Environmental Scan

Lake Michigan College Vision - 2010

Introduction

In the year 2010, Lake Michigan College will be among the top ten community colleges in the United States.

We will achieve this by creating and exceeding benchmarks of excellence, quality and service.

The College's premiere status will be the result of a relentless drive by every instructor, administrator and staff member to achieve three unwavering objectives:

• understand to an unprecedented degree the educational needs, wants and desires of virtually every current and prospective student, business, secondary and post-secondary school and community agency within Southwest Michigan and North central Indiana;
• harness the change, risk and upheaval inherent in innovation to create startlingly creative institutional improvements, academic programs and training and services that add significant value to students and stakeholders;
• establish benchmark standards of excellence for teaching and learning, student services, community service and institutional management.

The urgency of conditions within the city, state and country that Lake Michigan College serves requires that these objectives form the core of our mission. Nothing short of an institutional transformation will enable the College to significantly impact . . .

. . . the renaissance of a city at the College's doorstep in which four of every ten families live in poverty, one of every seven students fails to finish high school and one of every five adults is unemployed;
. . . a changing service area in which an aging population, continued out migration, fewer high school graduates and declining population will result in a shortage of workers in most occupations;
. . . a region in which kindergarten through 12th grade enrollment remains flat;
. . . an economically ravaged state in which more than 300,000 jobs, 65% of them in manufacturing, have been lost in the past three years;
. . . an information-saturated world in which a Sunday edition of the New York Times carries more information than the average 19th-century citizen accessed in his entire life.

But impact this environment we will. Within five years, Lake Michigan College will have achieved a level of excellence rare among this country's 1,200 community colleges. Not by boasts or bluster, but by every day discovering new ways to significantly exceed the expectations of our students and stakeholders. In hundreds-perhaps thousands-of ways, we will add significant value to the lives of these individuals by achieving the following milestones:

• Management by fact will guide decisions that add significant value to the lives and livelihoods of the individuals and communities the College serves. LMC will expand its research capabilities and collaborate with other data-driven organizations to develop a comprehensive and integrated fact-based system to help sustain high institutional performance and exceed accountability standards being demanded by government and the public. This system will enable the College to benchmark performance standards for student outcomes, customer service and other key indicators; anticipate and meet student and stakeholder needs, wants and expectations; and extract and use data and information to improve overall student, operational and financial performance. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College will rank among the leaders in student learning outcomes success. As leading indicators of excellence, LMC student outcomes will be the primary focus of our College and will rank among those of the top ten community colleges in the country. We will measure outcomes assertively, seek opportunities for improvement continuously and fund new innovations vigorously. Faculty will continually improve teaching and learning, driven by the routine assessment of student outcomes at the course level, discipline level, and degree level. (back to top)

• Students will have more opportunities to succeed than ever before. Every student will declare a major, set a career path or identify an educational goal, because a focused intention-an individualized, customized plan of action-increases student retention and educational success. Students will select from an expanded academic "menu" of innovative programs, including an exclusive Honors Program, courses leading to careers in emerging technologies and an invigorated transitional studies program that swiftly and efficiently moves students into degree programs. Students will have opportunities for real-life work experiences as part of their academic lives, which will strengthen their career choices and better prepare them with the skills to work in a global economy. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College will be indispensable to workforce education and training and a catalyst for business innovation in Southwest Michigan. We will create and deliver comprehensive training solutions-from workforce readiness, including reading and math skills to advanced skills-that prepare today's workers to compete successfully in tomorrow's world of work. We will collaborate with partners in the private and public sectors to retain and attract current businesses as well as develop the next generation of jobs in life sciences, information technology, advanced engineering and new and emerging sciences and technologies. The College's entrepreneurial influence will be felt throughout the region, from the corporate boardroom to the shop floor; from the family farm to the small tech start-up; from the restaurant kitchen to the research laboratory. (back to top)

• Every student will participate in student life activities. Student life will be expanded to enhance scholarship, enrich classroom experience and increase personal growth opportunities. Students will have access to clubs, intramural sports, creative classes and opportunities for social engagement that will help them develop self-confidence, interpersonal competence, and leadership skills that will be recognizable in the community as they enter the work force and at four-year institutions as they transfer for further education. (back to top)

• Full-time and part-time faculty will aspire to teach at Lake Michigan College. The best and brightest instructors and industry professionals will vie to teach in classrooms that are incubators for some of the most innovative teaching and learning methodologies in higher education. As renowned experts in their disciplines, instructors will access innovation resources inside and outside the College to design curriculum, develop interdisciplinary teaching methodologies, conduct applied research in teaching and learning and drive academic excellence. Attention to the unique learning needs of individual students, including one-on-one academic advising, will be the norm. (back to top)

• Teaching, advising and learning will be our instructors' core responsibilities. Based on faculty recommendations, we will shift instructors' workloads from extended overload, program review and other secondary activities to the critical functions of classroom instruction, student advising, professional development, curriculum design and program evaluation. The results will be an invigorated teaching and learning environment for both faculty and students. Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, creativity and other higher order skills will predominate faculty resumes and produce an innovative environment that pervades virtually every classroom. (back to top)

