Southern Vermont College

In a recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, co-authors of the new book Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and What We Can Do About It, are deeply critical of “vocational” majors.  

These authors comment on the need for colleges to produce “more thoughtful and interesting people.”  Then comes the old saw: they believe “impractical studies” (I gather this is a synonym for the traditional liberal arts) are a better investment as these disciplines alone foster imagination and “stretch … intellect.”

I agree that we want individuals with the described traits.  Where I differ from these authors is the pathway for acquiring these qualities.  I lead an institution with many “vocational” majors: nursing, radiologic technology, business and criminal justice, and I would not want to be graduating, nor do I believe we graduate, individuals who are deficient in the quality of their thinking, their capacity to be creative and their intellectual engagement.

Think about it. Who wants to employ a nurse that cannot think well and boldly in a crisis? Who wants to send a police officer into the field who cannot quickly assess and employ ways to de-escalate a bad situation? Who wants new businesses that merely re-create buggy whips?

It is time to stop bashing the vocations as lesser disciplines.  Critical thinkers, creative problem solvers and engaged citizens can and should be produced across the academy – in the “impractical” studies as well as the practical studies. How we make that happen within higher education is the question of the moment.  Nurturing quality professors and effective pedagogy is what matters, and if we have both, then the discipline is irrelevant.

Conversations on how we can improve teaching and teachers would be well-worth having, particularly for those of us interested in educating not only America’s elite but also the many Americans who can and should complete a college education.

 An Overview

A recent report issued by the Center on Education and the Workforce  makes it abundantly clear that the workforce of the future demands more and more workers who have attained a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree.  This key finding reinforces the importance of President Obama’s equally clear directive that America needs to improve its college graduation rates by 2020 so that our nation has the most educated and competitive workforce in the world.

Marrying workforce development with college/university graduation rates is, in and of itself, an important statement about the direction in which institutions of higher education need to go.  All of our colleges and universities – from the largest to the smallest, from public to private institutions, from two year to four year programs, those with deep roots in the liberal arts tradition to those that are career focused  ­we need to find ways to graduate more students who can meet our workforce needs. 

Not surprisingly, the Report observes that not all states are equal in terms of workforce opportunities and particular educative challenges. For Vermonters, these imperatives take on added urgency.  Here’s why.

Concerns for Vermonters

Between today and 2018, Vermont will generate 100,000 new job vacancies, and of these openings, 62,000 will require post-secondary credentials. Compared to the rest of the nation, Vermont ranks ninth in terms of jobs that will require a Bachelor’s degree.  Noteworthy, too, is that Vermont ranks 50^th in terms of jobs that will be available for those who drop out of high school. 

These data present real challenges in light of the documented weaknesses in Vermont high schools.  Looking at 11^th graders, one in three Vermont students are not proficient in reading; seven in ten lack math proficiency.  Although more Vermonters graduate from high school than its New England neighbors (with lower rates of progression to College) and Vermont is one of the states with the highest expenditure per student in the country, these students lack college readiness according to the College Board. Indeed, Vermont received the worst score for aligning high school with college readiness, according to Achieve Inc, an independent, non-profit education reform organization that helps states raise academic standards.  (click to read more on Vermont College Pipeline data).

A Call for Action

These data identify key imperatives for those of us engaged in ‘in-the-trenches’ educational initiatives in Vermont.  If we want to have more students succeed in college and graduate, we must work to find ways to enroll and graduate more Vermont high school students who are prepared for college level work.

Here are five possible initiatives, among the many that could be developed:

(1) The newly formed but unfunded Vermont Council on the Pre-K – 16 Pipeline needs to develop and incentivize concrete strategies that insure that Vermont’s students are prepared for college.  These include the possibility of colleges adopting local middle and high schools. Another approach is better coordination between high school and college/university faculty, an initiative we have started already at Southern Vermont College and Mount Anthony Union High School.  Programs like this could be enhanced and replicated with financial support.

