In the Know with ACCT

Open Educational Resources

For this episode of In The Know, we pulled together a panel of trustees and faculty from across the country to discuss the advantages of open educational resources, commonly referred to as O.E.R. Each of the three institutions represented, Pima Community College, Harper College, and South Florida State College, are at different stages in their adoption of OER, and everyone had valuable knowledge and experience to share.

Towards the end of the episode, our panelists shared a few resources they thought would be helpful. They are linked below. 

• Rice University OpenStax
• OER Commons
• Consortium for Community Colleges for OER

Dimensions of Diversity and Demography with Mark Hugo Lopez

The United States has a unique, ever-changing culture made up of people who migrate from throughout the rest of the world. Committed to open educational access, diversity and inclusiveness, community colleges have a special and vital role in guaranteeing a high-quality education to everyone in the country. Paying attention to demographic changes today and knowing what to expect tomorrow are imperatives for community college leaders.

In this episode of In the Know with ACCT, Pew Research Center Director of Global Migration and Demography Mark Hugo Lopez addresses the changing demographics of people within the United States.

Topics discussed include:

• What are diversity, equity and inclusion from a research perspective?
• How are these principles embraced today compared with how they were seen decades ago?
• How does the American perception of diversity, equity and inclusion compare with that of other parts of the world?
• How does the political partisanship seen in the media compare with research-based understanding of people's perceptions of diverse cultures within the United States?
• Are diversity and immigration one and the same?
• How do geographic and generational considerations relate to these issues?
• How do perceptions of higher education vary among racial and ethnic groups? What about different generations?
• How could changes to the 2020 Census affect perceptions of diversity and personal identity? 
• Will future generations give greater or lesser attention to discrete aspects of diversity and differences?

For more information from Pew Research Center, visit www.pewresearch.org. 

The Value of a Retreat with Rosie O'Neill

Trustees are busy people who volunteer their time to govern community colleges through board and committee meetings. Are retreats really worthwhile? If they're done right, one trustee says, they can be indispensable. 

In this episode of In The Know, ACCT Board Member and Northern Virginia Community College Trustee Rosie O'Neil speak with ACCT Director of Strategic Communications David Conner and Director of Retreat and Evaluation Services Colleen Allen about how retreats at her college and at ACCT have enabled her to grow as a trustee and have enabled the board to set clear strategic visions, monitor those visions and follow them through to completion. 

For more information about ACCT's board services, visit our website. 

Board Ethics with Jeff Advokat

On this episode of In The Know we interviewed Jeff Advokat, Trustee at the County College of Morris in New Jersey. Jeff was in town for the most recent Governance Leadership Institute, so we talked with him about community college board ethics. He’s been an attorney for nearly four decades and had a lot of good advice regarding ethical dilemmas trustees might encounter.

If you like this episode, check out the other episode we recorded with Jeff about what new trustees should know before getting started. It’s titled “Attention New Trustees, This Episode is for you.” Remember to subscribe so you’re notified when we release new episodes. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week.

The Future of Work with Michelle Weise

This episode featuring Michelle Weise was recorded at the 50th Annual ACCT Leadership Congress in October. Michelle is Strada Education Network's Senior Vice President of Workforce Strategies and serves as Chief Innovation Officer for the Strada Institute Future of Work, which is dedicated to advancing understanding of the future of work to build the learning ecosystem of the future. 

Michelle's research focuses on the future of the workforce and how to connect student learners more directly to meaningful employment pathways through their working lives. 

For more information on what Michelle spoke about, check out the book she co-authored with Clayton Christensen titled Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution.