Trusteeship - May/June 2020 - 30

THE 2019-2020 NASON AWARD WINNERS

Anne Arundel Community College
Board of Trustees

ing. It makes a difference."
Ulvila owns a large employee benefits consulting firm and
serves on several boards. "All my career I've built teams. I try to
take that experience to board service," said Ulvila, who earned his
first college diploma at Miami-Dade (Community) College. "To
me, if you're going to serve, you're not going to serve in name only."
The board approved hiring more advisers to boost completion
rates. The ratio of 800 students per adviser is now 650 to one. A
higher percentage of students is earning diplomas. The college has
won national recognition for creating a dashboard that every faculty, staff, and board members sees on their computer when they
log in showing up-to-date statistics on retention, persistence, completion, and other measures, broken down by race and ethnicity.
In the early going, Lindsay said, "there was some pushback from
our campus .... The strategy was to bring this in in a non-threatening manner so people could look at the data and come to their own
conclusions."
Lindsay has, in her words, "skin in the game." Forty percent of
her annual evaluation is based on progress toward the Engagement
Matters goals.
The 24-member board meets once a month, but Ulvila is "on
campus probably three days a week on average. We have up to
eight committees and I'm ex officio on every one." The board reallocated $2.7 million to make the strategic plan work.
The board Ulvila joined in 2010 at times poked its nose into
operational matters. "I couldn't stand that. We had to redefine what
this board service was about," he said. "The board only does two
things really: fiscal oversight and policy. That's what our role is."

Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) serves a county of
more than a half-million residents that stretches along the Chesapeake Bay with a main campus in Arnold, five miles from the
historic capital, Annapolis. It is the third largest of Maryland's 16
community colleges and offers degrees and job training to more
than 40,000 students, nearly half in for-credit courses. Like its
peers, it experienced enrollment declines in recent years when the
economy was strong and jobs were plentiful, and like many community colleges it faced perennial difficulties with retention and
graduation rates. "Too many students were leaving before achieving their educational goals. Data showed that the longer students
remained enrolled at AACC, the less likely they were to complete
their program of study," said President Dawn Lindsay, who has led
the college since 2012. Even more concerning, "We found at least a
10 percent difference between completion rates for our black and
Hispanic students as compared with our white and Asian students."
The college already had a strategic plan seeking to double by 2020
the number of credentials awarded but that plan did not adequately
address closing racial and ethnic gaps in completion. With stalwart
support from her board, the college ended the old plan a year early
and launched a new one called Engagement Matters: Pathways to
Completion that aims to "transform the culture of the institution to
ensure equity and to ensure that the college remains student-ready
and committed to academic excellence."
The board's support was crucial, Lindsay
said. It "immersed itself into better understanding pathways, equity, and completion" and
went on retreats "unlike any in recent memory" where experts including William Kirwan,
former chancellor of the University System of
Maryland and AGB consultant, helped them
see what the board needed to do to make the
transformation happen. "The board realized
it had to lead the way by helping provide
resources that follow the college's new strategic
vision and values," the president said.
Larry Ulvila, a board member since 2010
and chair since 2016, said some longtime
members "struggled a little with it. Very often
their explanation is, 'We've always done it this
way. Dawn and I are not believers in 'We've
always done it this way.' You have to go after
it." Now, with three years of improved compleAnne Arundel Community College
tion results, they can see "this thing is work30 TRUSTEESHIP MAY. JUN. 2020

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANNE ARUNDEL COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Trusteeship - May/June 2020

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