On September 4, 1993, just two months after his appointment
as president of Olivet College, and before he had met officially for the
first time with Olivet’s Board of Trustees, Michael Bassis convened a
special day-long "Labor Day Faculty Forum". His purpose in convening the
forum was to issue a challenge to the faculty.
The way it turned out, [the faculty on the Commission] would go
off and meet with groups of faculty and carry back their ideas to
the Vision Commission and then talk about those ideas. Then, when
the Commission got an idea, we would go back to those individuals
and groups and get them to reflect on them. So, there was a lot of
back-and-forth, and at a small place [such as Olivet] it didn’t take
too much of that before all the faculty knew everything that was happening,
and talking among themselves.
Many people, both on the commission and in the general faculty ranks,
looked to President Bassis for guidance as the academic "revisioning"
process began. Olivet faculty were not used to the degree of involvement
in institutional decision-making that the President’s challenge required
of them. Bassis, meanwhile, insisted that faculty claim responsibility
for the development of the college’s new academic vision, publicly and
privately asserting that Olivet faculty must "claim ownership" of the
new vision. On the other hand, President Bassis had begun to formulate
some ideas of his own about what a reinvention of Olivet College might
require. He had begun talking openly, first to a small group of fellow
administrators and, then, increasingly, to a wider group of faculty, about
the importance of thinking "creatively" and "boldly".
As a result of these competing pressures, Bassis’s role on the Commission
became that of subtly synthesizing and fertilizing ideas. When commission
members asked what the president thought, he offered suggestions, gently
nudged Commission members to "think boldly", and recommended various
readings about organizational change or educational reform for the group’s
consideration. As Commission members brought back disparate ideas from
the different faculty discussions, Bassis looked for the common elements
among the ideas that could bridge the various perspectives. Bassis,
however, was still unsure as to what form the emerging ideas might take.
The president later observed:
I’d never been in an institution that had done this before, so
I was really inventing the process as I went along. While there were
some values I believed in deeply, I had no idea what, specifically,
the vision statement might look like. I wasn’t even sure of how useful
it would be. That’s why the design criteria that I [had the faculty]
vote on were so important, because they reflected a set of values
that would help shape the outcome of deliberation. And there’s some
powerful stuff in there about being true to the values of Olivet.
Although President Basis was a regular participant of Faculty Senate meetings
throughout the fall of 1993, the topic of academic "revisioning" at Olivet
College was not a prominent agenda item. Indeed, if the minutes of the
Faculty Senate meetings were the only window onto events at Olivet that
semester, one would hardly discern that a process to alter the college’s
core educational vision was underway. Rather, Senate meetings were dominated
by an array of faculty issues not too dissimilar from the kind of discussions
that predominate in other institutions’ faculty senates, including the
development of alternative tenure-granting scenarios, the formulation
of a new sexual harassment policy, and the faculty’s desire for a greater
role in college budget decisions.
In truth, the Faculty Senate leadership welcomed their organization’s
lack of involvement in Olivet’s "revisioning" process. Indeed, the senate
president took credit publicly for deciding that the senate should not
become involved in the highly irregular activities that were underway
at Olivet College. His belief was that existing governance structures
were intended for the "normal" business of the institution, and that
it was therefore inappropriate that the faculty senate be used as a
vehicle in the change process. This development was in turn welcomed
by President Bassis, who viewed the Faculty Senate as too passive and
reactive in nature to be of any real use in rethinking and redesigning
Olivet’s future.
In marked contrast, the newly-created Vision Commission was extremely
active throughout the fall of 1993. On October 6, the Commission released
an executive summary of their ongoing efforts entitled, "Developing
Our Academic Vision" (See Appendix A). The document described President
Bassis’s charge to the Commission at the Labor Day Faculty Forum, outlined
the design criteria the Commission was using to guide its deliberations,
and described the process the Commission was employing to garner the
diverse input of Olivet faculty. The document also stated that the Commission
intended to present its new academic vision for faculty consideration
the first week in December 1993. Pending the approval of the faculty,
the Board of Trustees then would be asked to take formal action on the
vision statement during its January, 1994 meeting.
