MATC Matters

Looking at AQIP
Category 5: Leading and Communicating

AQIP has identified nine Categories of related key processes that provide a framework for the assessment and improvement of higher education institutions. The fifth category, AQIP Category 5—Leading and Communicating, focuses on how an institution develops the processes and systems related to communication and decision making.

It examines leading and communicating activities and the alignment of leadership system practices, institutional values and expectations. The category also includes decision making, direction setting and planning for the future and the development of leadership including succession planning and the use of data related to measuring outcomes and efforts at improvement.

In our most recent Systems Portfolio, a few of the more prominent MATC activities in Category 5 include:

• Improved alignment throughout the institution, beginning with the Board’s End Statements, to the Three-Year Strategic Plan goals, on down to each unit plan.
• Increased availability of leadership development opportunities through the Leadership Pathways initiative.
• Improved employee evaluation processes, beginning with the Administrative Performance Review process.

The College uses the following sources of information as measures of its effectiveness in leadership and communication:

• Personal Assessment of the College Environment (PACE) employee satisfaction results
• Constellation Survey results
• Annual unit plan participation
• Administrative Performance Review Process Results

The Systems Appraisal identified MATC’s strengths for “Leading and Communicating” as:

• The College’s demonstrated commitment to becoming a learning college by participating in the Vanguard Learning College process, the revision of College vision, mission and values to focus on student learning and its efforts to align program and course design with specified learning outcomes.
• The use of an environmental scan to help the College identify key trends, used for planning and working with the Consortium for Community College Development to define and establish new strategic directions for the college.
• College Council is aided in decision making by regularly receiving input from work teams, design teams, committees and other resources throughout the college.
• Efforts by the College Council to integrate information gathered through a variety of means—outcome data, environmental trends, internal scans, LSQIP data and other methods—into its strategic planning and decision-making processes.
• The College uses many methods to communicate to and among different levels on both a regular and as-needed basis.

The Systems Appraisal also provided feedback on opportunities for improvement including:

• Communication tends to be one-way, top-down, so more opportunities for information to flow upward are needed. The addition of a feedback loop would strengthen our decision-making process.
• More opportunities should be available for staff and faculty to participate in leadership training.
• The College would benefit from identifying a clear leadership succession plan.
• While direct opinion survey tools are helpful, the College needs to use additional methods to gather information on the effectiveness of leadership and communication activities.
• The PACE survey results need improvement. While MATC is at the “consultative” level, the Systems Appraisal Team expressed concern that more work is needed to improve confidence in decision making at all levels.

The two current Action Projects closely related to Category 5 are:

• Communication—improving College communication processes and perceptions.
• Culture—finding ways to encourage an atmosphere of cooperation across the college, as evidenced by PACE scores.

Both of these Action Projects were suggested by employees at the March 2007 Vital Focus meeting.

While communication has long been a concern at the College, AQIP offers us many new avenues to explore as we seek effective methods to improve. The Vital Focus sessions helped us identify some of our most pressing issues and concerns in the area of communications and leadership. As the college strives to improve, the recent PACE Survey results and feedback gathered at the upcoming PACE listening sessions will help guide us. If improvement in Leading and Communicating is to occur, all stakeholders need to be involved in creating an environment of mutual respect and open communication.