(2) More middle and high school students in Vermont need to learn about career opportunities available to them as adults, and the fact that these opportunities can only be realized in today’s workplace with a college degree. This needs to happen through experiential opportunities to visit workplaces, meet with professionals in the identified fields and develop mentorship relationships with individuals who can guide and support student progression.  SVC has launched a pilot summer healthcare academy with these goals in mind.

(3) Colleges and universities need to enhance their efforts to recruit and accept more vulnerable students into their institutions (i.e. first generation students, low-income students). Then, they must put in place strategies that improve student capacity to succeed, including pre-arrival preparation, bridge programming, peer-to-peer tutoring and first year courses that recognize the need for students to connect with each other and their community.  SVC has introduced a new pilot Anatomy & Physiology course to tackle these specific goals.

(4) The Vermont legislature, with gubernatorial support, and the private sector (including most significantly employers) must identify ways to increase meaningful financial aid to Vermont families, whether through grants, loans, tax credits or loan forgiveness for identified employment within Vermont. The goal is for college aged students who enroll in-state and graduate to focus on their studies while in school and emerge with manageable debt that can be serviced through meaningful employment opportunities; and

(5) There must be collaborations among the state’s institutions of higher learning so they can leverage resources and develop shared strategies for growing the population of college graduates.  These collaborations, some of which are already underway, can lead to more dollars and attention being directed to enabling student success.

Why this Matters

If Vermont fails in this effort, it will not meet the workforce needs of the coming decade. That failure will hurt our state’s economy and its capacity to thrive, and a generation of Vermont young people will suffer.  These individuals will not be workforce eligible or will be unemployed, which hurts them and their families.  That’s a result we cannot afford – on any level. 

At Southern Vermont College, we are working on all of these initiatives as part of an ongoing strategy.  We can do more, along with our statewide college and university neighbors.  Soon we will welcome the incoming Class of 2014.  I am excited to share with them our deep commitment to their collegiate success – without which we will neither meet the President’s 2020 goal nor create a powerful and able Vermont workforce for the coming decades.

Across America, students are struggling to pass Anatomy & Physiology. This is the gateway course into a wide range of healthcare careers, and the failure rates in A & P I – particularly among first generation students — are distressing.  Studies show that if students can pass the Anatomy and Physiology I, they are likely to pass Anatomy and Physiology II. 

With a growing shortage of healthcare professionals, we need to find a way to enable more students to progress into employment in health-related fields.  Our collective well-being depends on it.  To that end, we have decided to initiate a Pilot Program commencing in August 2010, designed to help students pass this critically important course — without lowering standards.   Indeed, at Southern Vermont College, receiving a grade of 77 or better is needed to progress from Anatomy and Physiology I into Anatomy and Physiology II.

Major features of the Pilot Program: The Anatomy and Physiology I course will run for two semesters instead of the usual one semester.  Based on successful research in graduate education, stretching this course will give students more time to assimilate the material while adding in new teaching and learning strategies while shoring up basic science knowledge.  Students who successfully complete this course will be entitled to take Anatomy and Physiology II at SVC in the summer of 2011(which also has a minimum pass rate of 77), without paying tuition for this course or cost of summer on-campus housing.  And, students will be on track to enter their professional program (nursing, radiologic technology) in Fall 2011.

Here are other key features of this Pilot Program:

• 12 students maximum;
• Multiple opportunities for learning while doing, including patient visits;
• Peer tutor and Success Center support;
• New clicker technology to help instructors assess and understand student learning and progress; and
• Foundational skill-building in Chemistry and Biology.

We will be studying the success of this Pilot Program, and look forward to sharing our results. If the course approach improves pass rates, we hope that other schools can adapt this initiative for their own institutions.

If you are interested in enrolling in the Pilot Program, details are provided in the attached flyer. 

An opportunity to succeed in a healthcare career awaits you!

Last week was National Nurses Week, which ended on May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday. Having recently participated in our nursing graduates’ beautiful pinning ceremony, I have been thinking about the nursing program at Southern Vermont College and the amazing careers opportunities that exist for our students – now and into the future.

