Changes at YSU: Still Up in the Air

Change, it seems, is a constant in higher education, and YSU seems almost always to be just about to make some kind of big change. This week, I’m talking with YSU Board of Trustees member Harry Meshel, about how YSU and the local community might be affected by a report from the Northeast Ohio Universities Collaboration & Innovation Study Commission, which includes, among other things, a call to “explore the creation of a Mahoning Valley community college.” Because of Meshel’s long history with the University and with state and local politics, I asked him to comment on the Commission’s recommendations and the future of YSU in general.

Meshel brings a unique perspective, in part based on his own memories of attending YSU full time while also working in the open hearth in a local steel mill. He also taught at YSU, on and off for about 20 years. He worries that higher education has gotten a bit soft, that students aren’t struggling enough, and that we focus too much attention on frills, like the wellness center. No doubt, I see more students today who have the privilege of not working while they go to school, I also work with many who are working every bit as hard as Meshel did when he was a student. Of course, those students are usually not the ones using the wellness center. I worry that balancing work, family life, and school too often means that education is the thing that’s easiest to let slide. Given the choice between taking care of a sick child or responding to a boss’s request that you work an extra shift, it’s hard to put school work first. But that always comes at a cost.

Meshel sees two promising things emerging from the Commission report. The first is the recommendation not to change the structure of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM). As Meshel explains, not only does the current program work, but expanding it meets current economic needs. There are jobs for health care workers in this area and elsewhere.

Meshel also likes the report’s call for a community college. People at YSU have been talking about this for more than two years, and the commission report brings us no closer to real strategies. It simply recommends exploring the idea; it does not yet suggest how to turn the idea into reality. Nonetheless, Meshel thinks that a community college might be able to serve the training needs of area businesses more efficiently and effectively than the University can. Some of that has to do with accreditation: a community college might be able to have students focus more of their time on specific workplace skills and rely more on part-time faculty or instructors who don’t have Ph.D.s.

In part because the community college is still more an idea than a concrete plan, we don’t yet know what it will accomplish. For me, the idea raises several questions:

• What role will YSU’s faculty, administrators, staff, and students play in creating the new college?
• How will a community college, which plans suggest could set tuition much lower than YSU, affect enrollment and academic programs at YSU?
• How will a community college achieve that lower tuition rate?
• Would the option of a local community college increase the number of people pursuing higher education in our region? Or would it encourage them to settle for a 2-year degree instead of getting a bachelors? And how would that affect long-term economic opportunities in the area?

I don’t necessarily oppose the idea. I’ve been an advocate of better education for first-generation and working-class students for well over a decade. But I am frustrated that at this point in the discussion, we still know so little. I keep hearing conversations on campus about how the community college will change things, but this is a change that seems to be permanently in the wind, not yet reaching the ground.

Educational reform is not for sissies

Anyone who’s paid any attention to discussions about education knows that we have no shortage of problems and no shortage of ideas about how to address them. The real challenge is creating change. This week, I’m talking with Bill Mullane, a local educator who’s spent years working for change in local schools and districts. He served as principal at Warren Harding High School for a number of years, and he now serves as supervisor of School Improvement and Community Relations for the Ashtabula County Educational Service Center in Ohio. He’s been both an observer and an active participant in K-12 education in our community.

In our interview, Mullane talks about two aspects of the efforts to improve education. First, he notes that we’ve undergone a major change in what we expect from students and from schools. In the past, schooling was organized around rules and requirements. Students were viewed as having met expectations if they completed the requirements, and those requirements were often different depending on the student’s future plans. That system was built around the assumption that students have different needs and abilities and that education was about having the right set of experiences. Today, education is organized around competency, defined almost entirely by tests, and all students must meet the same standards. Mullane doesn’t reject the idea of testing, though he does question the ways that test results are used. He points out that changing the model creates changes in how we manage schools and how we think about education.

Mullane also notes the difficulty of changing the educational system. After all, most Americans experienced public education first-hand, and despite our critiques of the system, we are also attached to it. It feels natural and therefore unchangeable. So many people – teachers, parents, community members, school board members – object to ideas that would change the basic structure of the school or the pattern of the school day. Changes do occur, gradually, but as Mullane suggests, any serious overhaul of our educational system will always be met with resistance, simply because it’s different.

I’m working with a group of YSU honors students this semester, all of whom are writing research papers that address, in a variety of ways, the question of how YSU could do a better job of helping students from urban districts succeed in college. We had an interesting but frustrating discussion last week about how difficult it is even to know where to begin to improve education, because what happens in school is influenced by so many factors. The conversation made me think of one of my favorite lines from the Jewish Talmud: “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” We may never find the complete solution to the problems of education, but neither should we ever stop trying to make it work better.

From the Super Bowl to the Streets? The Clayton Holmes Story

Instead of Lincoln Avenue this week, WYSU will air an interview by David Luscher with former pro-football player Clayton Holmes. Holmes won 3 Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys, but late last year, ESPN.com reporter Jeff Pearlman discovered that Holmes was living on the street in Florence, South Carolina. This Wednesday at 7:30, David talks with Holmes about his experiences.

Lincoln Avenue will be back next week, with a conversation with Bill Mullane about education in the Mahoning Valley.

Digging into the Past: YSU's New Archives

2008, as you may have heard, is YSU’s centennial. As part of the celebration, the University has opened an archive of materials documenting the institution’s history. This week on Lincoln Avenue, I’m talking with Maag Library Director Paul Kobulnicky about why the archive matters and how it works.

