Well, good morning everyone.
It's nice to see you and I would say "see"
you in
quotations. I'm excited to be with you
today, and I
candidly wish I could be with you in
Forfa like we always do.
That's one of the high points of the
year for me, and it's
unfortunate that I can't be with you
like that now.
I'm here in my office, and that's about
as close as I can get to the Forfa,
but I am excited to speak with you. And
I'm also excited because,
in the short time I've been with you as
your colleague, this will be the first
time that I'll
invite others to participate in the
presentation part
of this State of the College address. I
want to
say Hello and thank you to several of my
colleagues,
particularly those who are serving our
College in the Board of Trustees, and
then
you might recall that I have a little
bit of a convention, or a tradition, that
I'm going to continue here in a moment.
And I'll just leave that as a tease for
a moment.
Let me say I believe we have
several of our leaders from the Board of
Trustees here. I do see Trustee Lane
there
Good morning. I see Trustee Roxanne McDonald.  I know that Trustee
Adel Mozip
planned on attending. I know and I
heard her voice, Trustee
Mary Petlichkoff and
Trustee Jim Thorpe is
joining us today. And
I neglected to note the title of
Trustee Lane: Secretary Lane
and Treasurer Roxanne McDonald [and Vice Chair Thorpe]
But the person I want to focus attention on
is someone who, as I mentioned, has
become
somewhat of a tradition when we come
together for State of the College
addresses.
And that is Trustee Dr. Michael Meade.
Now, it's an important thing that you note he's here.
Because this is unfortunately going to
be the last time he'll be an
office holder at our State of the
College.
You know that Trustee Meade was
elected to our Board of Trustees in 2014
and
he has elected not to seek re-election.
So this will be the last State of
the College where he
is an office holder of the Board of
Trustees.
Throughout my time as your
colleague, I've taken a lot of pride in
introducing Trustee Meade, because
One: he was for sure one trustee I
knew would be at our State of the
College addresses.
And, number Two: he has been a good
mentor and a good friend to me.
But perhaps most importantly, number Three:
The man's devotion to this College is
simply unparalleled.
I just want to spend just a few moments
telling you about him, and then I'm going
to let him address you all, because
as a member of the Board of Trustees as
a leader of this institution,
I think his insights about where we are
as a College and where we're headed
are always valuable to hear. You may not
know it,
but it was just a little while ago, in
1966,
that Trustee Meade began his career in
higher education
as a counselor and later as the Dean of
Student Services at Montgomery College in Maryland, and then
the great State of Michigan lured him to the Great Lakes State
in 1982, and he became a member of the
Henry Ford (Community) College family.
He was the Vice President of Student Affairs when he arrived,
and he spent one year as acting
President. And I
sometimes like to kid you, Dr. Meade --
this job
was only -- you only wanted to do it
for one year after you saw what it was
like. Of course, I'm joking. I love my job.
Trustee Meade, but
 I do appreciate your service as
filling in this role. Then he retired
from his position as an administrator in 2005
but stayed on as an
adjunct counselor until 2015, just after
his election.
And so, if you count from the time he
came to Dearborn in 1982 until today,
you're going to count 80(!), excuse me, 38
years
of service to Henry Ford College. And if
you count
the time since Dr. Meade started his
service to the community college
movement,
1966, you're going to count 54 years
of devotion to higher education and
community colleges, and frankly the
students that we touch and serve.
So it is my great pleasure to
reintroduce you
once again to my friend and my colleague,
Trustee Dr. Meade,
to make some introductory remarks. Dr. Meade.
Hi. Thank you very much, and thank you
President Kavalhuna, Esquire,
for this introduction. I want to thank Chair Hussein Berry for
letting me
have this swan song statement and
get an opportunity to talk to all of you
a little bit about the community college
movement.
And he
normally would be giving this talk, but
he
allowed me to do this, so I appreciate
that.
Right off the bat, I've got to thank the team
that worked so diligently to bring
all of our students, well to open up
the college for the fall.
What a unusual circumstance
and normally we'd be talking to each
other face to face and
I would get some reactions from you that
might tell me
that I'm off course, or that maybe I
actually said something funny,
or yeah(!) So, I won't get any of that
feedback typically
and then that's what every faculty
member is going to be dealing with
all through the, probably all through
the next year, but let's hope
it's shorter than that. Let me ask you a
question,
when did you all fall in love
with the community college movement(?)
Now I ask that question because then I
get to answer it.
So I fell in love with the community
college movement back in 1965.
It actually started in 1966,
but in 1965 I was
a Voc Rehab Counselor for the District
of Columbia in Washington, D.C.
and I would have to say I was not very
good at my job.
I was there for a year and I got 2
people
to work out of 475 and I got 11 in
training.
So, I started looking for a different
career
and I was starting reading about this
community college movement. Here
in this country they at that time in '65
they were
opening community colleges on the
average of
one a week across the country. So this
was a concept
that was catching 
everybody and people were getting really
excited about it. So
I decided I better take a look at this.
And I was reading about it
and what hit you right away is that this
community college, the vision and the
mission, for the community college was
open door policy. A form of democratic
post-secondary education where everybody
gets an opportunity, who wants one to go
to college.
At that time, the admissions policy
was you're 18 years of age or
older you're admitted. So, 
one of the things that attracted me to
that was that
they were anticipating then, if there was
going to be an open door policy,
that there would be a lot of FIDACs.
There'd be a lot of
students coming to college who had
nobody in the
in the family who had had the experience
of college
and probably not many people to
counsel them with them about their
future. So, I thought well here I am. I
have a
Master's degree in Guidance and
Counseling, why don't I apply to that
community college? Because they probably
need counselors to help students with
making career and educational choices
and to deal with personal problems that
are blocking them from being successful.
So I was thinking about that
and
I started, I looked a little bit more
into it and I just
and I recognized that people really
wanted students to have an opportunity
at a cost that they could afford. So part
of the vision was that a third of the
cost
would come from the local taxpayers and
a third of the cost would come from the
state taxpayers
and a third would come from tuition.
So back in 1966, they were starting
at $20.00 a credit hour
so this gave everybody quite an
opportunity.
I also recognize that
the community college is going to offer
a liberal arts education as well as a
technical education which
gave some people the choice to get
knowledge and skills that would allow
them to get immediately into the economy
and others would have an opportunity to
transfer to the university
if they wanted to go on for a bachelor's
degree. So community colleges offered
these
associate degrees in technology as well
as in liberal arts and that was very
attractive to me also.
The other thing is, is that what I
learned is that faculty
were not required to publish or
perish. That they their major
responsibility was to teach
5 courses a semester probably to
about 125 students
and that they would have office hours
for personal tutoring
if a student needed it.
At first I thought, well this is like the
13th and 14th grades,
but no it's not. Because when faculty are
hired at a community college they have
the responsibility to develop
curriculum, to develop the courses that
make up the curriculum,
and to and to develop the content
of those courses. So they have academic
freedom.
It's very much different from the p
through 12 experience, so
yeah, this is a real college experience.
So students, once they finish with the
community college they are
totally prepared to go on if they
wish to. The other thing that struck me
is that
they called them the "honeycomb" colleges
and the reason why they called them the
"honeycomb" colleges is because
they were all small classrooms. So
an instructional building is made up of
classrooms that hold maybe 25
maximum 30. So there's a real
opportunity for interaction and
engagement
between the faculty member and the
students
and lord knows that the students coming
to the community colleges
who have no background experience need
all the support they can get.
So with this information, I applied to
Northern Virginia Community College
and to Montgomery College. I lived in
Silver Spring, Maryland so Montgomery
College was closer, I applied
and within a week i got an invitation to
be interviewed
at both Northern Virginia Community
College and Montgomery College. Northern
Virginia in the morning and Montgomery
College in the afternoon
and the next day I got a telephone call
from both of them
saying that they've accepted me for the
position of counseling.
I went for the orientation at Montgomery
College. I chose Montgomery College
because it was
a county-based program it was closer to
my home
and when I arrived I was shocked
because I was 1 of 70 faculty members
that were being
oriented that day. This tells you the
exponential growth of community
colleges
in that period.
So as Mr. Kavalhuna,
president Kavalhuna, expressed- he told
the rest of my story.
So the rest of my story is not important
now,
I just want you to know that in our
hearts
we know that the community college
vision and mission
suits us perfectly and
it is a great challenge but it is
necessary
to serve so many different students. Now
there's one thing that I
want to emphasize since I've had this
opportunity,
and that yeah, this is a crazy year but
we still need to
develop a strategic plan. The current
strategic plan is going to expire soon
and this is going to be in a very very
important
process this year.
Dr. Michael Nealon and Dr. Lori Gonko
are are leading this escapade
and I appreciate, I will appreciate
all of the involvement of people across
the college to make sure
that our strategic plan fits
with the vision
and mission of the community
college movement. We are chartered by the
State of Michigan
to be a community college, yeah we may do a few bachelor's degrees
and that's good for our students.