New Trends:

There are vast and varied opportunities for graduates of nursing schools.  To the surprise of many, only 50% of nurses will actually work in a hospital setting over the coming decades.  Nurses will be in elementary and secondary schools, community health centers, businesses, pharmaceutical companies, ambulatory care facilities, nursing and assisted living facilities, governmental organizations and research institutes. 

The range of professional settings in which nursing graduates will work has never been broader – in part because as we think about healthcare prospectively, we are moving from a “disease” model with delivery of services in hospitals to a “health” model with access to services across our communities. 

A recent article in a Philadelphia paper noted that increasingly, some urban hospitals in that region are only looking to hire new nurses with a bachelor’s degree. Indeed, it seems clear that, moving forward, a bachelor’s degree is the minimum entry-level degree requirement for nurses.

At Southern Vermont College, where we have both an Associate and Bachelor’s degree program, we encourage our students to complete their Bachelor’s degrees, and we welcome students with Associate degrees from other institutions to complete their Bachelor’s degree with us. One of the advantages of our program is that students can complete their Associate degree, take the nursing licensure exam, and then work in a nursing setting while completing their baccalaureate degree. 

Nursing as a ‘Team Sport’:

Importantly, our nursing program is growing, in part as a response to the need for nurses in state and our region.  To that end, we have added slots into our Nursing One program (for students who have completed their nursing course prerequisites elsewhere), and we installed a high tech Simulation Laboratory, where students learn on robotic patients.   We are increasing the size of our nursing faculty, which is itself a challenge given the national shortage of nurses within the academy. For these reasons, we have no waiting list at present for our Nursing One program. 

There are many reasons to come to SVC for a nursing education, and the people who best express the strengths of our program are our graduates.  As one of this year’s graduates said in a speech to fellow graduates and their families:

“We have students from all walks of life, religions and ethnicities. We have students who have started with us right from high school, students working on second degrees, and students making career changes. But, we all share this common bond.  Nursing is truly a team sport.  We have learned to help and support each other… Even though we still have a lot to learn, we are compassionate, knowledgeable, skilled advocates [for our patients].  We are NURSES.”

If you or someone you know is  interested in a thriving career as a nurse, call our Admissions Department at 802 447 6304 or email us at admis@svc.edu. Or, try our Transfer Credit Hotline at 1-802-681-AT SVC or 1-802-681-2878.  Best of all, come to our On-the-Spot Healthcare Admissions Day on June 15 where we can review your application and transcripts right then and there and perhaps even register for Nursing One classes for Fall 2010.

A career in nursing awaits you!

Figure Skater Michelle Kwan received an Honorary degree and gave the Commencement address to the graduates.

The weather may not have fully cooperated, but the sun shone on SVC’s graduation day on Saturday, May 8th.  From the music to moving student and faculty speeches to the awarding of Honorary Degrees and the warm, gracious and inspiring Commencement address of Michelle Kwan to that all-important awarding of the degrees to 93 graduates, it was a glorious day.   Family, friends, faculty, staff, coaches, alumni and graduates had a chance to share special moments with each other  — remembering collegiate bonds and accomplishments and reflecting on the bright future ahead for Class of 2010. 

Join me in sharing this event through photographs, watch it on YouTube or read about it in the media.  These are all ways to remember SVC’s wonderful 83^rd Commencement Day.

Colleges across America are concluding their admissions processes for the entering class of 2010, and many high school students are in the final stages of deciding where to attend college in the fall.  To be sure, over the coming months, there will some continued shuffling as students who applied late in the process make their decisions, students on waitlists are accepted, and transfer students from community colleges and other institutions find new academic homes.

