This week, Ken Steele chats with Maureen Adamson, president of Fleming College, about how higher ed leaders can sustain a culture of innovation on campus, particularly by investing in our people.
“The most important thing” Maureen says, is to “give the gift of time” to front-line faculty and staff to reflect and innovate. “It can’t be someone in a back room trying to think something up.” We also need to invest in our people. “We want our faculty to be best in class; that requires investment and professional development.” It’s also important to bring in external perspectives for lectures and workshops, to help campus personnel “think outside the box” and “beyond our navel,” to be exposed to the many innovative ideas out there in higher ed around the world. “There’s a lot of fabulous stuff out there that is mind-blowing,” she observes.
Maureen has publicly committed that, even in times of serious budgetary pressure, “there will be no cuts to professional development at Fleming College.” Ken observes that it seems particularly appropriate for institutions committed to education, to also be committed to the continuing education of their people. “There is no evidence to say that cutting PD is helpful,” Maureen observes wryly.
From her career experience in the healthcare sector, Maureen has learned that research, whether pure or applied, requires some tolerance for mistakes. “We have to give people the opportunity to take a risk, and to make mistakes… That’s the only way we’re going to get to that point of innovation.” Between academic rigour and public-sector accountability, Ken points out, public colleges and universities experience a compound, cultural “double whammy” that discourages innovation and risk-taking, particularly at the levels of middle management and front-line staff and faculty. Maureen emphasizes that “it’s all about accountability,” and accountability frameworks need to allow front-line personnel to take some calculated risks. “These kinds of approaches are all hands on deck, and they’re very iterative.”
From her experience in government, Maureen knows first-hand that bureaucracy “is very risk averse.” Colleges are fortunate to be a few steps removed from that bureaucracy, and to have some latitude “to change things up.” Maureen believes we have to shift the centre of power to faculty in the classroom, and to the student experience itself. Finally, she observes, in a bureaucratic environment, even if people don’t want to hear it, “you always must speak truth to power… It allows you to sleep at night.”
Maureen Adamson is president of Sir Sandford Fleming College, in the region of Peterborough Ontario. She has 25 years of leadership experience in PSE, healthcare, government and the not-for-profit sector. She has previously served as President & CEO of the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences and of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, as VP Corporate Services at Mohawk College, and as Deputy Minister of both Tourism, Culture and Sport and of the Status of Women for the government of Ontario.
A sincere thank-you to Fleming College for arranging the onsite videography for this episode.
Next week, Ken’s conversation with Maureen Adamson concludes with her thoughts on how to nurture a culture of innovation on campus by investing in our people. To be sure you don’t miss it, take a moment to subscribe at http://eduvation.ca/subscribe/
And if you would like to host 10K at your campus, more information is available at http://eduvation.ca/twk/site-visits/
This week, Ken Steele’s conversation continues with Maureen Adamson, president of Fleming College in Peterborough Ontario. Maureen was formerly Ontario’s Deputy Minister responsible for the Status of Women, so this week Ken asks her thoughts on gender equity and increasing diversity in higher education.
When it comes to equity of access and success of women in higher ed, “we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Maureen admits bluntly. We know that high-performing organizations require balanced boards of governors, and yet we still don’t see that in many industries. We need to start teaching young people about being leaders and volunteers in the community, and that leadership needs to start at PSE campuses. In particular, she says, “we need to debunk the theory that women don’t want to go into trades and technology because it’s dirty work. It’s not!” Fleming College will be focusing on cultivating interest in these critical areas for our future economy, at a very young age.
Maureen also emphasizes that the pay gap between women and men to this day remains “alarming.” (In Canada, it is often cited that women earn 87¢ for every dollar earned by men. In the US, women’s earning ratio has risen slowly from 61% in the 1960s to about 78% in 2013.) Maureen also observes that even at the highest levels, women serving on boards and as CEOs still don’t earn the same as men. “There’s a gap in the labour market, and this is one that colleges have a responsibility to fill.”
In higher education, although the number of female college and university presidents has been increasing, leadership in the sector remains male-dominated, but “we’re making strides,” Maureen observes. (A quick survey of Ontario college presidents finds 11 females and 14 males, or about 44% female.)
Campus student populations are becoming more and more diverse, as institutions recruit increasing numbers of international students, and encourage participation by under-represented groups like visible minorities, students with disabilities, and indigenous students. As colleges recruit more international students in particular, Maureen observes, we need to ensure those students are socially and academically integrated so that all students benefit from the richness of student diversity on campus. (A recent CBIE survey found that 74% of international students in Canada report some difficulty getting involved in campus life.)