Not all of Olivet College’s faculty was supportive about the efforts
of the Vision Commission. In fact, there were more than a few pockets
of faculty "resistance". Many resistors thought that Commission members
were spending an inordinate amount of time working on something to which
few people would ever pay serious attention. These individuals reasoned
that no one would ever notice or care about the group’s labored efforts,
and that whatever document ultimately was produced by the Commission
would likely "wind up gathering dust on someone’s shelf." To these resistors,
one of Bassis’s most frequent sayings, "Gone are the days of working
at a leisurely pace", seemed to embody the dangers of an overly-enthused,
inexperienced president engaging his faculty in a lot of "busy work".
For still others, resistance stemmed from an aversion to the threat
which President Bassis posed to the natural order of academic life at
Olivet College. Bassis spoke of the need to find a philosophical center
for the college and to identify areas of commonality, rather than to
dwell on differences. To a faculty long accustomed to its "Devil’s Bargain"
with the administration, in which the "reward" for low pay and administrative
micro-management was the right of faculty to be left alone and to do
little beyond their contractural obligation, Bassis’ talk of "revisioning"
Olivet’s basic educational purpose seemed foreign and threatening. These
resistors wished that Bassis simply would "run out of steam and go away".
On December 6, 1993, President Bassis convened a special Faculty Forum
so that the Vision Commission could present the proposal it had developed.
The vision statement was entitled, "Education
for Individual and Social Responsibility", and, although it was
only eleven sentences in length, the statement signaled a radical redirection
for the College. Claiming as its guiding principle the commitment to
student intellectual, moral and spiritual improvement first espoused
by Olivet College’s founders in 1844, the vision statement dedicated
the college to helping students develop "an ethic of responsibility"
for themselves and for their society. According to the vision statement,
this new ethic of responsibility was to be "realized in the context
of a distinctive liberal arts experience which nurtures in …
students the emergence and development of skills, perspectives, and
ethics necessary to better themselves and society."
After its formal presentation, faculty vigorously debated the vision
statement. Numerous questions arose about specific details contained
in the statement. President Bassis responded that questions about how
the new academic vision would affect institutional academic, personnel,
or budget matters was essentially irrelevant to the task at hand; faculty
had been convened to contemplate "the big questions" contained in the
vision statement and a discussion of "details" should be left for another
time. At the end of the day, a vote was taken in which 88% of the Olivet
College faculty endorsed the new academic vision and referred it to
the Board of Trustees for consideration.
On December 18, 1993, a faculty delegation presented their new vision,
"Education for Individual and Social Responsibility",
to the Olivet College Board of Trustees. The faculty representatives
described the process by which they had arrived at the new vision and
they discussed its substantive content. A question and answer session
followed the presentation, during which faculty were "grilled" about
the new vision they had developed. Just before the session was to end,
one trustee rose to his feet to speak. The lone trustee characterized
the new academic vision as "spectacular", and he began to applaud the
faculty’s effort. Soon, every one of Olivet College’s trustees stood
and began applauding; the faculty sat in mostly stunned silence at the
reception their presentation received. One participant at the board
meeting described his reaction to the trustees’ standing ovation by
saying:
[The trustees’ reaction] just blew the faculty away, they couldn’t
believe it. It was one of the most powerful moments [in some people’s]
careers to see this. The faculty were sort of doing this on good faith,
they didn’t know if … anyone would take [the new vision] seriously,
or anybody would really care. It had been a struggle [for them] to
put it all together because there had been strong resistance, with
some colleagues saying, ‘Why are you wasting your time on that stuff.’
Then, to see the trustees very spontaneously give a standing ovation,
that provided some of the fuel for a lot of what happened subsequently.
At its next meeting, on January 26, 1994, the Olivet College Board
of Trustees voted unanimously to adopt "Education
for Individual and Social Responsibility" as the college’s new vision
statement.