An archive of YSU history might sound like something that would be of interest only to people who are into, say, football trivia. But along with old photographs of Pete and Penny, the archive includes a wide array of documents that help us not only remember but also gain fresh insight on the history of this institution and this community. Old school newspapers can remind us of controversies and campus issues from earlier eras, while documents from University offices can provide insight into how the institution developed. That documentation is useful not only to historians but also for official reasons. Indeed, as Kobulnicky explains, public institutions are required to keep certain kinds of records. Thinking about the archive in those terms reminds us of the multiple roles that the University plays in the community – as the site of a common experience for many alumni and students, as a public institution that includes serving the community in its mission, as one of the largest employers in the Valley, and so on.

I’ve had the good fortune to work with YSU’s archives in several ways over the years, from digging through piles of books in the old rare books collection (which has been replaced, happily, by a very well-organized reading room where you can still access things like old maps of residential neighborhoods) to working with the archives staff to build a new collection of family history papers reflecting the ethnic history of the community. I’m a geek, so these things interest me, but even if you’re not the least bit geeky, you might find something in the YSU archives that will bring back memories or let you see this community and this university in a new way. I encourage you to explore what’s available – much of it online.

Getting Work and Workers Together: Harder Than It Sounds

In all the talk about economic development, I keep wondering about the prospects for the majority of the Mahoning Valley’s workers – those who don’t have college degrees and who don’t, at least on first glance, seem to stand to gain from the development of the local technology sector. In an effort to find out where they stand in the local economy, I’m talking this week with Bert Cene, director of the Mahoning and Columbiana Training Association. They’re the pipeline for federal funds aimed at preparing workers to fill the jobs available in the local economy.

MCTA works with both businesses and individuals, trying to match the workforce needs of area companies with the skills of local workers. But there’s a mismatch between the two sides. In our interview, Cene describes a local jobs fair, where employers came looking to fill about 2000 jobs and more than 5000 people showed up looking for work – but the employers still couldn’t find enough people with the right skills to fill all 2000 slots. What’s wrong?

On the one hand, local businesses could do a better job of working with organizations like MCTA to identify their hiring needs. On the other hand, more area workers have to be prepared on a basic level with skills like just showing up on reliably. At the same time, many workers have been displaced from jobs that paid well, and the positions that are available today offer lower wages. Cene suggests that many workers today shy away from factory jobs, preferring the clean, safe, and relative quiet of retail and service industry work.

But the big picture, which I found somewhat surprising, is that, at least according to Cene, employers in our area are looking for good workers but can’t find them. There are jobs available, and, Cene says, that as new industries develop, organizations like MCTA can help provide appropriately-trained workers, as long as business can identify what they need.

At the same time, educational institutions have to provide the right kind of training opportunities. Cene says that he’d like to see YSU offer more flexible programs geared to fill the needs of area businesses. That may be one of the advantages of the proposed community college. We’ll talk about that in a few weeks, when former state Senator Harry Meshel joins me to discuss YSU’s future. Stay tuned.

And if you're interested in work in the Mahoning Valley, visit the Worker Portraits website -- a collection of stories about real jobs in our community.

Funding Change in the Valley

Youngstown has many good non-profit organizations, and several key local foundations regularly help to support their work. But until now, those efforts have not been well-coordinated, nor have non-profit leaders had many opportunities for professional development and networking. The Raymond John Wean Foundation is stepping in to fill that void, as part of a new initiative on “capacity building” – that’s non-profit jargon for critical self-reflection, strategic planning, and deliberate, intentional efforts to develop an organization’s ability to make a difference and strengthen its day-to-day operations.

This week on Lincoln Avenue, I’m talking with the Wean Foundation’s still-fairly-new President, Joel Ratner, about the Foundation’s new directions, including a series of programs aimed at helping area non-profits work better and work together. Starting with a community summit last fall and continuing with a very well-attended set of workshops on strategic planning in January, Wean is providing training, opportunities for networking, and grants to support capacity building, all aimed at helping organizations serve the local community better.

This includes getting people working together. Those who have read the MIT working paper, “Why the Garden Club Couldn’t Save Youngstown,” understand that one of this community’s challenges, historically and still today, is that those who want to solve problems don’t always work well together. Just getting non-profit leaders together to discuss the planning issues that we all face is a step in the right direction. As someone who directs a center at YSU (the Center for Working-Class Studies), which functions as a hybrid academic unit and non-profit group, I’m grateful to Wean for the opportunity to learn not only about how my center can work better but also about the efforts of and issues facing other area organizations.

The other half of Wean’s new strategy is a focus on neighborhoods through small grants of $500 to $5000 to small local groups, especially neighborhood organizations that want to pursue concrete projects to improve their community. This project is still getting organized; the Foundation is establishing two community review boards, one for Youngstown and one for Warren, who will evaluate applications for these small grants. This approach goes hand-in-hand with the neighborhood focus of Youngstown 2010, putting resources in the hands of ordinary people. It also works as another form of capacity building, helping people develop the skills and experience to become community leaders.

Talking with Joel Ratner was inspiring to me, and what I’ve heard at Wean Foundation events this year suggests that they are working strategically both within the Foundation and with area organizations. I look forward to following the progress of these initiatives.

We're (Almost) Back!

Lincoln Avenue will return to the airwaves and the internet on February 6, with an interview with Joel Ratner, President of the Raymond John Wean Foundation. Watch this space for interviews on community development, education, the enrivonment, and more.