Brent Warner
This is the higher ed tech podcast season three, Episode 11. Back to School spring 22 with Dr. McDonald.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome to today’s higher ed tech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the instructional technologist here at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner
And I’m Brent Warner professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So Brent, hopefully, by the time this airs, you have had a vacation a little time off over Christmas, and winter break. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. And hopefully, it was a good time. Yeah,

Brent Warner
I, this is a little pre recorded. But I hope so too. We were wanting to make sure that we’re stepping in to the new year here. And so today, we always say the show is about integrating technology into the classroom. But every once in a while we kind of go off talk about other higher ed related things and less about technology. And today is one of those days. And so we are happy to have IVC as Vice President of Instruction with us, Dr. McDonald, how are you?

Dr. McDonald
I’m doing well. So based on the timing of the broadcast, I guess I’ll say Happy New Year. And welcome back to everyone. Hope everyone had a wonderful break.

Tim Van Norman
Thank you. So um, Dr. McDonald, how long have you been the the VPI here? And can you give us just a little bit of background as to what brought you to Irvine Valley College and being the vice president of obstruction?

Dr. McDonald
Well, it’s a long complicated story. So to make it easy, I’ve been the VPI since 2016. But I when I transitioned as actually at Saddleback, as an assistant, VP, so the VP at IVC had some minor surgery. So I came over to assist. And by the time we got into accreditation, started looking at some budget issues. Like the job like the college like the people started wearing IVC gear, and then, you know, one thing led to another chose to apply. So then I became the permanent VP, early 2017. So a little over five and a half years are going on five and a half years now in the VP IVC.

Tim Van Norman
Nice. Well, we we enjoy having you here. We’re glad you’re here on the show, as well as, as our Vice President of Instruction. It’s been good getting to know you that time.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So Dr. McDonald, one of the things that we really wanted to talk about, we’re partly having you here to talk about, like, what a VPN does and the decision making process. But right now, in particular, that is, there’s a whole different world around it with COVID. And all of these, you know, coming back to campus, I know that there are other schools that have been back to campus at IVC. We’re kind of like, trying to come back to campus but haven’t always been as successful as some of us have wanted, or, you know, there’s lots of shifts to online. And so we’re seeing a lot of that, you know, students are in faculty are trying to make a bunch of decisions and coming back to face to face, and maybe not everything is normal. And so I guess just we’ll start with a broad, we don’t need to get into today’s details, because today’s details will probably change by the time tomorrow comes around. But we did want to kind of just ask you, I guess we’ll start with the very big question is when you look at COVID decisions, and when you’re trying to, to do your job and you know, create classes and have faculty with jobs and have places for students to go, and you’re looking at the pandemic at the same time. What are the things that are key for you that you’re trying to make decisions on or that you’re trying to, to? How are you trying to accommodate and make your job work at this time?

Dr. McDonald
It’s probably most helpful for the listeners if I take a sidestep first, before answering those specific questions, because each executive is different. We bring our history, the sort of how we grew up in the system with us. So my view when you’re an executive, it’s different from being say a dean where you’re, you know, you’re more mid management and you’re closer to the action. So one way to frame it is The executives were really getting paid to make very few high quality decisions. Right? When you’re at the dean level, you’re making a lot of scheduling decisions, you’re working with the department chairs, faculty, students, and you’re really it’s really high touch high action, right? Now, why do I sort of have this view because other executives might disagree. So my personal view your executive, you’re getting paid, you’re making a small number of high quality decisions? Well, I sort of grew up in the system. And I grew up in a system at Mt. SAC, which is a very big college. When I left Mt. SAC, they were about 60, some 1000 students, right. And at our peak, we were on 15,000 students, I was chair of math and computer science at Mt. SAC. So which means math, CS background. So how we look at how I look at data might not be the same as how other people look at data, the sort of things I tried to do, a lot of that has to do with the discipline training. And then when you grow up, so you’re a faculty member, and you’re in this large department, right? The math department at Mt. SAC, when I was there, was serving over 10,000 students on the 67,000 per primary term. Right? So if you think about it, right, then am I Dean’s are serving 10,000 students currently at IVC are much smaller college, right? So you get a sense of complexity and volume, where if a couple percent of your students have issues, you’re busy, as a chair at that level, right? When you’re dealing with, you know, a lot of faculty members at that level, I’m just talking department level, right over 42 Full Time over 100 Part time that you’re scheduling, a couple of them, you know, have issues per turn, you end up being busy. So you get a sense of the need to prioritize, and the need to be able to break things down and get things out to large groups of people in sort of bite sized chunks, because the complexity is going to matter a lot, right? So if you fast forward, then being sort of like Dean of Math, Science Engineering. The math was no issue. The computer science, no issue. In fact, I had chemistry through organic sighs Okay, there. But if you got into biology, and I had the physics that we taught, but if you get into the biology, you know, you’re out of your comfort zone. Right? So then again, you’re taking a more broad view, how do you take care of a whole population, right, and the decision making, because in our participatory governance model, you can’t run out too far ahead of everyone, because you will alienate isolate. And one of the biggest things you run into as an administrator, even in tough times, like COVID, it’s that it’s very easy to violate the process in trying to accomplish things. And if you violate the process, you still have the substantive issue that you’re dealing with COVID, or whatever it is, but now you have a process violation in union environment where you have protected classes of people that deserve to participate in the dialogue and deserve to be at the table, right? So when you start looking at it like that, and then now you get to the vice president level, you start feeling sort of the weight of the institution on your shoulder at certain points in time. Now, because I know, Tim, I’ll digress and get closer to answering your question. I know I haven’t gotten to.

