My morning sessions started off with Entrepreneurial leadership and disruptive innovation with Chris Bustamonte, president of Rio Salado College. Rio Salado is impressive on many fronts and Bustamonte shared several remarkable things worthy of entire session just in the first 5 minutes. For example, 70% of the college's 40,000 students are online, they disaggregate the teaching role and they have 23 full time faculty and 1500 part time.
He talked about how to get to a culture of innovation and one key takeaway that I had was this - Rio Salado is part of a big system. Most of that system offers education in the traditional manner. His college does not. So, if you want traditional, there are plenty of places to go and teach. Rio Salado is not one of those places. They are not trying to have everyone do things their way, but this is one place set aside for innovation and, if engaging in innovation is not for you, there are plenty of other places to be. He wasn't being harsh about it, but simply acknowledging that you can't be all things to all people and they were going to focus on doing what they did well - innovation. Very energizing.
The next session was Yoga Mindfulness in the Classroom for Student Success with Dori DiPietro from Mesa Community College. She shared lots of studies that showed where engaging in a mindfulness practice really relieved student stress and improved outcomes. She suggested some simple ways to introduce mindfulness and we practiced some focused mindfulness in the session. It was nice. She shared a story about two wolves that battle within one - one of anger and one of peace. The one that wins is the one you feed. Engaging in a mindfulness practice feeds the peaceful wolf.
Finally, I attended a session called Applied benchmarking with Bryan Ryan and Robert Grove. Essentially, Applied Benchmarking has one
- Identify a problem
- Find someone who is doing well at the thing that challenges us (the benchmark)
- Find a way to bring it back to the college (in a way that does not break the bank)
At their college, Wake Technical College, they have every single employee engage in this process. I asked how they supported classified staff like secretaries and cashiers, who rarely go to conferences to be exposed to best practices, to engage in this process. They didn't really answer this question. I like the idea for administrators and faculty. Actually, I like the idea for everyone, as long as everyone is supported in being exposed to the best practices of their area.
I like to identify some things that I hope to do as a result of what I learned at a conference. My hopes from this morning's sessions are:- create a mindfulness module for my online classes, make it an optional but rewarded part of the pre-class assignment
- create an optional but rewarded process for Applied Benchmarking for my faculty, directors and program coordinators. Consider whether and how to expand to other employees.
- Rio Salado has a vibrant prison education program. We are expanding our prison education at Seattle Central and trying to do it in innovative ways. Dr. Bustamonte gave me a contact at the college and I will follow up and request a conversation with her.
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