Lately, I’ve been pondering ways to improve the Admissions process, including lowering the stress levels of prospective students and their families. (Click here to read Dr. Gross’  article on Admissions in Inside Higher Ed.) The need for some reform became even clearer to me when I spoke recently to ninth and tenth grade parents and students at a large suburban high school.  Almost everyone seemed worried already about college admissions. Parents were taking notes; some seemed to be looking for some magic information or advice that would secure success.  Others looked totally bewildered by the newness of all that was before them.

Students should not start thinking about college admissions in the second semester of their senior year, but, I want to offer up a distinction: thinking about college admissions is not the same thing as thinking about college success. Ninth and  tenth grade is the perfect time to reflect on collegiate success; college admissions can wait until grade 11.

Here are three things that higher schoolers and their parents can and should think about that will put students in the best position to succeed in college.  After all, what good is getting into college if one cannot graduate or one is singularly unhappy?

Course Selection

The literature on college success suggests the importance of a rigorous course schedule in high school. So, in a nutshell, course selection matters.  Encouraging high schoolers to take difficult courses can lead to greater college retention.  Indeed, as I reflect on applicants to college, I am way more impressed by the student with A’s and B’s and even an occasional C in a ninth or tenth grade Honors course than the student with straight A’s in easy courses.  A grade of B- in Latin or Greek or Japanese shows a willingness to try new things.  In fact, I like seeing an upward trajectory.  The student whose GPA moves from a 2.5 to a 3.5 from freshman to senior year presents a more compelling case for collegiate admissions than the student with a steady 3.0 GPA.

Finding a Passion

Rather than thinking about PSAT’s , SAT’s, ACT’s and grades in particular courses, students in the beginning of high school should search for and then pursue a passion. It really does not matter what that passion is; that’s because once someone is passionate about something, the feeling and developmental skill set is transportable. Parents can encourage exploration of a wide range of topics – art, music, dance, science, politics, community service, religion, sports, stamps, the environment. You name it.  And, the passion does not have to have intellectual heft: collecting baseball cards or Pez dispensers are wonderful passions.

Of course, there are some students whose passion is hard to find; there are adults too who can’t seem to find a passion. I appreciate that. But, encouraging interests, and trying new things is, in my view, a predictor for collegiate success. This is because students are who engaged in college tend to stay in college. And, it is vastly easier to connect early in one’s arrival on a campus if one has some interest – even if that interest changes over time.  And, academic success requires discipline and hard work.  A passion creates the architecture for working hard and concentrating for extended periods, and those attributes can be transferred over to academics.

Visiting Campuses

Instead of those formal visits most people take (if they can afford them), I suggest families visit campuses informally – when vacationing, when in a new community, when visiting friends or relatives. It’s sort of like visiting museums or a new city.  Stroll around, get a sense of a place, visit the dining hall or the student center.  Watch the students interact with each other. Visit the campus store and buy a t-shirt. 

Colleges have a feel to them.  And, there are vast differences between small and large colleges, between urban and rural colleges, between residential colleges and community colleges. Research universities feel different from small liberal arts colleges. 

It’s useful to visit when one is not actually applying, when the stakes are low and the openness to seeing what is there is high. Kids get a sense of what they like and what feels right.  And, perceptions change: what feels right to a ninth grader might not feel right to that same student in the spring of junior year. 

Yes, the stakes seem high. I get the media hype about college admissions.  I understand the competition that students and their parents feel to keep up with the Jones and the Smiths. I recognize the burden of applying and the financial obligations being undertaken. I know that telling folks to de-stress doesn’t mean they will do so.

But, I also know that life is hopefully long and rewarding, and college is but one stop in a process of developing personal and professional success and satisfaction.  Viewed from this larger lens, what really matters is that kids go to and graduate from one of the many wonderful private and public colleges that dot the landscape.

2010 Community Service Award winners at the Axinn Leadership Dinner: Celeste Warner, Tyler Morton, Kathleen Babcock and Kayleigh Denoncourt

There are many well-documented and oft-mentioned joys of spring – newly blooming flowers, the smell of cut grass, mud season (if you live in Vermont), and the start of the baseball season.  On campuses across the US, spring is also when we enjoy the many celebratory events that lead up to Commencement.