But primarily we are created to serve
the businesses and industries and the
citizens
of the area of our community.
So this strategic plan is
critical because it gives us a road map
for the future. It's critical for all of
us because then we
are guided properly and it's really
important for the president
because his job is to implement
the strategic plan. Now he may have a few
other problems that come along like
Covid [-19]
that weren't anticipated in a strategic
plan
and that's where his leadership is
needed.
I wanted to emphasize how important
the strategic plan is
and how important it is that all of you
get your oars in the water
relative to this because this will tell
us
what we're going to be doing in the next
couple years
and how we're going to serve our
students. And finally,
I know this is finally, finally I would
like to say
something about the role of the board
in terms of hiring and evaluating
the president of the college. Once we
have a strategic plan
it is up to the president to implement it
and the Board approves a strategic plan
and they use that as a tool to evaluate
the president. So the president needs
this as well as the Higher Learning
Commission needs it desperately so that
they can see that we are doing things
together and that we have a really good
plan to serve
our students. And finally,
I am very impressed
with Mr. Kavalhuna Esquire.
I have longed for a president
who is not autocratic,
who is authoritative not authoritarian,
who understands that
the buck stops with him but
the college will never work well if
there isn't
teamwork and a very healthy respect
for the faculty and their role
to generate the kinds of programs and
services
that allow our students to be successful
and to become
citizens that we are proud of,
So thank you for giving me this
opportunity and I wish you all
a wonderful year. It's a challenging year
but I know, I know that you are up to the
challenge.
Thank you.
Well Dr. Meade I appreciate
your comments
and I candidly appreciate your many
decades of service to the community
college movement.
I'll just say to you, you know,
it's unfortunate. You and I have not seen
each other face to face for
candidly longer, I really don't remember
the last time we saw each other.
What I want to say as intimately as I
can
through a computer. I appreciate what
you've done for me, you've been a good
friend and a good mentor to me
and you've helped me
be a good teammate to my teammates here
at the college and
I will miss the day I call you my
boss. But I am glad, I
hope I'll be able to call you my friend
and mentor for many days beyond that.
The last thing I'll say to you is if you
care to look Dr. Meade,
if you click on the chat function of
this Zoom meeting.
I've simply lost count of the number of
compliments you've received here
and the praise you've received from your
Erswell colleagues
about how much they care for you, how
much they wish for your health
and best wishes to your family and
what they see as probably your best gift
to the college.
Which is your unending support and
teamwork. So I encourage you to click on
the chat function so you can see that.
Now
what I'd like to move to ladies and
gentlemen, is to
my attempts to
show some of a powerpoint presentation.
You know, this is this is a new
world for all of us and candidly I,
know most of you instructors are
probably better at this than I am
because you're living through this world
now. But
I'm going to start sharing my screen and
we'll work through some powerpoint
presentations so that you don't have to
simply just look at me.
Then I will be going through
a couple opportunities to invite some
other speakers to give you some
perspectives. So let me
change to share my screen.
The first thing I want to do is just
a little housekeeping matters.
I've already seen in the chat window
that several of you have wondered
what the thought process is for 
limiting video and audio in this meeting.
I'll be the first to admit we're
learning as we go here and
I know some of you may prefer to
have your video up and that we've
limited that. Candidly, the reason we
have
is because as at this point, I'm counting
395 participants in our
meeting and if we  allow
video then we have to allow microphone.
If any of you all have been on a
multi-person meeting where even just one
person forgets to mute their
their device it can be kind of
difficult.
That may not be the best way and if
you're frustrated by that, you have my
apologies and I'm happy to hear any
feedback you have about that
but we have elected to allow you to use
the chat function uninhibited.
I see many of you have done that already
and I encourage you to keep doing that
and please do
put your questions for me or comments in
those and
my plan is to try to address as many
as those as I can during our time here
together this morning.
The other thing I want to talk to you
about is something I'm going to start
calling First Fridays and that's one of
my attempts to limit any of you all who
are frustrated by not being able to
use your voice and use your face, even in
this limited experience in Zoom.
What I'm committed to do is the First
Friday of every single month,
until further notice, is to have one of
these meetings where any one of you
are welcome to join. We'll unleash any of
these restrictions
on video or voice and if there's no
agenda
other than me sitting with you on Zoom
answering your questions, talking to you,
hearing your feedback from what's going
on
and that is as much of a help for me
as i hope it will be for you. My goal
there is to give you an opportunity to
tell me how it's going out there.
I just so miss my opportunity to be
able to do that in the real time, in the
real world before
the pandemic and my commitment to you is to be there on
the First Fridays. And I know that the
the next first Friday is actually
a week from this week and it's right at
the beginning of a
vacation holiday weekend, but I'm still
going to be there.
I'm still going to figure out the time,
probably in the morning on Friday.
The first Friday of September and for
any of you all who want to address me,
feel free. Of course I've never shirked
from
what I've always offered you all which
is if you want to contact me
and you want to email me you can you can
expect a response from me
and I'll maintain that commitment to you also.
So, one of the things that the State of
the College that I
enjoy doing is identifying
what's happened with our staff and
this sometimes takes a little more
time
but it's important to me because these
are our teammates and these are
developments in their life and their
relationship with the college.
So I want to go through them now,
we've got some new hires to address
and I'll read their names and their
position now.
Eve Chowdury is an IR Business analyst.
Julie Jackson is in the Surgical
Technology
department. Amy Paik is a Chemistry
Instructor. 
Kimberly Perlongo is an Accountant.
Heather Snead is an Accounting Analyst.
Now some of our colleagues have
achieved tenure those are, James Anderson in the Trades department.Theresa Betts a
User Librarian.
Glenn Wisniewski, as a Trades Instructor.
We've had some retirements and of course
I've noted on this slide
that this is a limited window and I
apologize in advance if I've missed your
name and you fit in one of these
categories. From January to August, please
let me know and I will make up for that
error by making it a public announcement.
The retirements that we have so far are
Terry Anderson from the Facilities
department. Kimberly Campbell Logistic
Associate.
David Cunningham was a Director. James
Elmer
was in the Energy Tech instructor.
Jackie Lawson a Business Instructor. Who
I hope will continue to
come back to have the
Women's luncheons serve their
important role she did there.
Tom Leighton from the Facilities
department. Dreama Pinkowski
was a Research Analyst. Samuel Plaza was
a History Instructor.
Greg Pudulek was a Facilities Engineer.
Elaine Saneske
was a Business Instructor and someone
who I relied on
for advice and candidly someone who
could tell me
how I was being perceived both
positively and negatively and I
encourage her to continue to do that.
Tom Seguin was an Accountant. Mark
Sedilk, 
an Electronics Instructor. Carol Sloan an
instructor in HBE.
And you know, it's not, it's frankly one
of the worst parts of my job but 
I do think it's important we pay homage
to those who were our colleagues
and who have passed away. I've made
statements about several of these
individuals,
but I need to make their names known one
more time.
Monica Casarez was a Health Careers
Instructor.
Michael Daher was an English Instructor
and a extraordinary
teammate and leader in the Honors
program.
Thomas Hudec was a Chemistry Instructor and Bridget Pizzino was an English
instructor and of course the spouse of
one of our faculty members.
The next thing I like to do at these
events is to give an opportunity to have
our collective bargaining unit
members have a couple items that are
important to them and they're seeing
and doing. Now these are in no particular
order,
but it just starts with Local 71
who I
congratulate the election of their
new leader, president Joe Zitnik.
I also want to note that
most of these announcements on this
docket with the collective bargaining
units come from my relationships and my
partnerships with the
leaders of those collective bargaining
units and 
president Zitnik wanted me to take
notice of the amazing work, and those
were his words,
but I completely agree. Of Holly Diamond
and the Enrollment services team
in the service to students. You're
going to hear from Holly Diamond about
that and I just want you to know that I
greatly appreciate her work and her
leadership and her team. 
Closely behind that is Reuben Brukley,
you know this man took the job of
Facilities Director and I feel a little
badly for him,
I doubt he expected to be handling a
pandemic but he's done that and he's led
a facility staff that has been
holding up the traditional job of
maintaining our campus but the included
tasks of cleaning and sanitizing our
campuses.
We have the SSA, and as you know,
they often I think back every
October put on
a Trunk or Treat event. Leslie Windless, this I
suspect, is the one who will be doing it
this year again.
She's fantastic at that and she's a
great teammate.
They also ratified a one-year contract
extension in the middle of a pandemic
and that was
a lot of good work done by president Kim
Kaier negotiating team LaDonna Holley
and Lori Gonko.
They began a new affiliation with the
Technical Professional and Office
Workers Association of Michigan and I
have to confess, I don't know much about
that group but I do look forward to
working
with that group and with all my
colleagues from the SSA.