• The College will provide a seamless integration of classroom, virtual learning, media and electronic communication to make teaching and learning both enriching and exciting. Distance and location will be inconsequential, with technology providing communications links between all sites and a gateway to our external community. Wireless technology will support any learning occasion. The sharing of knowledge will occur effortlessly through text, data, image, video and voice. The ability to access information through both print and electronic media will speed analysis of complex data and modeling and will improve decision-making. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College will get and keep the right employees. The College will be rigorous in recruiting faculty and staff who can think critically, act innovatively and serve students and stakeholders passionately. That rigor will define four practical principles for making staffing decisions: (1) When in doubt, don't hire-keep looking; (2) when we know we need to make a staffing change-act; (3) always put our best people on our biggest opportunities, not our biggest problems; and (4) train, motivate, reward and encourage passion in our employees. (back to top)

• 95% or more of all students and stakeholders consistently rank LMC service-in all areas of the College-as "excellent." Intensive, ongoing employee training, exacting service standards and continuous monitoring-through quantitative and qualitative research-will ensure that the College achieves the highest standards of student and customer service. This commitment to quality service will establish LMC among the top ten community colleges in the country in overall customer satisfaction. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College will be more diverse than the region it serves. We will scour the nation for qualified leaders at all levels, with an emphasis on diversifying our faculty with individuals who are master teachers passionate about affecting change both inside and outside the classroom. High-profile diversity leaders from across the country will regularly engage the College community in vigorous debate about how the cultures within our College, our community and our country foster or fragment diversity and inclusion. LMC will be a national model for diversity, transforming organizations from awareness to action. It will also be a place where anyone-regardless of who they are or where they come from-feels welcome and appreciated. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College will function administratively as a single, unified college, but innovation will know no boundaries. The South Haven, Bertrand Crossing, Napier and M-TEC sites, spurred by executive deans empowered to identify opportunities and take risks, will be greenhouses for exciting new varieties of academic programs, customer services and community initiatives that target specialized audiences with unique needs. (back to top)

• The pace of change inside Lake Michigan College will equal or exceed the pace of change outside the College. We will build enrollment, market share, revenue and resources by being better equipped than our competition to anticipate and respond to the needs of students and stakeholders with a continuous menu of breakthrough programs and services. We will be nimble, adaptive, timely and as sensitive as a tuning fork to the environment in which we do business. A planned and deliberate "Innovation Pipeline" will capture, evaluate, approve, design, and implement ideas from students, faculty and staff. Faculty and staff, trained in idea-generation techniques, will debate competing ideas to gain College support and resources. Innovation Action Teams will develop and bring to market bold new programs and services, perhaps within mere weeks of their conception. Occupational goals will be developed on demand. Radical, transforming ideas that advance the College's mission and values will originate with an employee working in an out-of-the-way office, atop a riding lawnmower, in the One-Stop Student Center or literally anywhere else within the organization. Timely programs will replace outdated ones, and change will be constant. (back to top)

• The M-TECSM site and the Bertrand Crossing Campus will support the transfer of discoveries and knowledge in emerging technologies from universities to industry partners and the rapid application and commercialization of this technology to stimulate economic growth. The College will collaborate with key government, education, economic development and private sector partners to identify, develop, fund and offer education and training to create new jobs and facilitate the development and commercialization of the real world applications of new and emerging technologies. (back to top)

• Partnerships with secondary schools, intermediate school districts and four-year colleges and universities will guarantee a seamless K-18 path to educational attainment for students throughout Southwest Michigan. Lake Michigan College will be the recognized pathway between high schools, careers and transfer universities. We will continue to generate baccalaureate, masters and doctoral programs with our partners that are vital to the region's needs to create new opportunities for students at every critical stage of their educational development. (back to top)

• LMC will become a primary advocate within the region and the state for community college education. The College will collaborate with a wide range of entities in higher education and local and state government to monitor and influence policy and to address issues of common interest. Through its efforts, the College will promote legislation, policy initiatives, innovative programs, economic development and strategic outreach that support the progress and well being of community colleges and their students. (back to top)

• Lake Michigan College's auxiliary services will be the region's cultural, business learning, innovation and continuing education resource while generating net income for the College. Every LMC auxiliary-Mendel Center Mainstage, Conference and Event Services, Community and Business Services, and the Institute for Diversity for and Leadership - will complement the College's mission, enhance the region's quality of life, and more than ever contribute to the College's financial strength. (back to top)

• The Lake Michigan College Foundation will contribute significantly to the funding of the College. Individuals, organizations, businesses and foundations will recognize that their contributions provide a margin of excellence that makes good programs great ones, retains our region's best and brightest students with scholarships, and improves access to higher education for those who otherwise might not be able to afford to attend college. (back to top)

• A model for the state, our in-depth facility assessment will guide facility improvement decisions in reducing deferred maintenance, minimizing catastrophic occurrences, sharpening energy efficiency, reducing safety and security concerns, assuring legal compliance and enhancing services to support our diverse student body and programs. Embraced by the community, our College Park land development concept will tie our property use directly to our academic programs and provide opportunities for real life work experiences for our students and support services for our programs. Development will maximize land use and provide a revenue source while protecting the College's environmental areas and allowing for College expansion. (back to top)

In 2010, Lake Michigan College will rank among the elite community colleges in the nation. We will achieve that premiere status by imagining and doing what can be instead of what is. By anticipating rather than reacting. By design, not accident.
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