But okay, so I want you to think about this framework. If I’m going to make very few high quality decisions, so people actually don’t know what I do all day, because I’m in the office, you can just walk in and see me it doesn’t look like I’m doing much. But there’s a lot of reading, I read everything, you have to process everything, I have to analyze everything. So there’s a lot of time to stop the machine, building the framework to make decisions. So when you’re in these leadership roles, my view, you have to live in the past, present the future, right? So I’m constantly looking where where are we? How did we get to where we are right now in this moment, and what might be. Now Tim can attest to this. About two weeks before we closed the college. I had a meeting, Tim was in my office, but right across from where I’m sitting now. And unlike Tim, you know, based on what I’m seeing, let’s prepare to close the college. So I need you to go off and do a significant amount of work. Let’s just prepare to close the college two weeks early. Now. Most people weren’t in that place at that time. And by the way, took me a week to get to 10. So in my mind, I was preparing to close the college a week before we got to tip. So the question is Why so early? With that mindset. It’s watching the rate of growth of the virus. Inadequate datasets at that point when you were talking about end of February, early March, seeing the reaction in Asia, seeing what was going on in Israel, seeing what was going on in the UK, and trying to extrapolate where we are, right. So I will be honest, I mentioned earlier deliberately that biology was my weakest. I had one bio class, I had the physics sequence, we teach at the community college and the chemistry sequence, one bio, it’s all I had to do as a math in CS major, right? All of a sudden, what do you do when you have one bio class now I knew the statistics, and I knew how to, you know, evaluate the mathematics about, you know, exponential growth, and what might herd immunity back then when we’re thinking we could get the herd immunity? And how do you do all these things in the absence of a vaccine? So that part was okay. I then had to become a quasi expert in an area that was not my academic discipline, because I needed to become a quasi expert in that area in order to make effective decisions. Remember, I’m only making a few decisions. I’m not making lots of decisions. But I’m making a few consequential decisions. When do you decide to put classes online? Right? When we think of building and construction, right, and you we learned initially, that or initially, we’re afraid it was surfaces. And you know, we didn’t know if it was more airborne more surfaces. By June of 2020, we learned it’s more airborne, okay? You get guidance from you know, health organizations, your air filters need to be MERV 13. Well, what does that do when our mechanical systems can’t handle a MERV 13 filter. So you start going after all these little sub disciplines you have to get into, and it’s just a lot of time sitting down at the computer, doing the research, not not looking at YouTube and not looking at, you know, CNN or NPR, actually going to primary sources, trying to get a good sense of where we’re gonna go, and trying to get a sense of how we’re going to keep the community safe. I think one mistake just to wrap up. One mistake I think we’ve made is that it’s very hard to get this particular bit of communication out. And the communication really is what’s the goal, my personal goal and have made the decisions and I try to communicate it to my team, is we’re trying to minimize the healthcare system being overrun, my goal has never been to eliminate 100% of COVID transmission. Otherwise, we’d all still be home, you don’t bring anyone back. Right. But it’s how do you not overrun the healthcare system? How do you minimize, you know, outbreaks on campus where you have community spread on campus, and we’ve been able to avoid that. So it’s sort of that kind of focus in terms of the decision making. And the last bit is, it’s just daily, by the way, some people think I enjoy it, I don’t enjoy the fact that I can name all the variants and all the lineages and talk about all the different studies. You know, if I weren’t talking to you now, I guarantee there is a few sites I would be on right now, looking at what’s going on today with right.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so one of the things that we were thinking of, you know, that that’s always struck me for you as a VPI is because of your math background in computer science background, and the analytics and all these things is that you come from a very database decision making process, or at least that’s why it seems to me as a kind of more, you know, personal long the literature and humanities side of things right. And so, and I know that some people struggle with that, I really appreciate it, I think, I think it’s really useful and, and a great way to deal with things. But like, when you’re going and getting that primary source information to make these kinds of decisions, you know, where are you going? Where are you getting your data from?

