One of the colleges I want to examine relative to models for shared governance is Valencia Community College in Florida. The reason that the President of the college offers for establishing a shared governance structure is as follows:
"A learning college needs decision making structures that honor the fact that the faculty and staff who mediate student learning know things about the students and about the organization that the rest of us cannot know. Therefore, they must have a powerful voice in the collaborative decision making that characterizes a learning organization (Valencia,2001 para. 5)."
This is a powerful statement about the mission of the college as a learning institution and how the governance structures can support this mission. It will be interesting to examine if this structure does indeed support the goals for improved student learning.
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Thinking about proprietary (profit-driven) schools vs. community (mission-driven) institutions... I think the strength of the community college lies in its dedication to democratic ideals, at least as far as that can go in an organization with fiduciary responsibility. Perhaps one differentiator is community colleges’ ability to teach community ideals even as we teach academic and technical subjects.
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