“We have to make it front and centre to be an inclusive and diverse college and culture,” Maureen asserts. Especially in smaller communities, without widespread diversity in the population, colleges have to pursue international exchanges and partnerships to create a diverse experience for students. The global student today is “super-global,” Maureen explains, and colleges have to respond to that. Global perspectives are crucial to prepare our students to be global citizens, and employees or entrepreneurs who can be successful in a global economy. It has to be “front and centre” as a priority, Maureen insists. “It has to be accomplished through active participation. We can’t just sit around and say we’re going to be inclusive and diverse, but without action.”
Maureen Adamson is president of Sir Sandford Fleming College, in the region of Peterborough Ontario. She has 25 years of leadership experience in PSE, healthcare, government and the not-for-profit sector. She has previously served as President & CEO of the Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences and of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, as VP Corporate Services at Mohawk College, and as Deputy Minister of both Tourism, Culture and Sport and of the Status of Women for the government of Ontario.
A sincere thank-you to Fleming College for arranging the onsite videography for this episode.
Next week, Ken’s conversation with Maureen Adamson concludes with her thoughts on how to nurture a culture of innovation on campus by investing in our people. To be sure you don’t miss it, take a moment to subscribe at http://eduvation.ca/subscribe/
And if you would like to host 10K at your campus, more information is available at http://eduvation.ca/twk/site-visits/
This week, Ten with Ken visits Fleming College, in Peterborough Ontario, where Ken Steele and president Maureen Adamson discuss the labour market needs of the fourth industrial revolution, and the need to prepare college students with interdisciplinary programs and the so-called “soft skills” in demand by employers.
Some of the biggest challenges facing higher education institutions, aside from budget pressure and demographic shifts, are the rapidly-evolving labour market. Most elementary students today will work in jobs that don’t yet exist. Artificial intelligence and automation are widely projected to impact at least half of all human jobs over the next few decades, and already prototypes have been unveiled of semi-autonomous vehicles, bricklayers, drywallers, news anchors, and even master chefs. In the past few decades, the jobs that have increased most worldwide are not those that require STEM skills, but those that require people skills, communication and emotional intelligence.
Fleming College is helping prepare students for a changing world, Maureen explains, through interdisciplinary experiential programs at its Kawartha Trades & Technology Centre. In this new 87,000-square-foot facility, plumbers, carpenters, and electricians work together to build an entire house. Students gain “hard”, technical skills, but also those critical social and teamwork skills.
Multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interprofessional training will become even more vital as “narrow” AI gets more and more capable of automating work within individual specialties. Ken shares Kai Fu Lee’s schema of AI’s impact on the labour market, which divides employment into 4 quadrants based on the level of creativity and strategic thinking required, and the level of “compassion” or social skills required. Lee predicts that routine, impersonal jobs will be fully automated within 5-10 years, while routine interpersonal tasks will require a partnership between an AI performing “back-end” tasks (like interpreting medical scans) and a human explaining those results to a patient. More creative, transdisciplinary work will require humans working in conjunction with AI tools for the foreseeable future. (Check out Kai Fu Lee’s TEDx talk, “How AI can save our humanity,” at https://youtu.be/ajGgd9Ld-Wc).
The fourth industrial revolution, caused by the impact of AI and automation on the labour market, means that today’s college graduates will desperately need the so-called “soft skills” like creative, strategic and transdisciplinary thinking, as well as interpersonal communication and empathy. “Not everything is technical,” Maureen emphasizes, which is why Fleming tries to integrate arts and humanities skills into many of its courses. Ken cites Scott Hartley’s argument (in the Fuzzy and the Techie) that “the antidote to technological irrelevance is to become MORE human, not less.”
Experiential, team-based collaborative learning models will help young people in particular become workforce-ready, and develop the interpersonal and workplace skills that many students no longer gain through part-time jobs. Maureen observes that “students need to learn how to learn,” and emphasizes the importance of the employer perspective on skills and competencies. (A 2015 Canadian survey by McKinsey found that 83% of educators, 44% of students, and just 34% of employers felt that today’s youth are being adequately prepared for the world of work.) “The more we can listen to our industry partners” about their needs, Maureen believes, the more colleges can “create programs in more of a design-thinking fashion.” For Fleming, and most colleges, “it’s going to be a culture shift” that will take significant time, as well as “investment in our people.”
A sincere thank-you to Fleming College for arranging the onsite videography for this episode.
Next week, Ken’s conversation with Maureen Adamson turns to diversity and equity in higher education, both in terms of gender parity and the integration of international students and perspectives. To be sure you don’t miss it, take a moment to subscribe at http://eduvation.ca/subscribe/
And if you would like to host 10K at your campus, more information is available at http://eduvation.ca/twk/site-visits/