Dr. McDonald
Alright, so the easy to have someone wanted to replicate what, and I usually put the links when I present like instructional counselor to the Governance Committee, so I usually have the links. So what you do is you go to the CDC site, and you go to the NIH site. And if you drill down beyond just the data tools that show you a snapshot of the vaccines and all that stuff, they have articles, those articles have primary sources, right? You could actually, if you cared to even that South African data, right? You can go to the World Health Organization, you can drill down to the actual sources they’re using from South Africa, and then you start then you get a beep, then you’re able to look at the studies. So the good news is the information is all public. The part that’s tough is it’s possible to look at a study and if you don’t have sufficient math background, they might be hard to get through, if you haven’t spent a fair amount of time already looking at sort of the mechanics of COVID, right? Because when if you’re reading a study, and you’re talking about, you know, anybody responses and you haven’t paid attention, if you’re not immersed in antibodies, you know, T cells, B cells, you know, sort of how the mechanics actually work, they can be a little tough to get through. But if you do it for a month, right, so I’ll admit, the first month, oh, I used to beat my head against the thing. But now, after a while, I can read studies, not just read the abstract, I can sort of get a little bit you know, get down deeper into the study and not understand 100%. But understand enough to know if it’s going to be valuable, then, part of the thing that you might be seeing, right, when you’re like, Oh, it’s a lot of data and analytics. When you’re, when you’re in my role, I have to filter what pieces I can’t come in and just put if I were to put up all the data on a slide. What are the relevant pieces? So again, I go to the primary source, because all reports are filtered. Right? Even my report that you see is filtered. Right. So my focus when I’m looking is okay.

How, like data from South Africa allistic, that, does their population looks similar enough to the US, okay, maybe maybe not. We seem closer to the UK, and we tend to follow, they tend to follow Israel. Alright, in terms of vaccination rates, in terms of, you know, prior infection with the various variants. So I’m looking at that as a filter, right? Then it’s like, okay, how does that translate now to Orange County, some sort of balancing my local community, my sense of what our population might look like, by the way, it’s a lot of guessing there’s not an exact science, a lot of guessing, and the data source because every community’s going to behave, sort of different. But if you understand that most of the waves are about 180 days, from the time it starts to get to the peak, you come back down, you know, roughly, then you start looking at, okay, what percent is what sort of what is the are not how many, how many people are each individual, in fact, in what sort of replication or the doubling rate, you know, omachron, right now, depending on where you look 2.3 days to double to four days, and you start doing extrapolation. So, for example, without me doing my prep today, I would venture to say, pretty confidently, we’re gonna have a rough four to six weeks in the US, because you got delta, you got the flu, you got omachron. Picking up, the Northeast is going to do worse than us, because we Florida and the South, and then us, we already had our delta wave, they’re getting the delta wave with Omicron. coming in. So I’d venture to say that Data Wise, right, what I would choose to present is like the Orange County, the number of cases per 100,000, and the test positivity rate, right? number of cases per 100,000. Right now, like I think, Well, yesterday, we’re at 9.0, we might be at 9.2. Today, I haven’t looked, but somewhere in that range, right? But we made decisions when we were thinking about fall, if you remember, right before flex, when we passed 10 cases per 100,000, we moved classes online that were scheduled to be face to face, and we reduced the number of people on campus. Well, we’re there now. And it’s highly likely we’re going to cross that barrier. By the time you’re, by the time this podcast is aired. So I have to start thinking now about what kind of decisions are we going to make the decisions to modify schedules, I make recommendations, right? Because we try to have the colleges do something similar air quotes, it’s not identical, right. In terms of protecting the community, we protect the community district wide, not just in our not just that IVC. So then it’s making recommendations to the President and the both colleges and then that recommendation will go up to the chancellor who would then consult with the with the board. So if you think of the amount of like I’m making recommendations, and you have to get through, right part of the governance process all the way to the board. So sometimes the decisions have to be made a little bit early on my part, which means I have to monitor make a guess. Right? Then what do you communicate? I’m communicating like really one number cases per 100,000. It wouldn’t make sense for me to get into all the little nuances of every little move. It’s sort of okay, you have a reasonable threshold. Everyone, can you understand the case burntwood 1000? Recognizing that you need a reference point, right? Because if I tell you 10, what does 10 really mean? Right? I mean, in New York right now or last I checked there about 54 cases for 100,000. Right? Massive, one of the reference point we use when California had their blueprint, and were that tiered colored system, right. So that was a reference point. So you have to have some reference, then we have to be able to communicate something reasonable. And on occasion, people might say, Well, why 10? Why did the executives come up with 10? Right? In part that was based on prior references with the California blueprint, right? So you’re really just doing stuff like that, and trying to make the best guests. That’s possible. Now, you did talk about like you being more from the humanities and in the literature. So here’s, here’s something I’ll add. Although my academic discipline was math, I don’t claim today to be a mathematician. So let me explain why. I don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking, ooh, you know, I could wish I could talk that kind of math problem. I am more in the middle of the night, if I wake up in the middle of the night, you’re more likely to find me reading in the social sciences. Now, you know?