Making Sense of the Vision - Back
to Top
By all accounts, the December 1993 Board meeting was a "watershed"
moment in the process of change at Olivet College, but no one knew for
sure what it meant. For that matter, no one knew for sure what the new
vision statement meant. Said one senior college official:
We all knew that the Vision statement would become something important,
but none of us knew what, exactly, that something might be.
It was all still very ambiguous and lofty. What did it mean? No one
knew!
At the Faculty Senate’s first meeting of the new academic term, on January
14, 1994, President Michael Basis presented his list of priorities for
the semester. First among the list was the need to begin operationalizing
the new academic vision. Bassis asserted that a concrete link needed to
be established between the academic vision and specific student learning
outcomes. He believed that what was next required was the specification
of a set of learning objectives which students should be able to demonstrate
upon graduation from the college. President Bassis then requested that
a special college-wide faculty meeting be held on January 22, 1994 so
that he could issue a second charge to the college’s faculty.
When Olivet faculty convened on January 22 for the all-day meeting,
Michael Bassis summarized the Vision Commission’s efforts since the
Labor Day Faculty Forum some four months earlier and he congratulated
the college’s faculty on the progress they had made in developing the
new academic vision. He then delivered another challenge to the institution’s
faculty. One faculty participant recounted the president’s comments
as follows:
[Bassis] said, ‘OK. This is terrific and great. We’ve got a new
vision, and this is important. But, we need to be able to specify
in fairly precise terms what students should be expected to have attained
by graduation. In other words, what does the new vision really mean?’
We all sort of scratched our heads
President Bassis told the assembled faculty to go find an answer to the
question he had posed. He also told them that, as before, they should
devise their own process for answering the question. The president stipulated
just two broad guidelines for faculty deliberation. First, he specified
that whatever learning outcomes the faculty identified must be consistent
with the vision statement they had just adopted. Secondly, the president
stipulated that the learning outcomes also be consistent with the standards
of North Central Accreditation, Olivet’s regional accrediting body.
The Vision Commission disbanded, but several of its members constituted
the core of a new, informal group that became known as the Learning
Outcomes Group. An open invitation was issued to all faculty who wanted
to participate in the group’s efforts to develop the learning outcomes.
Although President Bassis became less directly involved in this group’s
efforts, he personally, and often privately, approached certain faculty
to solicit their participation. Said one faculty member:
Michael didn’t dictate the outcomes of the Learning Group, nor
of the Vision Commission before it, but he was always trying to enlist
people’s help?trying to get people to sign on and sign up. He would
personally call or approach various people to get them to participate.
He was also always in the trenches that year, always attending every
meeting.
At various times over the next month, between one and two dozen faculty
worked both directly and indirectly on the formulation of the learning
outcomes. The Learning Outcomes Group was open in its deliberations, and
information and suggestions flowed informally from individuals in the
group to faculty in various departments and programs of the college, and
vice versa. Colleagues often transmitted ideas back and forth between
the group and the broader community.
Within one month, the work of the Learning Outcomes Group was completed.
Using the Academic Vision as its guide, the Learning Outcomes Group
had developed five sets of learning outcomes that represented the wide
array of skills, experience, and knowledge that Olivet students would
obtain upon graduation from the institution. The five outcome areas
included "Communication Skills", "Reasoning Skills", "Individual Responsibility",
"Social Responsibility", and "Focused Study." The faculty committee
also developed fourteen specific student learning objectives corresponding
to the five learning outcome areas.
President Bassis called a Special Faculty Meeting for February 21,
1994 so that the Olivet faculty could debate and vote on the learning
outcomes that had been formulated. The various learning outcomes and
objectives were vigorously debated at the meeting, and some of the items
presented for faculty consideration were modified from their original
form. At the end of the day, however, the outcomes and objectives (see
Appendix C) were adopted by an 84% vote of the faculty.
To many faculty, the successful adoption of the student learning outcomes
demonstrated the momentum that was beginning to build behind Olivet’s
"change process." A sense of expectation began to creep into conversations
among faculty. The attitude of faculty was beginning to shift slowly,
but perceptibly, as well, according to numerous observers. One such
individual, a faculty member and senior administrative official, recalled:
There was definitely a positive spirit beginning to peek through
the dark clouds…All of sudden, we [faculty] had a new academic vision
and new learning outcomes. We began to look around and say, ‘Hey,
this is pretty incredible what we’re doing here. We were beginning
to take control of our future." Of course, there was a lot of confusion,
too, because [none of us] had ever done this before, and that included
the president. And, there was still resistance from some quarters,
but the general climate was beginning to change.
Although President Bassis had indeed never "done this before", his
ideas about Olivet’s future and about the direction the institution
should take were becoming clearer to both himself and to the senior
administrators who comprised the President’s Staff Group. The President’s
Staff Group (PSG) consisted of a cadre of senior administrative officers
including a half-dozen vice-presidents, associate vice-presidents, and
"special assistant" staff. Given the size and nature of Olivet College,
most of these individuals held dual roles as administrators and faculty;
in fact, most PSG members had spent the bulk of their careers at Olivet
in the faculty ranks.
The President’s Staff Group served several different functions. First,
the group served as a "sounding board" and "early warning system" for
the airing of potential problems, perceived and real, as the college
began its difficult process of reinvention. It was here that faculty
criticism and resistance was first identified, and here that suggestions
were formulated about how best to respond to such resistance.
From its inception, however, the PSG also served as a "skunkworks"?a
place where President Bassis challenged his senior staff to think creatively
about the future of the college, where "wild ideas" were floated about
how to achieve those alternative futures, and where staff could "curse
and fight" with one another about which wild ideas were workable and
which were just "plain wacky." As the 1993-94 academic year unfolded,
President Bassis spoke increasingly to the PSG of his belief that Olivet
become "a distinctive college." One PSG member later remarked of Bassis’s
fondness for the book, Creating Distinctiveness: Lessons from Uncommon
Colleges:
Michael referred to that book all the time. He’d say, ‘I’d love
for Olivet to be in that book someday.’ To him, the surest route to
distinctiveness was in doing something that no one else, or at least
only a few others, had already done.
The theme of ‘distinctiveness’ was prominent in much of the innovation
literature the president encouraged his colleagues to read in preparation
for PSG meetings. One item which had a powerful impact upon the group
and its thinking was a videotape version of the Peters and Waterman classic,
In Search of Excellence. One portion of the video program chronicled
the innovative mindset of Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs, who ordered
that a "Jolly Roger" pirate flag be flown atop the flagpole at Apple headquarters
as a symbol of the company’s propensity toward risk-taking. For PSG members,
the Jolly Roger became a symbol of the innovativeness and the "no-holds-barred"
approach Bassis was advocating. One PSG member said:
Michael was always encouraging us to be risk-takers, to push the
envelope in terms of our conception of what the college should become.
His mantra was always ‘let’s be distinctive, let’s be unique.’ The
whole pirate thing and the Jolly Roger was a symbol of that spirit
of taking risks, of thinking ‘outside the box’, so to speak. We thought
it was fun, so we used it. But, we also thought it symbolized where
we might be going…
The Jolly Roger thus became a ritual whose popularity among the group
grew as the institution delved deeper into the change process. Soon,
PSG members began bringing to staff meetings a variety of "pirate" paraphernalia,
including tiny pirate lapel pins or pirate hats complete with skull-and-crossbone
designs. At one PSG retreat held in the spring of 1994, someone brought
a replica Jolly Roger flag and pinned it to the wall of the conference
room; thereafter, the Jolly Roger was occasionally "raised" when the
PSG convened. Although these rituals never filtered into the larger
institutional culture, reportedly the symbols served an important role
in fostering an espirit d’corps among the college’s top administrators,
many of whom had begun feeling overwhelmed by the pace and magnitude
of events that were unfolding at Olivet.
