Last Friday, I spent much of the day at a retreat on improving General Education at Penn State. The day was a great opportunity to share thoughts about this important part of teaching and learning. I came away from the day with four thoughts. My first was on themes. The second focused on administration. Today, I’ll focus on communication and transparency.

Communication and Transparency: As someone who has transitioned from Department Head to Associate Dean and from outside the process to inside the process during the past 6 months, my perception of communication and transparency issues regarding General Education may be unique. There are several aspects of this that I think need to be considered.

There is the issue of formal versus informal communications. If I were to describe the effort so far, I think General Education has relied on the Faculty Senate reports as a form of formal communication, and the development of a web site for more informal communications. Both, I think, are only part of the solution.

I think the communication effort needs to keep in mind several cross-cutting problems, some of which were highlighted during the university’s effort to change health benefits.  For example, the administration believed that communication through Faculty Senate was adequate for informing faculty. As the subsequent events showed–and our General Education effort should never forget–communication through Senate is weak, at best.  I’m sure many of us wish that were not so, but it is the reality we face.  Many, many Senators have not been provided the means to communicate with the rest of the faculty they represent; many faculty not in Senate are completely disengaged from its role.

This is just one of the cross-cutting issues. The fact that we have no President, the fact that we are engaged in strategic planning, the fact that we have significant divisions among the Board of Trustees and alumni, the fact that we face challenging financial pressures, and more mean that many employees are stressed and on edge. Our efforts need to take into account the current climate and recognize the need for extra effort in communications.

As anyone who has visited my blog, seen my Tweets or otherwise connected with me can tell, I use a lot of new communication tools–I have to thank my students for that, because they’ve always been the ones who pushed me to try them out. But, many other faculty do not and the blogs, web sites, and twitter have not had a compelling reach. Something has to drive people to these sites, and that simply has not happened, yet.  So, our informal means have also not generated what is needed.

Most importantly, I think the lessons from other areas of leadership about change need to be embraced.  I would highlight two.  First, when you are making big changes in people’s lives (health benefits and more than 33% of a curriculum are big changes), the message needs to be delivered from the top–it cannot be delegated. Second, when making big changes, extra channels of communication have to be used and more personal means of communication must be used.

In health benefits, I’d contrast Penn State-Hershey Medical Center’s largely successful roll-out of its health benefits change with our experience at University Park.  At HMC, top leaders–CEO, COO, CFO–and more conducted more than a dozen town hall meetings, and many, many visits to individual departments to answer all questions.  The effort was personal and it was extensive in reach outside the normal channels. And PSU has almost 5 times as many employees as HMC.

So, yes, it is a gargantuan effort to communicate big changes, and we have to recognize the size of the effort needed, if we want to do it right. If we as a group of leaders are not willing or able to commit the time, then why should we expect others to commit the time and effort to make changes?

Another reaction I had after the retreat was in response to a comment made to the effect that communication can’t start until there is a proposal to communicate.  And, here, I would disagree.

Before communicating about the proposal, the effort needs to communicate its understanding of the problem. I briefly touched on this in my first reflection. While the efforts so far have outlined the concerns, they’ve done little to provide transparent access to the data to support the arguments. When I’ve pointed faculty to the reports, the typical response has been: “That’s it?” The reports are largely assertions without strong empirical evidence.

Faculty are critical and analytical thinkers. Where are the survey data reporting and detailing student dissatisfaction with the current GenEd? Where is the evidence that the current GenEd has hurt students? Where is the evidence that other universities have improved student learning with their changes? Where are the tables showing standing faculty disengagement with GenEd? Where is qualitative assessment of the different options for changing GenEd and their strengths and weaknesses within the Penn State system? I know some of these data exist and even support the concerns, but they are not even available on the web site, much less being actively shared and distributed with department heads and faculty.

To get people to buy into your solution to the problem, you first have to communicate your understanding of the problem, convince them you’ve looked deeply into the quantitative and qualitative data, create real information from that data, and share it openly with the people you are trying to convince. If communication about the solution occurs without this, it’s often the case that people become distrustful.

It’s good that this emerged as an issue at our retreat and good that efforts are already being made to address this.  It’s a long and difficult task, but if the goal is worthwhile, it’s worth it.