To get other perspectives on the community college as a community, I posted a question on the faculty list serv at Austin Community College as to how others defined a sustainable community. I got several thoughtful responses and a set of great links. One response puzzled me. The writer stated that he thought ACC was the opposite of a community if you define it as a "group of people with common tasks, values, goals etc. operating in some sort of dynamically connected fashion". He did feel that the organization was pretty stable and sustainable despite the lack of community.
When I reflect on my experience as a part of the child development department, I see much interdependence, support and connectedness which is at least a community of inquiry or one of interest. With the place based aspect of working in one building shared with a child care center, it seems very much like how I would define community.
In response to further questioning about ACC as an "uncommunity", the writer acknowledged that there are some pockets of communities of colleagues, but overall the college does not function as a community. He went on to further state that he thought that if true community does not exist, the illusion of community poses threats to the organization, particularly around accountability. It seems that he is speaking to pseudo shared governance, where accountability for some tasks, but no authority, is given to faculty. He then argues that this leads to lax accountability.
This line of discussion leads me to think more about the practice of shared governance in the community college. Can there be shared governance without accountability? How can a group be accountable? The system is still hierarchical in that the board hires the president to lead the organization. The president is accountable to the board, not the faculty or the shared governance groups. So how can we move to a model of shared leadership?
Garner writes in On Leadership that "we cannot find an instance of a healthy society in which humans have not devised a framework of values, norms of conduct, a moral order. When the community's broad consensus disintegrates or loses its force, the society sickens." If ACC does not have shared values and goals as a community, can there be sustainability in the long run?
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2 comments:
Community, shared governance—it’s all in the definition.
Matt’s blog offers the idea of a normative definition of community. Your colleague at ACC has certainly created such a definition — one that sows its own seeds of discord in requiring shared values and goals.
I wonder how your colleague would view ACC through Green and Haines’ definition of community which requires only shared territory/space, social organizations providing regular interaction, and social interactions on matters concerning common interest. Lots of room in that definition of community for conflicting values and goals, disparate tasks, people working at counter-purposes, and other kinds of strife. No requirement for shared vision, just interactions around common interests.
I think shared governance is like community. It comes down to definition and execution. If the definition is “consensus on all issues” or “equal control at all levels” then it’s impractical. Participants are bound to be disappointed. However, if shared governance is defined as “transparency, a real voice in the process, and control over those things that most affect your work,” then we’re off to the races. As long as the concept is poorly defined and over-sold — like your colleague’s conception of community — it can’t help but become just another point of dissention.
LR>>I suggested last week that you should begin identifying key words and concepts.
I posed several terms that came to mind when reacting to another post and the NPR story on the Hinkle family: capacity, sustainability, resilience.
The original post suggests more terms: consensus and accountability. In my mind, you need both concepts to tease out a working definition of governance as self-regulation.
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