On the Southern Vermont College campus, the month of April is filled with these events.  Some examples: the Axinn Community Scholar Leadership Dinner, the Sports Banquet, and Honor’s Convocation, which includes the Alphi Chi induction ceremony and scholarship donor recognition.

Each of these events presents an opportunity to remind ourselves – as individuals and as a collective — of the successes of our students.   We can reflect on their cumulative achievements in academics, community involvement (both near and far) and athletics.  Each celebration recognizes the multi-faceted talents of our student population.

As important as these events are, and they are important, they can mask the remarkable effort, over an extended period, which is required for students to achieve success.  Lots of time and hard work by the students stand behind the successes we reward this month, and there is accompanying time, hard work and effort from their faculty, staff, and coaches.

I think as these formal spring events approach, it is easy to lose sight of some of the smaller, less formal, ongoing recognitions of student support that we deliver at SVC day-in and day-out.  A positive email, a special hello in a hallway, a conversation in the dining hall, an extra meeting to go over a paper, some added help on a project, an inquiry about their health or their family’s well-being – these are all ways to build self-esteem, to provide encouragement, and to create an atmosphere where let students know we believe in them – sometimes before they believe in themselves.

As we welcome in spring this year, I am reminded that we don’t have to wait for new bulbs to sprout or new leaves to unfurl for us to remember that successes within the academy – both big and small — are a common occurrence, worthy of recognition across all seasons. 

So, please join me for our many events this spring, in the spirit of celebrating, and with renewed effort to celebrate, the year-round, diverse successes of SVC students.

Figure skating champion Michelle Kwan

At my high school graduation exactly four decades ago, there were 21 female students in the graduating class and Margaret Mead was the Commencement speaker.  Yes, really.  I still remember what she said, which makes her speech a rarity.  Many people cannot name their Commencement speakers from high school or college, let alone the content of their speeches.

Margaret Mead said that life was a constant pot of stew on the stove, and our task was to keep putting in ingredients.  Sometimes the stew tasted wonderful and at other times, the taste was just not quite right. Mead advised us that in those instances, we had to keep adding ingredients and in due time, the quality of the stew would improve.  In short, we control our own destiny and even when we do not, we need to keep adjusting to the changed circumstances.

Sage advice.  It is advice I still use today.

Some years after that, I was invited to give the Commencement address at an inner city high school in Philadelphia where I taught part-time.  By the time of the event, I had moved out of town, I was newly married, did not have much money for travel and was completing graduate school.  I turned down that invitation and have regretted it ever since. It would have been a great opportunity to pay it forward, and to give the students a taste of the amazing Commencement I had experienced in high school.

In one of life’s strange turns, I now have opportunities for a mulligan – a do-over and here’s how.  As a college president, I get to participate in the selection of Commencement speakers for the institution I lead.  And, the main criteria for me is finding someone who can make memories, someone whose presence and whose words will stay with students for decades to come. 

I want the three M’s for our graduates:  Margaret Mead-like Memories.

Now, the three M’s are not so easy to create and part of the reason, of course, is that Margaret Mead remains one of those iconoclastic figures of the 20^th century.  But, I think I’ve found such a person for this year’s 83^rd Commencement Exercises at Southern Vermont College.

Our speaker is an icon herself – figure skating champion, Michelle Kwan.  She has graced us with her grace, she has won more awards than any other skater in history, and she has worked hard to achieve success – no silver spoons here.  She has fallen and gotten up (literally and figuratively), she has pursued a dream, she has kept true to her values, and, as the nation’s first Public Envoy for Diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, she has become a role model for youth across the globe.   

Michelle is a memory-maker…and we are delighted to welcome her here to address the graduates of Southern Vermont College.