The SSA took part in a peaceful
demonstration
or protest with the Dearborn Police.
I know that
several SSA employees took part in that
and frankly administrative
and faculty members took part in that
and I was happy to support it although I
was out of town and couldn't take part
in the actual event.
SSA members in the Campus Safety and
Facility department have been working
throughout the pandemic. They are the
front line workers of Henry Ford College
and they candidly deserve our respect
and appreciation.
The last line I have here is honoring
our teammates affected by the pandemic
and I
say that because the truth is I'm
talking about those individuals
who through no fault of their own and
because they simply could not conduct
their work at home
and that their work wasn't here either
they
were laid off and I just want you to
know I've been reaching out to them.
I care about them, we think about them
and we're doing our best to support them
in this very very difficult time.
The AFO and their president Lynn Bozza
reports to me
that was little notice the AFO members
became computer network technicians
that helped HFC's ITS department
and each other purchase their own
equipment when needed and
deliver online education that they
hadn't really
expected and they conducted 
prepared to teach online training in a
very short amount of time and
some of them even became the trainers.
Examples of that are Ken Shepard
and Cedric Knott not we also have
amazing teamwork with the AFO
and other groups and that was
something that
president Bozza wanted me to
acknowledge. That was most apparent
when over 50 adjuncts returned to campus
in July to finish those courses that
were paused as a result of the pandemic
back in March
and of course five members contributed
to the return to campus committee
including
Edgar Johns who served on the Core team,
which is a monumental success that
I'll talk more about in
in the future of this presentation.
AFT 1650,
in my discussions with president
McDonald
we want to congratulate them and
note some of their accomplishments. One
is that
they played a pivotal role in moving
over 88
of our courses from face to face in
March
to being delivered online and candidly
I'm going to talk a lot about that. I
think it's one of the greatest examples
of our teamwork that between
AFO 1650 administrators to serve
students
in a way that we really probably didn't
think we could, but we did in a short
amount of time.
Of course 1650 is generous with its
resources,
they contributed over eight thousand
dollars to various community charities
and they make significant advocacy
efforts with state and federal policy
makers.
I also want to join president McDonald
in thanking Pam Stewart and Jeff
Morford for their time as chairs of
the CTEI.
I've presented to that, or actually met
with that group, 
I believe on two occasions and i
continue to be impressed by both.
Pam and Jeff, they're leaders, they're
smart, they're hard-working and
they're devoted to the mission of the
college. There's no doubt about that and
their work on the CTEI
shows that Local 1650 also has
leaders.
In a higher education collective
bargaining of course John McDonald was a
ranking delegate to the AFT convention
which in my understanding was
a virtual convention and he was a
delegate to the AFT Progressive Caucus
Steering committee. 
He, of course, remains a vice president a
national vice president with the AFT and
expects to seek re-election
and I think he will be successful when
that election happens in September.
That's a very large collective
bargaining unit across our country
representing over 1.7 million members,
our local vice president in the AFT, Eric
Raider was elected
secretary of the AFT Progressive
Caucus and elected to State Democratic
Party Central committee.
He's a delegate to the AFT virtual
convention much like
president McDonald and of course he
co-chaired the HFC
return to campus subcommittee.
Not to be outdone Chardin Claybourne,
the other vice president of the local
was a delegate to the AFT convention
and a delegate to the AFT Progressive
Caucus steering committee.
I think 
one thing that didn't get added here
because of its late breaking news, I want
to congratulate
John McDonald and his negotiating
team along with John Satkowski and the
negotiating team from the administration
who worked hard together to deal with
a collective bargaining negotiations.
That took a lot of time
and took a lot of resources from both
groups to try to come to a compromise
and
just last Friday the
administration and the Local 1650
leadership
agreed to a two-year extension to their
contract.
During a pandemic, and again, I think
that the vast majority of credit
goes to John Satkowsk and John
McDonald  for their efforts
in looking out for the betterment of the
college
through representing their
constituencies. 
Now, the next thing I'd like to
address is
the pandemic and how it has affected us
as a college
and I could go on about this for longer
than you'd probably like to hear me talk
so I'll be brief, but I think we need to
take a look step back and look at where
we've come from.
You know this is the first time we've
had a chance to come together as a State
of the College since the pandemic
started and our college has changed in
the past six months.
We're going to talk to you a little bit
about this, about some of the things that
have changed and some
that have not changed. On Thursday March
12th, seems like a decade ago now,
We announced major changes to the
college operations due to the Covid-19
pandemic. 
We canceled classes for a week following
spring break to allow us to pivot in
ways that we had never done before.
Our Academic Affairs team, our Faculty,
our Support teams moved more than 1,700 classes
or 88 percent of our classes
from that winter term to an online
format in
a two-week period. Instructors who had
never taught online, learned
how to do that in record time. Faculty
members pitched in to help each other, 
teamwork was everyone's commitment.
We were trying to do something
that some people thought wasn't possible
and
the only way to make it possible was
through teamwork. 
It's a good thing that we chose to pivot
when we did because on Monday
March 23rd Governor Whitmer issued her
first
stay-at-home stay safe order for the
state.
This essentially closed both of our
campuses, but we were ready.
In addition, we moved almost every aspect
of our campus services to an online
format at the same time. This included
all of our
Enrollment Service areas where we have
Advisors, Counselors,
Admissions Officers, Financial Aid
employees, Cashiers,
Orientation Staff, Registration, Career
Services, Student Activities and
International Service team members
serving students personally and
individually every day.
All these teammates had to learn new
ways of using technology to provide the
same great service that the students
expect from us and that we continue to
deliver in a pandemic
and they have done it during a time when
we all have high anxiety.
We have uncertainty to deal with and
we continue to work on our ever pressing
need to
maintain enrollment, which of course, if
it's a State of the College. I will be
addressing
in a few moments, let's talk a little bit
about what we've done
with the operations that we've changed
throughout the pandemic.
You know it's been strange times and
we've had to change these operations,
but our focus, indeed our mission remains
the same.
If you've been with me for the State of
the College for the last couple years.
You've seen I've continued to talk about
several things that I continue to
believe to be
the North Stars of our important
missions.
The first is we need to assure that the
college and the students here are
continuing to thrive
and there really are two subparts of
that maintaining student success
and maintaining budget health. We also
have continually focused on a commitment
from the leadership of this college to
keep you, 
faculty and staff and our students
informed. 
We've worked really hard on that and
it's been really important to be able to
do that
during a pandemic and of course we
continue
to rely on and build a culture of
teamwork.
Frankly, there's no way we
get through this pandemic
and make the progress we already have
without the great
great gains you have made on your
culture of teamwork.
So while our operations have changed a
lot,
what I would suggest to you is that our
core focus areas remain the same
and they continue to be something that
we should all be proud of having
accomplished significant round in each of those.
Here are just a few examples of some
of the operational changes that we made
during the pandemic that I expect
will both show you what's been
happening at the college
but also what we can be proud of is how
we've come through this pandemic.
You know we found new ways to help
students and to provide for their
emerging needs.
We handed out almost 200 laptops to
students who did not have the technology
they needed to continue their coursework.
Our Financial Service area has
distributed 2.6 million dollars in CARES
funds to spring
and summer students providing for their
needs.
We have helped connect students to
personal and social services
that they were in deep need for and our
Advancement team,
led by Reginald Best, showed great
flexibility and student focus
in extending its normal scholarship
deadline for two months
and as recently as last week they helped
students obtain scholarships
to help them support their success.
They've also
been leading the way towards sending
personalized gifts to every student who
graduated this year because,
of course one of the sad realities is
that they were stripped of the
opportunity to celebrate in a formal
graduation ceremony. We've had the ITS
operations changed to support hundreds
of employees now working remotely
and our IT teams helped every person who
asked for help in setting up technology
so we could serve our students. Our
Facilities team has been sanitizing our
campuses daily
and putting up barriers and signage and
enhancements
to keep people safe when they do need to
be on campus. This is in addition to
their regular work of maintenance and
cleaning
and overall operations and I've
been there with them.
I worked about half of a third shift
with Keith Gaines and I know that those
employees continue to do great work.
Our Campus Safety team has kept our
campuses not only safe
and secure, but friendly and welcoming to
the employees and
students who are on campus for their
work and education.
They have also led on campus screening
process
which has been very successful by almost
any measure.
You know our Marketing and Communication
team has contributed significantly to
our progress this year
by supporting the college and focusing
primarily on enrollment and student
services.
The Covid-19 website that they created
in one weekend,
as soon as the pandemic began, was one
example of this
great achievement. Student
resources and support were available on
that website and within the first week
260,000 visitors came to that site.