Did I recently go through? You know, David Hume? Sure. You know, well, I read Nietzsche, you know, that’s my Jamaican pronunciation, by the way. Sure. But what you find is, if you’re thinking about because I, you know, I’m thinking about your show now on sort of technology and sort of decision making. For me, personally, I like to read just a wide variety of stuff, right? So you’re always sort of going back, fill in gaps. And I write I prefer reading physical books, textbooks, I actually like textbooks as a thing. Because so I’ll give you my secret. Like, why do I read textbook that faculty give me their discipline, textbook, have a way of giving you a summary, giving you details, and they’ll read a lot of them, if it’s something mechanical, where you have examples, they walk you through examples, then you’d have the homeworks. So I don’t do the homeworks. Right. But because you get a summary prior to get in the details, and you have examples worked out, I just sort of enjoy sort of the flow of the textbook format of being a way to learn. I know not, not a lot of people like textbooks, but not know, I love textbooks. So periodically, I borrow textbooks from faculty, I’m borrowing from you yet. And I just sort of, you know, work my way through that textbooks in all, you know, the different disciplines. And believe it or not, having sort of that broader perspective, helps versus a more narrow focus on the same type of thing all the time.

Tim Van Norman
That makes sense. Wow. Thank you. This is enlightening, especially as having been involved in part of those meetings, like you were talking about. Yes, I remember you sitting across the table from me and saying, I want you to do this, you know, be prepared for that two weeks. And I believe there was something in there about, you know, can you do this by Friday, or do this by by next Friday or something like that? And I thought it was an impossible task, but because you asked, you know, figure out what’s good,

Dr. McDonald
no, I, I made me feel bad, you know, put a lot of pressure on you. You challenged

Tim Van Norman
me. And, you know, we all had to rise to the occasion. And that was great in

Dr. McDonald
a sense of urgency before everyone else knew there was a sense of urgency. Absolutely. That makes sense.

Tim Van Norman
Yeah. Well, and and what I think it was three weeks later that we close to campus. So yeah, it was, yeah.

Brent Warner
It’s fascinating.

Dr. McDonald
We were making a bit, you know, it’s something there’s something interesting with decision making. So if you look at the social sciences, right? If I just say something is likely, that means different things to different people if it’s probable. So there are times where I’ll just force myself to put a number on it. So what you didn’t know is, I think back then I’d put a number of at least 80% chance we’re going to close. So it’s how do I gradually get everyone ready to say, you know, if I just say it’s likely we’re going to close. That’s not a sense of urgency. If I say, you know, there’s an 80% chance now, you could be wrong, right? But when you do in forecast, what I find and this is not anything to do with with the math or you know, the game theory classes and stuff. It’s just if you try to be disciplined in thinking, right? And by the way, all our personalities are different. I just happen to have the weird quirk where I want to put a number on as many things as I can, if I’m making decisions around people’s lives, people’s livelihoods and safety, does that make sense? And a lot of people who don’t think like I think, come to same similar conclusions or do something slightly different, like it might look completely different, but they still end up taking care of their community and the population at large, right. So it’s this force. Okay, put a number on it. What do I think the likelihood is? And then if I can’t find evidence to change that number, I just gamble that hey, you know, if Tim does all this work, and I’m wrong, I feel bad for Tim. But the college would be ready. Does that make sense?

Tim Van Norman
Well, and in my head, you didn’t know this. But in my head, my assumption was, we would not come back from spring break. So I was only pushing it a little bit further than you were at. But in my head, you gave me that impetus, I needed to finish that off. So you know, thank you. And that’s part of why we wanted to bring you on is because getting to know that as we’re looking at the future, because you as you said, you live in the past, the present and the future. So we’re looking at the future. What challenges are you seeing to students coming back? Faculty coming back? Even staff? Most of the staff are back at least part time? What are the challenges that you’re seeing to that? Or? Or in that process?

Dr. McDonald
The Okay, the big challenge is the unknown with Omicron. Right? Now trying to keep the community safe, right? So airborne virus, you know, you put HEPA filters in, right? But HEPA filters don’t work as good as we might assume, depending on what study don’t look at the manufacturer sponsored studies, because then they’re all wonderful, right? So what happens is like, in my office, I don’t know, I haven’t tried to touch the ceiling, but I’m assuming it’s about 10 foot ceiling, HEPA filter would work well in here. But you take some place where you have, you know, three and a half stories, I don’t know, like maybe the library student services center, where the ventilation system is much higher, right, they’re going to be less effective, right, your traditional ventilation system is not going to filter down to the level of one to three microns at nine 9%. So you know, you’re getting good airflow, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you know, it’s 100%. Safe. So we have to have masks indoors, right. So if you’re not going to get the ventilation perfect, then you have to have masks, indoors, I don’t think that’s going to be a challenge right now. Because I think people are just the expectation that they’re going to have to have mask, indoors, surfaces, we still worry about it, right. So making sure when students flow in and out of areas, we’re still wiping things down, right, so we don’t ignore surfaces. But that now requires a little bit of coordination with faculty, because some of the faculty come in back. Think about it this way. If you’re a faculty member in the labs, right of any time, you’re probably more attune with directing students to do X or Y for safety reasons and not. If you’re a faculty member in the languages, you might not be as attuned to remembering to direct students to do X or Y. Right. So you do have to expect that there’s going to be a learning curve for some of the faculty coming back, right. Now, the thing I have to worry about is, if we, when you move programs, people back to remote work.

You can’t just move them and then 180 days later, easily bring everyone back you create this disruptions. So to have sort of the maintain the integrity of the program, and take care of people at large individuals at that level have to make decisions. So the question is sort of what to challenge challenges that if the best way to serve students is that you’re going to have to have individual Dean’s work with their faculty and staff to make individual decisions. And it’s not going to look the same across all you. That’s a talent, right? Because remember, we’re in a unit union environment with all protected classes of people who we’re trying to take care of. And there’s always optics about fairness. Does that make sense? So I would say the broader political context around vaccine Boosters is a challenge. Still, the country context of fairness when you want individuals at the local level, making the call about the units, right? That’s a challenge in terms of the mechanical systems and the ability to clean and maintain minor challenge challenges there, but I think those we can work around. And then the broader conversation would be a big challenge is for students and the vaccine mandate and getting the students uploaded, verified. There’s still some technology issues, most of the technology in place uptake, and glitches, you know, uptakes an issue. Glitches we’re working through communicating to students, and students are, you know, interested, because it doesn’t matter if you send them 10 emails, they might get none. If you send them five text messages, they may or may not respond, if you call them, you can see, and hopefully to get a higher response rate. So trying to get students to do what they need to do, prior to the deadlines, right. Prior to this week, some of the deadlines that we’ve set, were reasonable because a student could go get Johnson and Johnson, the j&j and be vaccinated. Well, what happens last week is that when, you know, the CDC comes out, and they’re like, well, the j&j vaccine, it’s the same the old issue where the it’s rare cases with blood clot issues. Right? So they’re now recommending Pfizer and Maderna. Right? So if you’re a student, and you’re not vaccinated, yet, that now creates a problem to be fully vaccinated with two shots, right. So, you know, I know I’m getting into the weeds there, but you start seeing the compilation of things that I have to look at and weigh as we’re trying to take care of the community. Right, and trying to figure out what to do, recognizing that a lot of decisions are going to have to be made by flex week, right. And in order to have those decisions made by flex week, it can’t be two days before. So it’s the constant looking ahead into the future trying to make the best guess. And then trying to have enough time, which is usually week, 10 days minimum, in order to get the communication out to have the best outcomes.

