Institute/Session Summary:

Purpose and Relevance:

Administering a learning or tutoring center requires leadership skills that transcend day-to-day operational issues. Fiscal and operational difficulties threaten to constrain learning and tutoring centers due to declining budgets and increasing pressures of external and internal accountability. Rather than accept those limitations and pressures, leaders of those units must manage change, stakeholders, and resources effectively and productively to grow and to expand needed services to clients.

In order to build capacity to handle these competing issues, the presenters will facilitate a discussion for organizational leaders on managing change from an assessment perspective. Participants will engage in a thorough assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of both their leadership style and of the organization that they lead. After the analysis, theoretical, practical, strategic, and tactical implementation techniques will be examined within the contexts of managing organizational change.

The workshop will cover these organizational themes:

• Managing Change: Internal and external forces that impact current practices and policies; how to prepare an organization for change; how to manage employees during change; differentiating between strategic and accidental change
• Managing Stakeholders: different types of internal and external partnerships (e.g., universities, community agencies, local educational associations); assessing partnerships and their value to future growth; eliminating partnerships that no longer work
• Managing Resources: local, state, and federal funding opportunities (e.g., grant writing, fee-for-service programming, contracting); conducting a fiscal and space assessment (e.g. measuring service effectiveness, selecting instruments, disseminating results); setting priorities that are "fundable"

This workshop will allow participants to examine the barriers that prevent an organization from expanding fiscally and operationally, explore the opportunities for managing change and building partnerships across organizational types, and develop strategies that strengthen an organization's capacity for sustainability. Participants will leave the workshop with an organizational action plan for Managing Change for Sustainability and a personal assessment of their leadership in the change management process.

Theoretical Basis and Assessment Framework
The workshops' theoretical framework is adopted from the following: Senge's Fifth Discipline concepts, Greenleaf's and Maxwell's Servant Leadership concepts, Student Development Theory, Motivation Theory, Mattering (Belongingness & Inclusion in particular) Theory, Organizational Development Theory, Change Management Theory.

The assessments and inventories are taken from a variety of validated and reliable SWOT, change management, organizational development, and competitive analysis instruments. At the end of the workshop, a learning outcomes assessment will also be conducted to measure the articulated outcomes.

Learning Outcomes

1. Participants will assess their organization's fiscal and operational strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
2. Participants will articulate three major changes in their organization which have impacted their operations
3. Participants will specify major barriers to negotiating changes from both an individual and organizational level
4. Participants will identify at least three possible stakeholder partnerships to expand services
5. Participants will develop an organizational "Managing Change for Sustainability Action Plan"

Program Outline

1. Introduction (20 minutes)
   Welcome
   Agenda
   The Facilitation Model
2. Self Assessment (30 minutes)
   Leader Analysis
   Individual SWOT and Small Groups Discussion
   Change tolerance assessment
   Integrated values assessment
3. Organizational Assessment (40 minutes)
   Organizational Analysis
   Organizational SWOT and Small Group Discussion
   Competitive assessment (Internal and External Stakeholders)
   SWOT and the Institution
4. Organizational Change (40 minutes)
   Sustainability in Organizational Change
   Internal and External
   Support and/or Resistance
   Funded versus unfunded mandates
   Structural change and its impact on organizational values
   Predicting and planning for change
5. Action Plan (40 minutes)
   Integration of SWOT Analysis
   Stakeholders: Interest and power
   Fiscal assessment: Alternate funding scenarios
   Action Steps
   Presentations on individual or organizational action plan
6. Assessment (10 minutes)
   De-brief
   Workshop Learning Outcomes Assessment
   

Presenter1 Name: Mary Jo Gonzales
Presenter1 Institution: Dickinson State University
Presenter1 Bio: Mary Jo Gonzales, Ph.D., serves as the Director of the Academic Success Center at Dickinson State University. Her educational and corporate experience includes leading organizations through change, building strategic partnerships, and developing alternate funding mechanisms. Her current research interests include learning outcomes assessment, best practices, and leadership.

Presenter2 Name: Derek Brandes
Presenter2 Institution: Columbia Basin College
Presenter2 Bio: Derek Brandes, M.A., serves as the Assistant Dean of Student Success and Retention at Columbia Basin College. His educational and research interests include the mentoring relationship, student development, and the first year experience for college students. He also serves as an assistant coach for women’s basketball at Columbia Basin and is pursuing his doctorate degree in teaching and learning.

Presenter2 Name: Kevin Moberg
Presenter2 Institution: Dickinson State University
Presenter2 Bio: Kevin Moberg, M.A., serves as Writing Center and Supplemental Instruction Coordinator at Dickinson State University. His interests in research and practice include policy implementation, paraprofessional student training, instructional development, and writing across the curriculum. His previous work has been in teaching writing, literature, and theatre at both the secondary and post-secondary levels. He is currently pursuing his doctorate degree in educational leadership.