If you don't know it, you should Rhonda
Delong is the backbone of that
operation and she's the workhorse that
does
much of that work. Now she has a great
team, but I want you to know
that she is one of the best teammates
putting out the amazing amount of
communication that supports you
and me. In fact, that presidential
communication and college-wide
communication that she and I and her
team work on
has continued in the pandemic. You've
seen our messages that have been
adjusted for holidays and crises,
they've been adjusted by the pandemic,
but they continue.
I count 68 messages related to Covid- 19
since they've
since the pandemic has hit over the last
five and a half months.
That's our commitment as leaders to
continue to have you
be involved and informed of what's
happening.
There's also a special advertising plan
to fill the gap.
The gap that we sense from the Board of
Trustees encouraged us to fill
between spring and fall with advertising.
I hope you see those messages
out in front and that they make a
difference for what we're trying to do
with both
success and enrollment for our students.
The Human Resources department just got
a new leader.
In fact, LaDonna Holley had barely been on
the job when a pandemic struck,
but they've done exceptional work to
support employees
and their families during the last six
months. They've developed
remote work policies and procedures,  they've
provided guidance to employees and
managers during the transition to remote
work.
They managed support for employees
affected by Covid- 19
including Emergency Leave Bank
compliance with
an education about the Family's First
Corona Response Act.
They provided scheduling options for
working parents
and they've respectfully helped
employees who were laid off
or for those who were impacted by the
Covid- 19
pandemic. They organized with the Board
of Trustees led us to do
which was to maintain medical insurance
for our colleagues who had been laid off
and they enrolled HFC in a Michigan
Workshare program which lessens the
burden
of layoffs at our college and they've
provided
help with maintaining compliance with
executive orders
from the State of Michigan. They've
helped us see through the process of our
screening process and they've made sure
we're
complying with CDC and OSHA guidelines
and I'll be candid with you, 
they've worked with the collective
bargaining units very effectively.
This has been hard, everyone is concerned
and scared
but our union leaders our administrators
and particularly
HR have helped us get through every
problem we've faced.
I'm so proud of all of them. Our finance
team
continues to track the dollars and cents
in times of
difficult budgeting. They've helped us
anticipate where our budget would shift
and I'm proud of where we've come as a
college both with negotiations with
collective bargaining
and with our Board of Trustees helping
us see ourselves through
what are really, unsure times financially.
With all these changes and more
the pandemic has not changed us in the
most important ways
it actually has made us stronger. Our
work and commitment
have demonstrated that our best strength
is our teamwork and we have proven that
teamwork is not
location dependent. All of you are my
teammates
and I'm so proud of what you have
accomplished and I know
that your accomplishments will continue.
I really want to say thank you to all of
you.
I know I can't know and see all of your
work,
but I hope you can sense that I, sense it.
I'm appreciative for it and i'm proud of
the teamwork we're starting to show as a
college.
Here are some of the things I believe
we've learned about ourselves during
this time,
these lessons are part of what will make
us stronger in the coming years.
First, while the operations might change
our mission has stood the test of time
and i'll just repeat them for you
because I know,  I know you agree with me
that we will continue to make this
college a place where the college and
students thrive by maintaining
student success and budget health. We'll
continue to work as leaders to promote
information and education to you about
what we're doing, in other words the
leaders of this college will continue to
communicate openly with you
and will continue to foster a culture of
teamwork.
We've learned a lot about resilience and
flexibility,
we will be better in ways that we just
don't know yet
but I'm exactly sure that we'll be
better because
we have overcome adversity and the
challenges we've faced.
You know leadership and great ideas
emerge from many places.
When teams are functioning well,  many of
the ideas that you now see in place at
our college
came from you and from your
colleagues in each department
even as we are even farther apart
physically
our teamwork has been strengthened and
we've all done this work without
sacrificing excellence.
Now regarding a thriving college, each
time at this year I update you on some
important metrics about our success and
those are enrollment and budget.
So let me take a minute to address those
issues. Enrollment,
due to the extraordinary efforts of so
many of you in this strange and
difficult year
we are approaching our enrollment goal
for the fall. We're not there yet, 
our goal is about 105,000 credit hours
which is 5.5 percent
less than last fall's significant
enrollment increase
and as of this morning we're at 99,000
credit hours which is
just about six percent down from last
fall.
Now there's a deregistration that's
going to happen very soon
and that will probably reduce this
amount. I can't promise
where it will but I just need you to
know that we're going to continue to
work
through the fall registering students
for the 15-week
registration period which is until
September 2nd
and we'll also continue recruiting
specifically for the 12-week semester
that starts on September 17th. I know
that you are all working on this and
it's been a college-wide effort
and aside from us others in the
community college world are struggling
with enrollment.
I've looked at those data, of the eight
largest community colleges in the state
who are reporting their numbers and some
don't,
but of the eight largest who do report
their numbers
all of them are down at least nine
percent from last fall.
Some are much worse, in fact two of them
are down
34 from last fall
but our laser focus on student success
and our college-wide enrollment teamwork
is something that
sets us apart from other colleges. It's
something I'm very proud of because it
shows our teamwork.
There's a lot of great work happening in
Enrollment services
that I would love to tell you about, but
vice president Daniel
Herbst and I thought it'd be better if
you heard it from someone who's a leader
in that effort. Someone on the ground
so I invited Dolly Diamond, the Executive
Director of Enrollment Services and the
College Registrar to share some of this
with you
today. Mrs. Diamond, the floor
is yours. Thank you!
Good morning and it's a
great day to be a Hawk, right?
I wanted to see, I got a laugh
that's a good thing.
I'm here representing not just
Enrollment Services, but
the entire division of Student Affairs.
So those of you who are not familiar,
that also includes
Counseling, Student Activities, Athletics,
Career Services of course Enrollment
Services so it's a really
large group of people that i'm going to
be speaking about.
I wish I could give you a lot of detail
but I have five minutes so I will do my
very best
at acknowledging everybody and all the
great things that are going on.
Now, I know when you hear from me and
you get information from me you 
think it's enrollment management or EM.
When we started working in this pandemic
we
decided and we quickly learned EM means
a lot more
than enrollment management, it means
everybody matters.
We took that to heart, everybody matters
within our team
those we serve our colleagues across the
campus.
So we tried to take care and support
each other,
I know we heard a little bit earlier
about
becoming IT staff, and so some of my
lead staff
turned out to be the best IT support for
some of our other staff members.
So we had to take care of ourselves
before we could take care of our
students.
So we made sure everybody was
comfortable, we learned quickly not
everybody
loved working at home. I'm one of the
people who love working at home but I
was,
you know, it took me a while to help
other people
adjust during this transition. So
while we are taking care of each other
we decided okay
we could sit back and wait and see what
happens.
We decided we must meet the students
where
they're at, we could not wait for
students just to call us.
Some of the things that happened were we
took an entire call center for the
entire college offline and moved it
remote.
That would not have been achievable
without our great IT
leaders and without our wonderful
Enrollment Services staff, so I want you
to know
all those calls that are being answered
you know we've had
hundreds of thousands of calls going out
and coming in
and those, that is your enrollment staff.
It is our enrollment staff
making those calls or receiving those
calls
and again they're doing it from from
their homes and a lot of us would not be
able to
do our jobs the way they're doing that.
So we thank them immensely.
Some of the other things that are going
on were Student Activities.
Student Activities ,you would think in
the middle of a pandemic,
might not do anything this summer and
just sit back and wait and see what
happens for fall.
But Cassandra Fluker and her team,  they
worked really hard and they now have
some virtual programming
plans such as Welcome Days, presenting
motivational speakers
and concerts. So we're really excited
about that.
Our Career Services department over the
summer again they could have just wait,
sat back and waited, but they took advantage of this
opportunity.
They developed specialty work groups for
our students.
They also did some wonderful virtual
recruiting
and with that virtual recruiting they
were able to get
major employers such as DTE and the
State of Michigan,
pretty phenomenal. Our Counseling area
they were able to start seeing students
online
in a virtual environment again something
we would never imagined have happened.
Our Academic Advising and student
success team,
they used a tool, they went more than MS
Teams they did
more than Zoom, they used a tool called
Google Voice
and they were able to connect with
students
and develop such a wonderful
relationship
they found their attendance rate for
their appointments increased by
40 percent. So this was pretty amazing
you know when they say
good comes out of bad really this has
helped us have such a wonderful
relationship with our students
and connected a level that we never
thought was possible in the past. You
know, we're meeting students where
they're at.
Maybe it's a working parent who has two
children who we can now meet with
where they would have never been able to
make it to our campus. So we are really
looking at
some changes long term
as we work through this pandemic.
I want to talk about the Enrollment
Services team as well
and then, that is a large team it's
Admissions,
Recruiting, International students the
Call Center, Registration just to name a
few.