Brent Warner
Yeah, this is this is fascinating. I, you know, there’s so many different aspects to consider with everything. And I think, you know, we’re trying to recognize all the stakeholders, and, and respect and, and respond to all of them. Want to take a little, you know, kind of a step back or a little bit broader, which, but still looking at the future, which is, I’m interested in what you think the long term effects on enrollment or in person versus online classes might look like? Through all of this, I think a lot of us teachers are making guesses about like, Oh, this is gonna be this forever, or this is going to change or, you know, and you know, and none of us have the crystal ball, but I’m just interested from your perspective. How do you see the the Broad College landscape changing now that people have had so much experience learning and teaching online, too?

Dr. McDonald
Alright, so I think it’s probably going to be discipline specific, to some extent, right. So that’s going to be a factor in areas where you need a lot of hands on type, you know, so we don’t have, let’s say, auto mechanics, right. But you get into some of those areas, you know, your chemistry bio, the students have to actually touch equipment if you’re preparing them to work in those fields. So we know right now, and it might shift that there’s a preference. Generally, for, you know, non lab non technical stuff, it seems like the students right now, and it might change, prefer online, right? So if you look at our registration patterns, right, if the same factors take the same faculty, if you offer a class online right now in the same class with a face to face component, in most of the disciplines, that aren’t lab activity courses, type disciplines, the preference right now seems to be online, by the way, that wasn’t the preference, pre COVID. And some of that could have been because we didn’t offer enough online, you know, as a percent of the overall offerings. So I believe that a lot student demand where the, you know, the students are going to vote with their feet, right. I think that has shifted some. So a larger segment of the population might prefer For and I, when I say population, I mean Community College student population might actually prefer online. Now, there are some students that definitely have a preference for, you know, face to face on campus activity, so that won’t go away. But pretty COVID, you know, we were, you know, you throw emeritus out of the mix, we’re about, you know, like, 17 18% on like, right. You know, I say, I like to put numbers on it, I wouldn’t surprise me if post COVID were 40%. Online, when I say post COVID, what I mean is, sort of, you know, you get out of the, the sort of the phase we’re in where COVID is more, you know, you get your annual shot or two, and we just, you know, we’re gonna live with it till you can get it out of the population, you know, and hopefully, have it not circulate in the population at the rate of circulating, but that could be, you know, your tool away, where it’s not these massive spikes and drops, it just sort of a reasonable, you know, amount of transmission. So you get to that point, I think we might get close to 40%, by the way, our sister college, you know, depending on whether or not you keep emeritus in or out, you know, they were mid 30s, you know, getting close to 40% online anyway. So I think we’re going to move in that trend. Now, a, something we have to look at, too, is that IVC is sort of our bread and butter is the students coming in, who wants to transfer our comprehensive college, but we have to admit, you know, who we are, right? Well, a lot of those students now would have had more experience with online when they get to us. And they will continue to have more experience with online when they get to us. So if you look backwards into the pipeline, what we might see is more of a preference for online as we progress, right. So I don’t think we’re going to get to a point where even the faculty say, and I’ll pick on Biola, to teach and bio, I don’t think we’re going to get to a point where they’re going to have 100% face to face all the time, you know, moving forward, it might more be hybrid, where the lectures are online, and then you come in and you do the labs, face to face. So that’s sort of the world that I am seeing. You know, we do recognize now that the technology has caught up, we know there are some, you know, disproportionate, you know, impacts in terms of access. But, you know, I’ll be honest, when I was teaching math, I taught on mine a couple of times, you know, we’re talking in the early 2000s, and I wasn’t a fan. Right. But the technology just wasn’t there. In my view, the technology is there now. And it’s more widely accepted, where I think we will likely, you know, see that just sort of moving forward. I know faculty in multiple disciplines, if you think success and retention, the student’s success rates haven’t dropped, but faculty are concerned about students, cheating, and faculty are worried about you know, so those are some big issues that we’re going to have to figure out over time. But you know, there are enough smart people working at it, where it’ll work itself out. But something that’s critical is when you go from 17%, about online, and we’re moving into this new environment, over the next three years, how we look at online, the infrastructure, the amount of training, what we do in terms of policy, in terms of quality assurance, all that has to change, because we’re still in the midst of the pandemic, you know, we talk about it, but it’s still on the periphery, because we’re still day to day dealing with the pandemic. Right. Right. So when you get to the endemic phase, where it’s a little bit more normal in terms of you know, the spread, and we can go back to looking at operations, we are going to have to put more resources, right. And students, parents expectations, community expectations about quality are going to change, right? Because you want to provide this, I would argue that today, I can’t guarantee that every student, the quality they had before, is identical. Now, in a lot of cases, yes. But I don’t think it’s I don’t think we’re there yet. Right? So we recognize we’re going to have to put a significant amount of resources into that. So we’re having those conversations and those will ramp up in the spring. Because, you know, you start thinking of your technology master plans, strategic plans. It’s not just words, those, you know, we update them, right? But we’re gonna actually have to update them and put a little bit of resources and you know, some action into it over the next year, year and a half.