I’ve watched every Olympics since I can remember and, unless I am mistaken, I’ve noticed a change in the coverage of the Games this time around. In the past, the commentators primarily focused on either those who medaled or those who were expected to medal and then failed to do so. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat were the reigning themes. And yes, there are exceptions to this rule like Eddie the Eagle and the Jamaican bobsled team.  But, the coverage at the Winter Games in Vancouver seemed different somehow.

At the opening ceremonies, one commentator observed that for some athletes (and some nations), just being in the opening ceremonies was reward enough.  As the event coverage progressed, I have been struck by the repeated references to athletes achieving a “personal best.”  In speed skating, figure staking, ice dancing among other sports, the athletes were being measured against themselves.  Of course winning still matters but uber-winning seemed less important.

Take this example.

Joannie Rochette, the Canadian figure skater whose mother passed away unexpectedly in Vancouver, was heralded for her effort (both in the short and long skate).  Yes, it was terrific that she medaled but what seemed to matter was that she kept skating a personal best.  

This changed approach to Olympic coverage provides an important lesson for higher education – actually, for education more generally.  If we just focus on the gold, silver and bronze students, we fail to recognize the achievements of our “non-medaling” students and in so doing, we fail to honor their tangible progress.  In many ways, the progress of the struggling students is more remarkable and more rewarding than the continued excellence of the A+ student.

In my years as a law professor, I count among my biggest successes moving a student from a grade of “D –“ in his first course taught by me to a grade of  “A-” in the third course of mine.  It is not the grades themselves that matter; it is the learning evidenced by the improved grade.  And, for the record, law school grading is blind, so I had no way to detect the name of the student in the evaluation process.

I think this non-medaling approach can also inform how we grade our students’ work in courses.  If we use a blended average of the papers and tests and oral exams (assuming that the testing devices themselves are quality measures of skill acquisition), we favor the consistent student or at least the student whose first score is relatively strong.  And, we most assuredly disfavor the late starter.

If we were to weight the later tests more, then we are rewarding learning, which is  — assuming basic competency — what matters.  Dropping the lowest test score in another method.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting for a minute that the student who progresses from an F to a C- in Anatomy & Physiology is entitled to progress into a nursing program.  Reflecting on the Olympics, the very presence of an athlete there signals basic competence; even the weakest Olympic athletic exhibited strong skills.

Consider two students: one student has test scores across the semester of 80, 82, 82 and 76 (the last grade awarded), for a blended average of 80. Another student has a starting score of 63 and then progresses to a 75, 85 and 97 (last grade awarded) for a blended average of 80. Which has evidenced the greatest progress and in which would one have the most confidence in terms of future trajectory?  I’d take the second student any time. 

It is unclear to me whether the shift in Olympic rhetoric has changed as a conscious effort to contextualize winning in light of our miserable economy or the death of the Georgian luger or the catastrophe in Haiti and now Chile. What is clear to me is that the current broadcasters are reframing and expanding the definition of winning. Yes, a gold medal is one way to win. But there are other ways.

Winning within higher education for vulnerable students has a lot to do with improvement and progression. Sure, there are vulnerable students who are academic Olympians and these students progress into some of America’s most elite institutions of higher learning.  But, there are other vulnerable students for whom for whom personal bests are important and continuing benchmarks on a pathway to learning and success.

With the Games over, the broader measure of winning promoted by the commentators in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is worth remembering and periodically circling back to.  It can help how we frame and evaluate winning in higher education.

In the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Southern Vermont College and Bennington College are featured as two schools that are changing the paradigm for what it truly means to be a liberal arts college in the 21^st century. Both institutions think the “traditional” way is not working and have charted a new path.

 (Click here to read the article.)

SVC is committed to training the leaders of tomorrow to have critical thinking and problem solving skills.  With a liberal arts core, we are fostering learning through a laboratory, hands-on approach, rooted in engagement in the community and partnerships with those outside the walls of the institution.

The Chronicle article captures the essence of SVC, and I am pleased that, together with our neighbor Bennington College, we are seen as places that are working to provide quality higher education in a changing world.

Our students, faculty and staff can be proud that our story is being told. I, too, am proud.