Delivering the Academic Vision - Back
to Top
By the spring of 1994, there was a growing sense of anticipation at
Olivet College. Within a period of six months, and starting from scratch,
the faculty had articulated a new academic vision for their college,
had formulated specific learning outcomes for their students, and had
crafted the deliberative processes by which both the vision and the
learning outcomes were developed. To top things off, the Academic Vision
and the Learning Outcomes had been endorsed by overwhelming votes of
the faculty.
Yet, it was obvious to virtually everyone that much work remained.
In particular, there was no implementation vehicle, or delivery system,
for the new academic vision and learning outcomes. In late March 1994,
President Bassis hosted another Special Faculty Forum, at which he unveiled
a third charge to the Olivet College faculty. According to one Forum
attendee, the president recounted the college’s progress to-date, but
asserted that this progress would be in vain without some "delivery
model" by which the new ideas could be implemented. The forum participant
recalled:
Michael said, ‘O.K. You’ve got a new vision, and you’ve got some
new learning goals for students, but what specific form will the new
educational program take? How are you going to deliver this new academic
program? You need to go find the answer.’ Of course, by this time,
we could have guessed what was coming; we’d grown used to the ‘questions’.
Because time was running short in the semester, President Bassis proposed
that interested faculty self-select themselves into four different "Working
Groups." Each working group would identify and collect information about
a different innovative undergraduate college or program around the country.
The working groups would then conduct site visits to each of the four
locations over the summer months for the purpose of bringing back to campus
information about the different models and ideas about how each model
might be implemented at Olivet. Faculty would then debate the alternative
models and choose one for use in delivering Olivet College’s new academic
vision and student learning objectives.
Although faculty would be free to select the group in which they participated,
and the groups would be free to visit whatever institution they chose,
the president stipulated that all prospective delivery models must be
consistent with the six design criteria used in the development of the
Academic Vision at the beginning of the academic year. Additionally,
Bassis stipulated that the delivery-model-of-choice must be capable
of fulfilling the intent of both the Academic Vision and the student
learning outcomes.
Twenty-four individuals, or about one-half of the institution’s full-time
faculty, enlisted to serve on the four working groups, with each group
consisting of about 6 faculty. The working groups each elected a chair
to coordinate their group’s efforts. Two members of the President’s
Staff Group were elected as chairs of their respective groups.
Following considerable information-gathering on a variety of institutions
known for their distinctive undergraduate programs, the working groups
selected as the site of their campus visits three liberal arts colleges,
Tusculum College, Colorado College, and Evergreen State College, and
a large state university, the University of South Carolina.
The four schools represented a rich variety of alternative models of
undergraduate education. Colorado College was selected by one of the
working groups because of its "course block" system. Under the course
block system, each semester was divided into four time blocks, and students
focused on only one course per block. This focused calendar was said
to provide students a depth of discovery, allowing them to study intensively
one subject at a time. Tennessee’s Tusculum College was selected for
its own variation of the course block system and for its "service-learning"
program, which sought to integrate students’ classroom learning with
experiences in service to the community. Evergreen State College, located
in Olympia, Washington, was selected as a third prospective delivery
model because of its experience with student "learning communities".
The learning communities allowed small groups of students and faculty
to participate together in several of the same courses connected by
an organizing theme, which provided an interdisciplinary, "team" approach
to learning. Finally, the University of South Carolina was selected
because of its acclaimed "First-Year Experience", a program dedicated
to improving students’ first year in college through the use of various
interventions aimed at maximizing student potential to achieve academically
and to adjust to the interpersonal challenges of collegiate life.
As the spring term drew to a close, and despite some considerable rumbling
in the Faculty Senate about faculty not receiving extra compensation
for "summer work", the four working groups prepared to fan out across
the country to visit the different sites. Supplementing the groups’
travel was a $15,000 "planning grant" that Olivet College received in
April, 1994 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, located just a short drive
away in Battle Creek, Michigan. The grant, which was the college’s first
in many years, was the result of repeated efforts by President Bassis
to apprise Kellogg Foundation officials of the change process that Olivet
College was undergoing.