And so much happened this summer,
we when we talked, you heard a lot about
collaboration and teamwork earlier today
and this really happened
tremendously this summer within our
division. We worked with
IT,  we worked with Marketing, we worked
with
even the Mail room. Our friends in the
Mail room said, "You want to send
26,000 postcards?" And we said, "Yes." And
they said, "We'll make it happen."
So really, thanks to Marketing, thanks to
Graphics
and our friends in the mail room who
helped us mail out
over a thousand diplomas. So a lot of
work has been going on
and we're really really proud of that.
A couple things I would like you to know
regarding the support of each other and
supportive students.
Enrollment Services looked at what would
need to happen
to help make students more comfortable
and their parents more comfortable
coming to Henry Ford College.
So our team developed something called
Hawk Family Fridays
and this was designed for the families
that support our students.
We recognize that our students need
support, but support for more than just
us,
support from their families. So we had
these Hawk Family Fridays and we even
had a family from Senegal
join us and those were rave
reviews and things we were going to
probably do in the future.
The Admissions team took their show on
the road, if you will,
and the admissions recruiters met with
high school counselors,
parents, families and students. This is
something that we didn't do before, again
we just thought
wow, this is amazing and we're going to
keep doing this for the future.
Our enrollment managers saw a need in
the Office of Financial Aid
in terms of late SAP appeals and without
getting in too technical but that there
was a need and our enrollment managers
knowing it wasn't their job decided,  I'm
we're gonna help out. An example that
happened just yesterday, 
Jeremy Guc who is our leader in
Admissions and Recruiting and
International students
recognized that we are going to have a
deregistration. That's going to happen,
so he said, I want to see that list of
students.
And he started looking at those students, 
how many of them were first-year
students, how many of them were dual
enrolled.
Then he said to our partners in
Financial Aid, so he was being nosy
butting into Financial Aid's business and
they let him, which is good,
but he said let me let's talk about
this.
Then he started talking with Cashiers, so
you know we joke about we're being nosey
and we're in everybody's business but
it's an example of
all the walls have come down. There are
no more silos, we were truly working as a
team
and what happens after Jeremy does all
his work
is he will send out robocalls to
students.
What happens from that, is that our
phones will explode
and the leader of all of our services
for current
prospective and admitted students Nicole
Ford-Kondraciuk, 
her team will lead the answering
of those phone calls. They will lead the
discussions that need to happen and Zoom
meetings that need to happen
for appointments, such as for
financial aid or
registration. So those are some of the
things that are happening right now,
again silos are gone. I know it's kind of
an old saying, but we really broke those
down. There are no
more barriers really working for the
good of each other
and the good of our student. I
am very happy that I was able to join
you today and talk a little bit about
what's been happening in our area.
Thank you Holly and I appreciate so much
you sharing some of the great work
that's going on in your area. 
I wish you the best because we're
all counting on all of you
to help us continue what we know is
important and that is enrollment. 
I'd like to add some
corrections and I really appreciate my
my colleagues reaching out. Keith Binion,
I appreciate you telling me
and I regret having made the mistake but
I do want to add
our condolences because we lost
another
one of the HFC family. A retiree, I
believe,
Theresa Mosik and then
Lorena Bensick I want to thank you for
also noting in the chat
that Kimber Pearson has been elected
and is the new
Associate Dean of the school of 
Business Entrepreneurism and
Professional development. 
Please do, if there are things
that I
miss, please do throw them in the chat.
I'll try to keep my eye on that and
continue this to be as much a
conversation as possible.
You know, I really regret that we
can't do what we usually do in the
Forfa, which is
we pass around the microphone and we
have a conversation but the chat is
a good way to try to accomplish some of
that.
The next topic I'll just briefly touch
on is and this is another convention
I've come to
give you an update on the
budget.
It's not the most sexy topic but
it's a really important topic.
It is
that we were happy that the Board of
Trustees approved our annual budget
it assumes an enrollment decline of 5.5
percent and as you know we're probably
going to, right now we're below that.
So we're hoping to increase enrollment
but
that will be a significant shortfall.
We also anticipate State appropriations
to be down 20
percent compared to the start of fiscal
year 2020
and despite that we
worked hard to try to make sure
that we could
balance the budget and of course we
did that. 
Last point I'll make is
I know, I know I hear often from your
vice presidents that there are vacancies
that you believe
are important to be filled and I take
those seriously.
But the truth is, one of the best ways
to handle
reduction in revenue, and that's what
reduced
enrollment and reduced state
appropriation is, that is reduction in
revenue
and we have the same same college to
deliver
with those reduction in revenue they're
really only two ways
to handle that. You can adjust how much
you're spending on staff
which is either to keep vacancies or do
layoffs, and I'm not talking about either
of those, I'm just
being truthful with you about what your
options are as an administrator.
Or you can increase tuition, now none
of those are
outstanding options but I just need you
to know how serious we take it, how
serious I take it.
I have a balanced budget and to deal
with the question of vacancies those are
two parts of the same analysis.
Now let's talk about
some of the innovations we've had here
on campus
as a result of the pandemic. I invited
two guests
to share with you some of their
experiences in the past few months
and they each provided a video that I'm
going to share with you.
One is dealing with how the faculty
develop new models for teaching and
learning.
You know, as I mentioned earlier, the
faculty played a pivotal role in
transitioning
from face-to-face courses to distance
modalities in a very short amount of
time.
Much of that success was due to the
Faculty Senate and its leadership team
including then
Chairman, Paul Fisher and its current
Chairman, Tony Perry.
The Faculty Senate and the Academic
Affairs Leadership team led by vice
president Michael Nealon
showed outstanding teamwork and focus on
service to students.
Not only during the winter onset of the
pandemic, but during the once in a
lifetime
spring and summer that we faced.          
You know I met with them.
I met with Chairman Fisher and
then incoming Chairman Perry and I met
with the Senate and I remember being in
Kevin Dewey's classroom. We were all
separated by those tables and
I remember seeing senators and faculty
worried about what would be in the
future and I remember saying we were
going to hold together as a team
and I remember leaders like Eric Raider
and Tony Perry and Scott Stills
saying that they were going to help each
other and make it through and they did.
So I thought there'd be no one better
than Tony Perry
to give us some perspective about what
you all accomplished as
faculty working with administration to
deliver for
students. And so I will stop sharing
and ask my comrade in arms,
Rhonda Delong, to help take over the
screen and show a video from
Dr. Perry. Welcome back
dear colleagues. We
made it through the winter
and the summer. Welcome back,
even if it's just virtually.
president Kavalhuna asked me to briefly
speak about the work you did
to get us through the winter term and
what challenges we have faced
before us this academic year.
If you don't know me, I'm Tony Perry, the
faculty senate chair for this academic
year
I know we have a lot of work ahead of us,
but before we get to that
it's important that we acknowledge all
the incredible work you did
since the pandemic hit. Henry Ford
College's success is built on your backs
and it requires all of us to lift
together
to move the college forward.
You've shown that you're up to this
challenge.
I'm immensely proud to work with all of
you, moreover
your efforts this spring and summer need
a special recognition.
These went beyond and above
what anyone could have imagined.
I would like to take a few moments to
highlight some
of the work I saw that epitomizes the
strength of our college.
Our college success rests on all of you
and I am more than happy to talk about
my brilliant
hard-working colleagues that make
working here so inspiring.
From the return to campus committee to
the numerous other groups
who have guided the institution during
this time, I say thank you.
Last winter term we had to quickly
respond
to the threats of a pandemic, there were
things we had to do
because the State of Michigan required
us to and there were things that we had
to do to continue our mission as an
institution
and there were things that we had to do
just because they were the right thing
to do.
I can say that the work you undertook
was not easy
and none of us were experts in dealing
with such a situation
yet you did not let that stand in your
way
you took the problems and developed
solutions.
I can say the HFC administration did not
assume they had all the answers
but they realized that it was going to
have to be on all of our backs
to find the way through this and they
supported the leadership
coming from across campus. Our
administration realized they didn't have
all the answers,
but they didn't need to, they had a lot
of smart people across campus
who could develop solutions. Now for
those of us who have been here for
for a while we knew our colleagues
always had this ability.
I've seen this time and time again and
that's why I love
HFC, but you my friends
are exceptional professionals and human
beings.
Too often in the past this was not
recognized
but this was not your first rodeo, your
first time
solving problems, you set this foundation
year in year out and that's why you're
able to quickly respond to this crisis.
Faculty administration and Support Staff
came together to solve
problems to help students and to make
sure
we were doing our very best. While there
are too many examples to list
everything here I'll mention a few and a
few people I saw doing
exceptional work, this is really servant
leadership
at its best.
Finishing the the winter term for most
classes online was not easy, students
faculty and staff had to pivot
quickly and completely to a remote
environment.
I saw my colleagues come together to
train those in need to support directly
where needed. Faculty throughout the
college
who had never taught online feared the
concept,
they came through and finished their
semester and ensure their students
learn what was needed.