Tim Van Norman
This has been this has been fascinating, and I definitely appreciate this, but I want to give you the opportunity to answer a little different question. You’ve been touching on this the whole time. And that is what would people be surprised that you do and your position? You’ve touched on a whole lot of things. And I think I’ve been surprised at a couple things that you’ve mentioned myself. But what do you think people are surprised? If when they find out that you do certain things?

Dr. McDonald
So there are aspects of the job so qualified. So there are aspects of the job that I delegate, right. So, and what I do personally, is the, I’m gonna just frame it in a weird way, the things that can cause harm to the college are more likely to micromanage. Right, so the fiscal health of the college and the district, the accreditation status, right, and things around student performance and student outcomes. Right. So I kind of micromanage those a little bit. But most other things, I don’t really micromanage that much. Now, when you think of the fiscal health of the college, something that might surprise people is that whenever you have like litigation, or you know, the higher level discrimination complaints and stuff like that, I’m hands on. Right. So one of the things I do with those is my preference is I work with HR, I work with legal, so we don’t involve the Deans and the faculty, except that unless they must be involved, it’s, I take the burden there. So that the folks doing the work of taking care of the students and providing services to students can focus on taking care of students and providing services to students. So I do that. Something that might surprise folks that I do, and this is, by the way, just a personality thing. I never rush you know, you will not see, you might see me look at my watch. But you You never see me run into a meeting. You never see me like running down the hall. What I do, deliberately, and it actually surprises me, this is the most surprising things to find the time when it looks like I’m in a rush. If you walk into my office, I’ve set the time for you. If I ended up a few minutes late to a meeting, I’ll text. Here’s why I make appointments, surprises, but I’m never in a rush, you have all these things you’re dealing with. Remember, it’s a few high quality decisions, right? If a faculty member students, staff, if someone walked into my office, trust me, it’s important people don’t just walk into my office just because, right. So also, I know I have to go find people and find opinions. Right? And I’m primarily doing that on the instruction side, not so much with student services. But like your door is open, people talk about an open door policy, right? But not everyone’s going to cross that first of all, because of the position titles, not everyone, right? Not everyone recognizes that, hey, you can always just walk in, right? So I make a point to not rush to find people. And I’m always listening for cues. And I’m always trying to read the tea leaves. And what that does is there are times where a specific department issue, I might actually get involved and carry it through the governance process. Right, that actually surprises people. Like why are there some issues, you know, that I take to instructional Council, I’d go to a PTC and I take it through the Senate that appear may or may not appear to be a department or school issue. It’s looking for the areas where we can make improvement. And you go around and you sort of listen. And then I put everything sort of on a schedule or on a timeline. And I grab individual issues and I walk them through. So the not rushing, trying to find the time to touch everything if I need to, and then walk away from some things that are running well. You know, a big thing I force myself to do. I can take guided pathways, because it’s one of the carpets where

