What is SLI?

The Strategic Learning Initiative is a faculty-led partnership with Lane’s administration to create increased capacity for innovation and to carry out major, systemic change of the learning environment at Lane Community College. The effort is built around widely engaging faculty toward four general aims:

• To incorporate what is known about learning and student motivation to enhance the learning environment.
• To incorporate technology to enhance the learning environment.
• To fit the course and program formats to better meet the learning needs of current and potential students.
• To create a college-supported practice of learning scholarship among faculty.

The specific, short-term projects of the SLI are woven together and focused by the Leadership Team with the aim of reaching and sustaining the above four aims. In this way, the students’ immediate learning environment will be improved systemically, as well as improving the systems through which faculty innovate and exercise collective responsibility for enhancing the students’ learning environment.

The SLI is structured as a joint faculty union – administration project, anchored in a collectively bargained agreement * (.pdf) to provide stability and support. The agreement provides authority and resources to a predominately faculty Leadership Team that in turn charters faculty-chaired Project Teams to carry out specific projects. The faculty union and Office of Instruction vice-presidents respectively select the faculty and administration Leadership Team co-chairs and faculty and management members, and select replacements due to resignations.

* PDF ( Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader. )

What is the Strategic Learning Initiative built upon?

The focus is on learning. In contrast to research institutions and institutions imparting high social status to their graduates, community colleges and community college faculty traditionally take student learning as their highest priority. Yet this commitment is often not well examined and many indirect measures for learning are relied on. At a time of systemic change, even previously valid indirect measures of learning will no longer serve as good measures of learning, nor serve as guides for change. The direct focus on learning is needed. The focus on learning also offers an opportunity to re-examine college activities that do not contribute to learning.

The SLI is faculty-led. Faculty are the natural leaders of this change process because of their skills and expertise, their deep professional commitment to student learning, and the faculty’s commitment to the quality of their profession which suffers if it doesn’t actively improve itself. Practically, there are no realistic alternatives to faculty leadership. If major systemic improvements are to be made soon in the learning environment, the effort must be faculty led. The SLI is structured so that faculty and faculty values predominate at all levels from guiding the whole SLI to creating and carrying out specific innovations.

There is partnership with the administration. While the SLI is faculty-led, it is also a partnership between the faculty and the administration. This partnership is structurally reflected in consensus decision making in the Leadership Team, insuring a voice for the diversity of faculty and administrator concerns. The partnership is also reflected in the exclusive role granted to the SLI for systemically changing the learning environment at Lane. Faculty leaders appreciate expertise and the essential contribution of managers and administrators and appreciate mutually shared values. Administration leaders respect the faculty’s expertise and commitment to student learning, and support the partnership because it best promotes the mission of the college.

SLI is about strategic, systemic change. The SLI is more than a collection of short-term innovations. It is aimed at fundamental, long-term improvement of the students’ immediate learning environment, so more students are learning more effectively. And it is aimed at fundamentally changing the infrastructure of that environment so Lane more effectively improves itself over the long term.

Faculty are widely engaged. The SLI aims to widely engage faculty to allow faculty the maximum use of their skills, expertise, and intelligence. In addition, the SLI aims to build an effective infrastructure for faculty to exercise appropriate collective responsibility for the learning environment.

SLI closes three gaps. Right now there is potential for significant improvement in the learning environment in three general ways: (1) incorporating what is becoming known about how and why students learn, (2) incorporating new technology, (3) changing the formats of courses and programs to meet the needs of current and potentially new students. The SLI aims to close these three gaps in what exists and what could exist at Lane.

SLI will establish a college-supported practice of learning scholarship. For the college to make best use of its resources to continuously improve the learning environment, faculty will be supported to engage in scholarship about learning. This systemic change in the infrastructure of the learning environment helps to ensure that Lane continues to close the three gaps above and to incorporate and create new improvements in Lane’s learning environment.

The SLI is a joint faculty union – administration project. The faculty union is inevitably a central participant in the change process, because fundamentally restructuring the learning environment also restructures faculty working conditions and redefines the role of faculty. The collectively bargained agreement establishing the SLI provides the means to create stability that faculty and administration can count on in the long term. This protects the Initiative from changes in leadership in administration and in the faculty and seals the institutional commitment necessary to advance change. Union and key administration participation in the Leadership Team also provides power to move the initiative forward.