From Vicki, Glenn, Christian and
Instructional Technology
to Pam and Jeff with CTEI we saw the
core group adapt just and meet the needs
we had.
Remember, we had fewer than 20 percent of
our courses offered remotely before
March 2020
and then we went 100 percent remote.
Faculty from across the campus work with
their colleagues,
usually in their own discipline but not
always, to bring them up to speed
and to make sure that the vast majority
of students
finish the semester successfully.
This was vital on so many fronts,
if we were not able to finish the winter
semester, so many students would have
lost that semester would had to repeat
it
the college would have had to reimburse
their tuition and this might have been a
fiscal cliff no coming back from.
So many of you worked tirelessly
and many times throughout the night as I
know of many
conference calls and such to address the
issues facing our students and our
colleagues and the institution. Crises like this are often paralyzing to
people
you weren't paralyzed you were super
charged,
the Instructional Technology committee
and Allison Buchanan and Scott Still
who just got the prepared to teach
online class rolling
now to make this class available to so
many more
and this was really unexpected. Working
with Pam Stewart
and Jeff Morford they're
able to ramp up many more
sections to accommodate the
unprecedented needs
this was done to develop the best
possible remote learning classes
not putting this on just putting classes
on the schedule
but being prepared to teach online
remote learning.
I can say this is a unique among
academic institutions,
it shows our commitment to student
learning as our top priority.
It takes a lot a lot of work to develop
online classes
and to do it well takes even more work
and thought
during the spring and summer and going
into the fall this effort
of preparing and improving a remote
education
has been the equivalent of a marshall
plan and this is very impressive
because this is being done in addition
to everything
else we still must do. I know many of you
are
working around the clock many days turn
into evenings
and nights and really without much of a
break.
What makes it more challenging is that
many of us are doing this while trying
to juggle many new responsibilities
in a new environment in your homes where
focus time is hard to come by,
technology may or may not be optimal and
the
pandemic has left all of us feeling like
we have no control over our lives.
Beginning in late January, a few of us
including, Adam Hazlett,
Bob Armada, Betsy Cohen and Eric
Raider started talking about the
pandemic and the potential impact on us.
We discussed this very possibility of
having to deliver remote learning
and the challenges that it would bring, I
met with Dr.
Nealon in late February about these
concerns and the importance we had to
prepare for not
a delay in the semester but finishing
online.
He was most receptive and then Senate
Chair Paul Fisher brought this before
the Senate
to begin to figure this out, however,
the theoretical did not really prepare
us for what was needed.
Within the first week back after spring
break many
students were challenged to finish the
semester in this
typical asynchronous online environment
so are many faculty.
Many faculty started to use Zoom, Big
Blue Button,
Microsoft Teams and other tools to bring
their students to regular
weekly engagement sessions others
even use just conference call technology.
It became apparent quickly that these
sessions were extremely beneficial to
student learning
and there were going to be large group
of students who could not
handle the asynchronous classes
and they weren't going to come back in
the fall if that was their only option.
Beginning with a few phone calls and
expanding quickly an ever increasing
group of faculty discussed
developing a plan to ready to deliver
live
remote learning.This group
by early April included over 50 faculty,
staff and administrators.
Jeff Morford coined the term, "Live
Without the Drive" and it stuck
and a new mode of teaching and learning
was introduced.
The groundwork for what this mode would
mean,
required meeting after meeting after
meeting; weekly
sometimes daily from March through July.
Numerous colleagues shared their
expertise and came together to think
about ways to deliver this education
effectively. I can say personally
participating with my colleagues in this
process
was rewarding, in so many ways, it
reiterated my faith in many of you.
You are extremely dedicated individuals,
you did not have to do this.
You didn't have to spend countless hours
in meetings planning and developing
training to deliver this new mode
you could have said, "someone else will do
this,
this is not my responsibility," but you
didn't you engaged
even when you were overwhelmed finishing
the winter term.
And even more, it was impressive
this we can do it attitude
by so many, for instance lightning Holly
Diamond and her team
getting that Live Without the Drive
designation on the courses
without a hiccup, Rhonda DeLong and her
team began working with several faculty
on the language to describe this mode
for students and for recruitment.
I can say this is not normal for an
institution, especially education
institutions.
You know the literature says that it
takes 50 years
for major changes to happen at
institutions of higher education,
we saw it very quickly.
The only good part of the pandemic in
the stay-at-home order
was you my colleagues were able to pass
out at home without having to drive home
after putting in so many hours. The Live
Without the Drive was introduced in
several math courses this summer
and will be formally introduced this
fall semester.
It's not perfect, it's not the best way
to learn.
Yet it does however offer a bridge
through this academic year.
The Live Without the Drive team
developed and held training sessions in
early July
with several faculty members providing
their expertise
to help us get started.
Jessica Schomberger shared with us the
web conferencing tools
and Pam Stewart, Hollie Saraswat
Sue Jabar and Rosemary Miketa addressed
various pedagogical
methods that could be employed across
various disciplines.
Sam Bazzi shared with us the various
tools for recording lectures
and Shanna Simpson-Singleton made sure
that we were aware
that there are going to be pitfalls and
how we could possibly address them.
This was an introduction to many about
this new mode
and in in the course of the fall term
we're going to learn a lot more about
this
and remote learning. Our colleagues are
already meeting to address the pitfalls
of remote learning
and to come up with the best practices
across the curriculum.
Whether this be through groups like,
Kevin Trovini's brown bag sessions,
which he's been hosting during the
summer, to the more formal CTI
work and instructional technology
resources that are online and available
to all of us.
As we embark this fall we are eyes wide
open.
Groups of faculty are already coming
together to discuss
ways to ensure academic integrity with a
group led by Mike Hill.
In the coming weeks, we'll need to share
expertise's
and our experiences with each other
figure out ways
to work through problems, tweak our
methods,
and share best practices for educating
our students.
We are reminded that not all of our
students have the same resources and
networks we
have
we need to make sure they have every
opportunities for success.
Yes, the threat running through all we
have done
has been the concern over access
ensuring we are addressing our students
ability to access this learning
understanding that much of our community
we serve is underserved.
We are not doing our education in a box
but rather with people
with real world challenges and meeting
each student
where they are is what we must do
even with more normal times we were
challenged at doing this
it's going to be even more vital than
ever.
Many individuals and groups across
campus have been stepping up
from Elizabeth Preston and S.A.F.E, Kalvin
Harvill and the Black Male
Queen's Focus Group and Hawk's Nest who
are all helping many of our students
with their basic needs. To president
Kavalhuna and the administration making
sure
our students can get laptops if they
need to.
The needs are only going to grow this
fall more than ever before.
I think we're up to these challenges so
I'm going to end my
remarks with thank you. Thank you my
colleagues,
my friends, I feel blessed to work with
so many of you
we are all working to meet the
challenges ahead, together
we can make sure that our students
succeed.
Have a great semester. Well thank you Dr.
Perry.
What a great addition to this
presentation and I appreciate what you
say,
you know I've been watching the chat and
I thought it was great. Brian
Smith, you my friend, made a comment
about Dr.
Perry sometimes reminding you of Dr.
Fauci and how prescient he was
about the fact that this was going to
be a problem and of course
he was in my ear too. I can see he was in
Eric Raider's ear, he was in Scotts Dale's
ear
he was in everyone's ear saying this is
going to be a thing so
we're glad to have Dr. Perry as a leader
and as a teammate.
You know I don't vet these speeches.
I don't tell him what to say, but it
was really great to have him talk about
the laptop
program that we put on campus
because that's a great segue
to the next presentation and that is
going to be by Christina Bailey, the
Director of Academic Services who will
tell you about
our efforts to put that technology in
the hands of students who needed it.
So I will now ask my colleague again,
Rhonda DeLong, to give the mic
to a recording by Dr. Bailey who I
believe has a picture of an autopsy
maybe the first one ever
at the beginning of her presentation.
Good morning President Kavalhuna, Vice
presidents
and colleagues in late March
when the shelter in place order came
from our governor
and that it was necessary to
implement a program
to allow students to get a laptop so
that they can complete the winter
semester courses.
Vice president Herbst and Dr. Nealon went
back to work immediately
and we all together started to look for
computers.
The Purchasing department was able to
come up with 100 chromebooks for 
purchase
and the Dearborn public school loaned us
more than 100 laptops too.
So we implemented a loan program for our
students.
I have never been so proud of working
for an institution
when there are so many logistical
aspects, so many items to take care of,
but it was foremost for everyone
that the successful completion and
safety of our
students was at the forefront.
Both by [vice] president Nealon and Herbst updated
everything they could to make sure that
the program was successful.
So the next day, Joe Zitnik and his
team
they were able to very quickly prepare
those 100 chromebooks and all of those
Dearborn public school laptops
so that they were ready for the long for
loaning to the students.