we recognize that the folks who are responsible and in charge of doing a good job. And that if I just show up to a meeting and give a little bit of opinion, it might skew what they want to do because of position. So I just sit on the periphery I might not agree with every decision, but they’re doing a good job, see, allow them to do a good job. And then if they need me I clear roadblocks and then I go back. So lots of the job is just sort of clearing roadblocks. I think you too can appreciate this because you’ve been involved enough. If you think of a roadblock, sometimes its fiscal right budget stuff. Budgets are just about people politics and history. Right. So how am I going to roadblock, it’s not by fiat, the vice president says, It’s okay. Who are the folks involved? Sort of, were there any political considerations for the allocation process in the past? What does it look like now? Right? And then how do I manage the dialogue to get things through. So let’s round it out. It’s a lot of touching bases with people at all levels of the orc, different times people don’t know that I do that scene, I’m recognizing the talents, the wishes of individuals that are running into issues, providing assistance to the Dean’s, the department chairs, the staff, to get some initiative through, I don’t touch every initiative. And sometimes I just touch it briefly to get it implemented. And then I, you know, you assign the right folks, and you have people do that. But lots of odd things. So it’s, you know, counseling individual students, when they end up in the office, you know, you’re off meeting with people, because I’m trying to think, like, some of the odd things, you’re off meeting with people, like business partners, people in the community, and trying to assist faculty build programs, at the same time, working with the Senate’s working with the unions to make sure that implementation of you know, the big things are being done. But overall, it’s, I think, day to day, if someone were to watch me, they’d be surprised that it’s just sort of this fluid, you know, moving around, trying to make the best decisions possible. And YouTube, probably no, you know, I, I’ll admit it, I probably only get to 80% of the meetings on my calendar, and I’m not there the whole time. Because I’m often double or triple booked. But that wouldn’t be surprised

Brent Warner
at all. Yeah, this is this is fascinating, got some real insights into like, the process of EPI, but also your your own approaches here, Dr. McDonald. But as we wrap up, we just want to make sure is there anything that you’d like to share that you’d like people to know or be aware of, before we close out, or maybe as we’re stepping into the new semester?

Dr. McDonald
Well, it’s not so much things I need people to know, it’s just expressed an appreciation for patience, recognize that none of us have all the answers. We’re all trying to, you know, pull together, we’re all trying to make, you know, a lot of you know, change, and people don’t like change. And I think the best way to exemplify just glimpse at myself on camera, and notice my IVC logo is show it, right. So just a final thought, as we’re trying to work through these complex situations, right? A recognition just from the social science literature that when you have diverse organizations, in terms of social trust, it’s hard. We also have a history at IVC. You know, prior to me being here, where the faculty and staff didn’t always trust the administration, social trust was low. So just another part of my personality quirk, because you might say, How come you only see me in a certain tie? You know, rarely, I’m always in IVC gear, you know, part of the thing, if you like, I went to USC for grad school, when you go to places that have high school spirit, right? It actually, although the, you know, the faces are diverse, the ideas are diverse. When people recognize the moment they see me, it’s like, oh, it’s not necessarily casual. It’s IVC. I want to you, right, so we’re all in the same boat together. We’re all pulling together. We’re all just trying to make it done. And, you know, if, folks, if you’re seeing the executives running around, we’re no different. We’re not different from you. Right? We’re just trying to do the best weekend. Yes, ultimately, we’re responsible and in charge, yes, ultimately, we can be called to the carpet, but we can’t do anything without the faculty and the staff. Right. So it’s just want folks to know that there’s a level of appreciation for the patients and the level of appreciation for what everyone’s doing. And that you know, if you’ve got good ideas, you know, I’m always willing to listen to good ideas. You never know when, you know, I I might implement if it’s now sometime later, but um, but But I catalogue the ideas, I keep track of ideas. And I’m always willing to talk to people, see how things are going and make sure we’re just moving forward and doing the best we can.

Tim Van Norman
Thank you. This has been Very enlightening episode as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, I appreciate you coming.

Brent Warner
Yeah, thanks so much for your time. Dr. McDonald. We’re, we’re really grateful to have you and hopefully this insight helps other people too

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely.

Dr. McDonald
Well, we hope but hey, you know, if you tell me at some point that you ended up with, you know, some high rated podcast on iTunes, you know, invite me back. (laughter)

Tim Van Norman
Glad to!

Brent Warner
Will do!

Tim Van Norman
Ticket. Thank you for listening today. In this episode we talked about back to school with Dr. McDonald. For more information about this show, please visit our website at the thehigheredtechpodcast.com. There you will find our podcast and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner
As always, we want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com. And let us know your thoughts. And of course, if you have ideas for future shows, or people that you’d like us to talk to, there’s a link on that page where you can give us her ideas

Tim Van Norman
for everyone at IVC. That’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC Technical Support at extension 5696 or by emailing IVC tech@ivc.edu. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please contact me Tim Van Norman at Tvannorman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram at @BrentGWarner.

Tim Van Norman
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner
and I’m Brent Warner and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Have a good semester everybody