Welcome to ELPA 6454. I'm Dr. Bethany Flora and thrilled to be here
co-teaching with Dr. Brian Noland for The Inaugural Cohort in Community
College Leadership and Elba. What a gift for you to be sitting where you are,
because this semester you will be taught by Dr. Rich Rota and Dr. Brian Nolan. Two
of who I consider the most notable policy experts in Tennessee Higher
Education if not nationally. So I'm a learner with you this semester. I
consider myself really to be on the other side of the camera more than I
should be on this side of the camera, but thank you for indulging me and allowing
me the opportunity to join this class with you. A little bit about my
background. I have come to the place where I am through kind of a weaving
road. I was a business major, undergraduate and master's degree in
business and my first job outside of college was working in manufacturing and
it was a Fortune 500 manufacturing company and my job was to take customer
orders and order all inventory, order raw materials and then to schedule
production on 17 different manufacturing lines. That was Ball corporation; very
fast-paced environment. I also worked a day ahead constantly which has come to
serve me well in my project management roles, because in manufacturing you're
always working in the day of head, you're always anticipating what could happen.
But when I finish my master's degree at Tusculum, I was invited to come back and
teach as an adjunct. Dr. Melanie Narkawicz invited me and that really began
my love for the thought of changing future leaders instead of being one, in a
way. So, I was really attracted to becoming a professor at that time and
kept finding myself though in these administrative roles in higher education.
So, my first administrative role in higher education was the Northeast State
Community College. I worked on a workforce investment act grant there,
anchored in the high school of Sullivan East high School and an interesting
tidbit about that experience that was the year that Sullivan East had a mold
problem
unfortunately, but the fortunate thing for the kids was that they moved
all of the classes in the high school to Bristol Motor Speedway. So we finished
out the last semester of many kids senior years which, you know what a way
to remember your senior year, having class at Bristol Motor Speedway. So from
that Northeast State workforce investment act grant position, I
transitioned into Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center working for
Radford University as their site director and I do have to tell you this
has probably been one of my most rewarding experiences in higher
education. It was a consortium environment and so there were about 12
universities there under one roof partnering to deliver academic programs
to an underserved region of the area in Southwest Virginia. What was most
rewarding about it was that my office was at for Radford University was in
between the Virginia Tech offices and the Old Dominion offices and so what a
rich opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas with regard to institutional
policies and practices around recruitment, retention, program
development.
This is where I also became seasoned speaking on my feet to a group
of people about academic programs. So, I would go to different consortium and
Chamber of Commerce events and have to talk about what it is that we deliver in
Abington, not just the programs that I deliver, but what all of the institutions
deliver and later on in my dissertation I conducted on higher education centers.
I really do believe that these centers as consortium environments can become
somewhat of a test case for higher education and interventions across the
landscape as a whole, because you have publics and privates both competing and
and then collaborating with and against each other inside one organizational
unit. So it's quite the experience and as you get to know me and hear me talk, I
tend to talk a lot about consortium environment consortium environments,
because I think they're a remarkable way to deliver higher education. So
working for RU there in Abingdon, I became
a mentee, I would call it of sorts, to my graduate Dean. I reported to her. She was
on the main campus at Radford University and I was blessed when the opportunity
presented itself to go to RU to become the director of graduate
recruitment and retention. My dean Dr. Carol Cipher it how I saw potential in
me and she said, "Bethenny come up here, get close to Virginia Tech, pursue your
doctor, I'll support you while you work full-time for me," and you know we all
probably have stories like that, that we are standing on the shoulders of giants.
We would not be here where we are without people who believe in us. I hope
you have someone like that at your institutions as you're pursuing the
certificate program. So i worked recruiting, I was traveling quite a bit,
but i would recruit during the day, go to so many undergraduate institutions. I
have my favorites that we'll talk about in the class, but recruiting and talking
to undergraduates and oftentimes their faculty or their family members about
their graduate education options. I entered my doctoral program at Virginia
Tech at that time, so I worked full-time and completing my PhD full-time and
while at Virginia Tech that first year working on my PhD I had a professor Dr.
John Hurt who was very good friends with an associate provost at Virginia Tech
and it just one of those things worked out to where i was able to transition
from RU to Virginia Tech and went on board at Virginia Tech in March of
2007. At that time I was hired as a special projects coordinator. The
university was getting ready for Reaffirmation for Accreditation and
maybe you all understand this, but the periodic review of academic
administrators was one piece that the institution was very much concerned with.
They wanted to make sure that we were in compliance as we got ready for that SACS
review. So in march of 2007, that's why I was hired.
We also knew and we're anticipating some turnover in the vice-president season in
the Dean ships and they wanted to hire me to manage those searches. My Provost
at the time was not a strong believer in the use of search firms, he much
preferred using in-house folks to staff searches and so I was hired to do those
two things: the searches for Vice Presidents and Dean's and then the
Periodic Review of Vice Presidents and Dean's. Three weeks later, as many of you
are aware, the shootings happened on campus and I found myself kind of
leaving that role in taking over the Provost communication crisis
communication role. As you would understand the senior leaders were
pulled out immediately working with the families, working with the media, truly of
being an external source in many regards and so those of us who are left in the
office became responsible for a lot of the internal operations of the of the
institution during that season and I was promoted to assistant provost and then
took on more duties related to the recovery in response efforts.
Dr. presidents presidents Dr. Charles Steiger, the president of Virginia Tech
at the time appointed me to staff the internal review of what happened when
when the shootings occurred and so we conducted a very extensive interface
interviews with all the offices who had interacted with the shooter at the time.
I staff that I also had the very distinct privilege of staffing the
Norris Hall task force. My office and Birstall actually looked out at Norris
Hall and so I was selected to staff the Norris Hall Task Force which determine
what we would do with the space where the shootings occurred.
Now that seems pretty tense to have a baptism by fire, but i have to tell you
that my experience at Virginia Tech during that time gave me a rich
appreciation for the development of personal relationships with your
colleagues as well as professional relationships, because the seasoned
relationships of the senior administrators, what they had
is what they pulled up on when they responded to the crisis. Lots of policy
changes came out of that and we'll talk about that in the class. I feel like the
one little thing that maybe I could contribute to this class is the local
institutional level view of policies and I'll talk more about that as we go along
the way. So at Virginia
Tech, that was my job also worked in some of the fun things that I did was to
work with faculty development and advancement, I organized the new faculty
orientation program, we did board support so the academic affairs subcommittee of
the Board of Visitors, our role was to prepare presentations and then also the
education and training of the internal campus community before things went to
the board. So, that was a very exciting time. Some of my favorite memories I
think, as an academic administrator, were working with students. Doctoral students
like yourself or graduate students like yourself who would come into our office
and we would give research projects to and it's very rewarding to see where
they are today. So, that's a whole lot about me probably more than you really
wanted to know but that's what I bring academic wise in my administrative
portfolio both in my education portfolio as well and then why I'm here today is
that I'm an assistant professor of educational leadership at ETSU. So I've
transitioned out of academic administration now I'm back into the
classroom, teaching and working with you and doing what I love. So I really do
look forward mostly to our weekend weekend sessions so that I can interact
with you a little more personally. It's weird being on this side of the screen.
I know that you all are going to be shooting a recording, an introduction
video of your recording so you'll understand, maybe sympathize with us here
behind the camera, but I do look forward to meeting you and I look forward to
working with you and will see you online soon. Take care.