By the first of August 1994, all four of the working groups had completed
their site-visits and had begun preparing reports to share with the
Olivet faculty. President Bassis announced a two-day faculty retreat,
which was to begin on the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend and conclude
the afternoon of the next day, on Saturday. On the first day of the
retreat, the four groups would present their reports, assembled faculty
would debate the various models presented to them, and a vote would
be taken to decide which of the four models was to be adopted as the
delivery system for Olivet College’s new educational program. The day
would conclude with a college-wide barbecue for faculty, staff, and
their families at the president’s home. On the second day of the Labor
Day Forum, faculty would flesh out some of the specific details of the
model which they would have adopted the previous day.
On Friday, September 2, 1994, at 9 a.m., Olivet College’s faculty and
senior administration, approximately fifty people gathered in the Choir
Room of the Music Conservatory building to receive the much-anticipated
presentations of the working groups. An external facilitator, a nationally
recognized expert on strategic planning in higher education, was asked
to serve as facilitator of the presentations. The four working groups
were asked to make their presentations, each in turn. The groups were
asked to provide an overview, history, and detailed description of the
respective innovative program each had studied on its respective site
visit. Four flip charts were placed on easels at the front of the room
so that the working groups could write down the major elements that
comprised the models they had studied.
The group presentations consumed the morning and extended into the
early afternoon on Friday. By all accounts, the working groups made
their presentations to an exceedingly attentive audience. Although roughly
one-half of Olivet’s faculty had participated in the working groups,
individual groups had not previously shared their reports with one another.
When the presentations concluded, the floor was opened to questions--"very
tough questions", as one forum participant described it.
Nobody held back…people asked hard questions about what the various
plans had achieved at the institutions where they originated, how
each plan worked, and how specific elements of the plans worked. The
questioning was very thorough.
When the questions eventually died down, the forum facilitator announced
that a vote would be taken to identify which of the four different plans
had the most support. The facilitator gave each person in the room several
"gold stars" and asked that people approach the flip charts at the front
of the room and place their gold stars next to the elements within each
plan that the participants most supported. The room soon began to swarm
with activity as the forum participants crowded around the flip charts,
distributing their gold stars among the four alternative models. As one
participant later recalled:
It was a serious moment, but it was also a funny sight, with all
these people walking around with their little gold stars like the
kind you used to get in school for having the right answer.
The apparent humor of the moment quickly vanished, however, when participants
looked up at the charts and realized what they had done: the gold stars
were almost evenly distributed across the four plans that been presented,
with no one prospective model enjoying a majority of support from the
Olivet faculty. The facilitator reportedly looked around the room unsure
of what next to do.
The anticipation and energy that earlier had permeated the gathering
turned to frustration as it became clear to participants that the day
would apparently end in gridlock. Instead of providing a clear consensus
as to which of the four models would become the delivery vehicle for
Olivet’s new educational vision, the forum was producing additional
confusion about the college’s future. Contributing to this frustration
and confusion was the realization that "time was running out"; Olivet’s
1994-95 academic year would begin the following week and there seemed
to be no end in sight to the now year-long journey of institutional
reinvention. A senior administrative official recalled:
The [atmosphere of the] room was really heavy. We had come to the
end of this long process, and we were so close, but there was no solution?we
couldn’t agree on what to do. People were tired and frustrated, and
hungry, and we were wondering how we would get out this logjam. And,
we only had one day left.
At about 4 p.m., President Bassis, who had remained quiet throughout
the faculty forum, adjourned the meeting and reminded the faculty of
the barbecue that was to follow at his home.
Back to Top
Reference Links:
Managing
Change and Transformation in Higher Education...Institutions...M.
W. Peterson...CSHPE...School
of Education
Higher Education Transformation Work Group
Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education
2117 School of Education
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1259