So very soon, we started the program the
next day after the sheltering place
order came
and we were there every day of the week
from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
for the 1st two [to] three weeks and after
that, it was just
twice a week until there was no more
demand
in late May that or June.
So it was a very successful program,
we loaned close to or maybe more than
200 chromebooks to the students.
This program is going to continue for
the fall. So expect
expect more details about the
implementation of this program
coming through our HFC Communication's
emails. I want to note too that some
of the instructors were just
wonderful how they were so worried about
the success of the students
contacting us all of the time making
sure that the students
had the laptops that they needed. A
couple of instructors that even
came to campus to make sure that the
students were able to retrieve those
laptops
because of transportation problems.
And one thing that I want to note, and
this is
on the side, one day I was there with the
students
and to follow safety protocols I only
allow one student at a time inside of
the atrium of their
Campus Safety building. So this person
that came to the door was going to
access the building but I was serving a
student already
so I signaled this person to wait
outside.
After that, when I finished with the
student I realized that it was president
Kavalhuna the one that I made him wait
outside. 
But he was so good about it, he didn't
complain, he just waited and when I signaled he came into the building and
we had a good laugh about it. 
So it was very good it was it was a
good effort
by everybody in order to make sure that
our
students successfully completed the
Winter semester. Well thank you Dr. Bailey
I appreciate your support and yeah I do
remember that day.
I was watching you maintain the
security of that building like a hawk
and I appreciated it.
Let's now go back to screen share
and let me make a couple comments and
then we're gonna hear from another
individual.
I'd like to talk about student
success, what does the student's success
look like
during a pandemic and we asked
at least two recent students to give
their description of what their
experiences
were like at HFC and talk about how the
college helped them
when they needed it the most. Now the
first is Hassan Hammoud
and he was a nursing student who was
dual enrolled
and I'll let him speak about his
experience in his own words 
in a video he sent to us.
Hello everybody. 
It is an honor for me to speak to you today from the
confinements of my own home, obviously, during this little pandemic we've got going on.
My name is Hassan Hammoud and I know we are
not as close as we'd like to be when it
comes to our distance
However, I do feel that we are still as close 
 and as connected as can be when it
comes to our ideas, thoughts, and goals.
Before I begin talking about HFC
and everything it has
HFC has done for me --
because, trust me HFC has done a lot for me --I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the amount of impact that God
think the amount of impact that god has
had in my life.
Without that, without my self-care activities and my spiritual activities.
I don’t think I can be the type of person I would like to be  in
every situation that I am. 
With that, I would like to begin with the College has
helped so many of us
in so many ways. Whether it be
working here, going to
school here or volunteering here even.
I think the message
implied is really the same across the
board.
And the message that I take from it is that you are supposed to work to
limits
that you never really thought that you
could reach before and then once you've done that
make sure the next day, yeah, you work
twice as hard
It is that same message that is really
the focal point of this community we've
created here.
It is with that same message that whenever
I ask the hardest working of faculty
or even nurses that I work with. Where
did you go to school? They look at me,
they smile, and they say,
"Yeah, I went to Henry Ford." A coincidence?
I really don’t think so when it happens so often
and as consistently as it does. This is the same College that took me in at age
15
while I was in dual enrolling in my high school.
And back then, of course Nursing has always been the goal. But
at age 15 that goal really seemed like a
drop in the ocean.
And that mission I had at age 15 
was pretty simple,
maintain the highest grades that I possibly could, learn as much about life
as possible,
keep a smile on my face through it all
and be the absolute best version of
myself.
What stood in my way? 
Well, about 100 credit hours
and structures that pushed you to the
brink to pull out qualities in you that
you never knew that you possessed.
A nursing program that does not allow
you to blink, and then, oh yeah, a pandemic, 
in the middle of learning about a
cardiac system with Professor (Nancy) Borkin, and if
any of you know her, she'll
she can teach about cardiac quite a bit
and through it all, I worked a lot. I
worked really hard. And through that I learned so much
through that gruesome process
I learned what it meant to believe
to believe in the universe at large, myself and every person that was willing to help.
And at Henry Ford
every person that breathes at Henry Ford
is
willing to help.
I know that the success story
is
supposed to be about me and about my success,
but I am really one of the last people
responsible for that to happen.
It is my parents that are available for
me night and day.
Office members like Karen Elsersy
that literally greet me every single
time I
step through that door
and allow me to grow through this
whole process.
 Dean Shunkwiler, who cares about my well-being before it comes to any of
my grades.
Professors like I mentioned, like Nancy Borkin
that, if you don't get it, we'll make sure
that we get through it together.
And honestly, even like our school
president Russ.
You know, like I remember when this pandemic started, he
really gave us some very powerful message to all the videos that he sent
and I watched them all! I really appreciate it all. And forgive me
for not mentioning your last name. You know, I'm not even going to try on that
right now.
But really, it is the accumulation
of all these things that we're able to go
through the harshest
of pandemics together, and I know I maintain my positivity and hard work through it all.
But, 
this is really not my success story, but
it's our success story. 
And thank you all and God Bless you all.
Well  thank you Hassan, no worries on
the last name,
sometimes my kids can't even quite get
it right.
One more story that I do want to
share
on this topic is from a student
from
our Ford Asset program and
that student's name is Shafiq
Gibbons. He was in the Automotive
Technology Asset program and he sent a
message that I would like to read to you.
It was, "So it's been a few months since
school ended
and as of last Wednesday I have become
Suburban Ford's new Trans Tech, full-time.
I would like to thank you for teaching
me and helping
mold my career you showed me the steps
led me to the door and practically gave
me the key to open it.
Now I have a means to support my family
and to give a better lifestyle to my
daughter
thank you Mr. Young." Shafiq was speaking
about
Instructor Chris Young who is
one of the teachers
providing the same kind of experience to
all Ford Asset Students.
I know Chris, in fact I have a one of
my favorite pictures of when Governor
Whitner was here was
him educating Governor Whitmer about the
Ford Asset program.
You know it's these experiences of these
students and the thousands
like them that show what it means to
transform their lives
and to help them build better futures.
This is the core of who we are
I hope it inspires you to keep going
because it does for me.
Let's think about that, student success
across these semesters.
There's one thing I want to
 tell you about student success.
Our Winter 2020 semester finally
concluded
last week, the semester was extended
because there was
simply no way to continue it. We had to
postpone winter
on campus classes until July
7th. 246 sections
were postponed and then resumed. 996
students successfully completed these
classes
and are now able to continue their
studies
or move on into their careers. That's
something you can be proud of.
So let's talk about what it means to
return to campus
and maybe even a bit about what the
future holds for us from the fall
and the winter. Before I go into the
details about the fall I want to talk
about our return to campus process.
I'm immensely proud of the great work
this team accomplished in a short
amount of time and under significant
pressure
in about three weeks during May and June
our Return to Campus Core team and
subcommittees under the guidance of vice
presidents Amy Clark
and Lori Gonko managed to find solutions
to many complex issues from academics to
operations.
I would also like to thank the Board of
Trustees for its support
and guidance during this process,
especially trustee Roxanne McDonald who
served on the core team.
They put together a substantive phased
plan
that gave us a path to operate safely
and successfully on our campuses.
The return to campus core team and four
subcommittees
comprising of 50 people from across our
college
researched best practices conducted a
campus-wide survey
evaluated state mandates and plans
and focused on safety and excellence as
their top priorities.
Their plan has guided our efforts
through summer classes and will continue
to guide our operations
for as long as necessary. The diversity
of this team
and its success are what makes me
extraordinarily optimistic
that we will overcome any challenge we
face. Just
think about what it shows about our
diversity, that diversity of thought
and experience is our strength. We are
strongest when we all work together from
across
our various areas of the college. The
core team included Reuben Brukley, Amy
Clark, Kevin Culler, Rhonda Delong, Holly
Diamond
Paul Fisher, Lori Gonko, LaDonna Holley
Edgar Johns, Roxanne McDonald, Katrina
Minnis
Tony Perry, Eric Raider, Karen Schoen and
Susan Shunkweiler
what a diverse team and what a powerful
team.
Second, that team showed that when we
work together
we can overcome significant hurdles that
are beyond our control.
This team and many others in the
subcommittees conducted this difficult
work together
virtually during a pandemic.
And with the changes that are happening
almost daily
as they were trying to build a plan and
under a tight timeline
with students wanting to finish their
courses and they were successful.
Finally this team shows that we are
excellent
and we are at our best when we come
together
this process continued our work in
breaking down silos and overcoming past
power struggles
but in a very short time with an
important deadline.
Those of you who have been here a long
time realize as Dr. Perry noted in his
presentation today, but this is a big
step forward for us
during a very difficult time. To come
together set aside battles of the past
and to focus
on our students, our teammates, and our
joint future
and our outcome was top notch. Think
about what this team delivered,
we have a communication strategy to
inform students and faculty and staff in
real time.
We have a phased approach to restart our
education
on campus, we have a playbook to
educate you, our community, on the
processes that we will
comply with and to comport with federal
and state
regulatory strictures and best practices.
And the process that we've developed
is by my estimation the best in class.
Just read some of the news articles
today you'll see other institutions
struggling with developing their plans
much less executing them and we've
executed ours for several weeks already
and because of our teamwork we have
delivered this excellent plan
and we are still deploying it.
I have to do a public service
announcement, if you haven't completed
your playbook training,
please do that by Friday, September 4th
and you'll find the link
to this training in your HFC email if
you search
playbook training and assessment the
mail will be from hr collaborative.net.
If it looks like spam you can contact
Jennifer Chapman and Lori Gonko's office
to be sure, but
that's the one. You know this return to
campus plan was successful in July and
August
as many of you returned to campus to
complete pause classes for the winter.
We will no doubt continue to evaluate
this plan and we'll have to refine it
as circumstances and science inform us
about best practices to keep our
students and teammates safe.
Our work continues and this pandemic
shows that we will
work and it will be hard work to
require us
to be nimble and to work together as a
team.
But take a moment and share some pride
in what we've accomplished, I'm proud of
it and I hope you are
too. We've accomplished a great deal
we encountered a hurdle after hurdle and
worked through them to overcome them
together.
This is becoming our calling card as a
college and as a group of teammates we
identify
problems, we set the best minds and the
best hands at work
to deal with them. They devise a plan and
we begin to implement that plan.
The way we interacted with this pandemic
is just one in a long line of examples
of that
We've dealt with that same problem and
process with our Strategic Enrollment
Management team,
how we handled HLC Accreditation, how we
evaluated
and analyzed our Human Resources
department. When we analyzed our Campus
Safety levels, some of these are still
ongoing.
How we as a college move 90 percent of our
classes in two weeks from
face to face to online. I continue to
believe
and I encourage you to believe that when
we work as a team, there really is not
anything we cannot overcome and this
leads
to one of the most pressing issues that
we now must confront
that is our campus culture on diversity,
equity,
and inclusion. Most of you know that I
held a social justice town hall on
June 11th to hear various voices about
issues confronting our college
and our society. On June 25th, I sent you
a message about my thoughts on that
event
and our next steps. I remain committed
to personally work on these issues with
all of you
many groups and individuals have engaged
with me during the past two months
and we have made progress in one big
step. That I hope
and I am committed to be just the first
step and that is that we will engage in
an
experienced consultant to help us
undertake a comprehensive
campus climate survey. The results of
this will be used to help us move
forward in the best ways possible. This
recommendation came from the Diversity
task force before I  arrived at the
college.
We will begin by developing a proposed
list of survey questions with the
help of this consultant and then when we
engage the stakeholders,
like you all, to make sure we have the
right questions to generate authentic
answers that can help us
make the changes that we need to make.
The climate survey will not be focused
only on race, although that will be an
important part,
it will include all types of questions
about all aspects of diversity.
I also make the commitment to you that
this process will not be rushed.
I heard from you, that you want
meaningful consistent
action and we need to know what you see,
what our community sees in our strengths
and our weaknesses. This will help us
understand how we can make sustainable
progress as we grow as a culture.
But this survey work is so important
that it can't wait until the pandemic
subsides
which is why over the last several weeks
Reginald Best, LaDonna Holley and I have
interviewed multiple consultants and
selected one to help us conduct this
survey.
We plan to begin this work of building a
survey and getting your feedback on it
right away and I aim to deploy this
survey in September.
After the survey is completed, I will
share the results with you and engage in
conversations about where
those results should lead us as a
college in
making our culture what we want it to be.
This is a big step
towards lasting meaningful action by the
college.
I thank all of you who have done so much
on this topic already
and I commit to you to keep you involved.
I know that we've got work to do and I
commit to you to do the work with you.
Now I want to move to just a few
logistics about
the upcoming terms and months, I'd like
to note that
as of now this fall will be about 75
percent
of our classes that will be online
either live or asynchronous.
We will still have more than 1,000
students on the campuses
for classes that must be held in person.
We will continue to do everything we can
to keep students
and employees safe. These measures will
be familiar to you,
enhanced sanitation, required masks.
social distancing, physical barriers
health screening forms, temperature
checks and designated plans for any
emerging symptoms or exposures on campus.
We will work with the Wayne County
Health department if there are any known
cases in our campus community
and we will comply with all executive
orders. As part of our efforts to make
our campus
safe and as safe as possible. We will
have
to greatly reduce our on-campus services
this means many services will only be
provided in remote formats
or simply be closed. I will send you a
complete list of services that will be
available
and the services that will be provided
in remote formats.
You can also find this list of services
that we will
we will be providing remotely on the
fall student
resources web page. We do not know yet
what Winter 2021 semester will look like,
but we'll start planning that very soon.
I'd like to close with a personal
statement
and I want to encourage you to continue
the work you've done as teammates. To put
our students first in these toughest of
times.
As you know, all the online and remote
communication
methods that we've needed during this
pandemic have not been my favorite way
to lead the college. This has been a
struggle for me.
I much prefer to see you all in person
because I take a lot of joy in
interacting with you
and our students here on campus and in
person.
I like to give and take in the real-time
engagement that those kind of
interactions offer
but one thing I've learned during this
pandemic is that we
can still succeed together even in less
than optimal
circumstances. You have shown me how to
do this and you have inspired me
to keep doing this when it has been the
hardest.
I've shown you some of the voices that
inspire me here today.
Your determination and innovations have
energized me and convinced me that we
are doing the right things. In fact, we're
leading higher education and doing the
right things.
Your teamwork has been the most
important and heartening ingredient
in our success, from the bottom of my
heart
I thank each and every one of you for
the hard work you have given to me,
to our students, to each other
and to our college. You
are doing excellent work and I  know you
will keep it up.
All of us will need to pull together to
have a successful fall and I'll keep
communicating with you, probably
sometimes more than you'd like,
but if you ever need me you know I'm
here for you.
I support you and I'll maintain my
commitment if you contact me,
I will respond. Now, I'm going to stop the
sharing of the 
site and I'll do a quick look of
the chat and I will invite anyone else
to throw
questions in.  I've got a couple questions
that came in that I think I'll have to
address
at a later date because they involve
some sensitive issues about diagnosis
with Covid- 19
and HIPPA. So I'll hold that one for a
later
response.
I did have a question about the
hiring freeze
and I just want to respond that
we do have a pretty stringent process
for filling vacancies. It's not a
complete hiring freeze,
but it is a stringent process and it's
the one that frankly keeps our budget
in the black. I'm happy to take any
questions directly from anyone on that
by email to outline the process and I'll
engage you whoever sent this question
with the applicable vice president. Okay
Nancy Borkin asks, "are we going to get
proctoring programs for exams?" And I'm
glad you asked that question because
there were a couple things that in my
conversation with Dr. Perry
he asked me to bring up that I know are
our issues for Academic Affairs
and for the Faculty Senate and one of
them is
dealing with assessment in the remote
world.
I know that's on your docket to
to discuss and try to
accomplish best practices on. I don't
have any development for you on that
Nancy, but
the reason why I don't have anything
is because i trust
Dr. Nealon and his team and Dr. Perry and
his team to come together and try to
come up with the best practices there
and I recognize that
it's not easy. I look forward to
seeing what doctors Nealon and
Perry have to say about that. A lot of
discussion going on now
about exams,
"Any status to expand Zoom access for all faculty?" Pam, send me an email about that.
send me an email about that  I'm
not sure I understand, which is fine.
Any other questions in the chat?
I'm about 15 minutes late and
Dr. Perry has the
mic next. I don't want to go
too far into his time.
The last thing I'll say before we go
is,
I've never thought about doing a State
of the College with Zoom. I  hope this
was worth your time.
I'm happy to hear feedback about how
what worked and what didn't work. 
I do take some solace watching the
Democrats and Republicans trying to do a
convention for four days straight with
stuff like this 
so, it's not easy. I hope that it was
meaningful for you,
but I will note that the real, if you
think that it was done well.
Then you should reach out to Rhonda Delong
and Kathy Dimitirou, 
they are the ones who really made this
happen.
And like I said, contact me with any
questions.
If I get questions I'll always
give you the straight answer.
Dr. Perry I see you, you're ready to in
the wings. I'm sorry I'm giving you the
ball 15 minutes late.
I appreciate your time and your
partnership and is there anything I can
do to help you get off on the right foot
for your part?
No you did a great job, thank you so much
Mr. President and
I appreciate obviously all the
information that's going to really help
make the Faculty Organization meeting
after this
go much more smoothly. We have a lot of
answers to a lot of questions that would
have
mostly likely would have come up there.
 
