Abstract: This case uses the Institutional Intelligence Model (Boettcher & Salinas, 2024) to examine the challenges and pitfalls staff may encounter when change is deemed appropriate by upper administration and resisted by a campus department. Specifically, this scenario addresses a Vice President and Associate Vice Presidents who believe the campus career fair needs to change venues to allow for growth, with little input or buy-in from the Director of the Career Center or the Career Center staff.
Keywords/Phrases: Conflict Resolution, Top-Down Directive, Empowerment, Transparency, Student Affairs
Primary Characters:
Julie Kizer – Associate Vice President (she, her, hers). – Julie is one of five Associate Vice Presidents (AVP) of Student Affairs. Julie oversees the College Career Center, the Academic Success Center, and Student Life. Julie is two years into her role at Elkhorn College and has a background in student life and academic success. Career services is a new department for her.
Jim Mathews – Director Career Engagement (he, him, his). Jim has spent his career of 20+ years in higher education and career services. He, like Julie, is new to Elkhorn College and began as Director of the Career Center a few months after Julie started in her new position as AVP. Jim comes into the Career Center at a time of turn over and uncertainty. Many of the Center staff have moved on to other positions at the College or have retired. Jim has worked hard to build trust among the Career Center staff during the transition.
Bart Macken – Vice President of Student Affairs (he, him, his). Bart has been the Vice President of Student Affairs at Elkhorn College for 4 years and previously worked closely with Julie at a University in Iowa. They have a close working relationship and Bart was thrilled when Julie joined the team. Bart has worked hard to make improvements and grow programs within Student Affairs and Julie has been an integral part of this growth.
Overview
Elkhorn College is a medium size midwestern liberal arts college that is experiencing a growth in student body and reputation. Staffing has not kept pace with the growth and turnover across campus has been high. This case examines communication and transparency between an Associate Vice President and her direct report concerning a proposed directive regarding growth and change.
Context and Case:
Jim, a director for a College Career Center for Elkhorn College, a small midwestern liberal arts college, is just two years into his job and one year past the COVID lockdown. He has worked hard to gain the trust of his department, which he took over amid a great deal of change and turnover within his department. During his tenure, there was also a great deal of change in the Student Affairs division, which he reports.
In the two years since Jim started at Elkhorn College, he and his Career Center team increased employer and student engagement and had a consistently over-funded budget. His department executes a campuswide career fair each semester. The Career Center is proud of the career fair and the customer service they offer their employers. Jim is pleased with an increase in student attendance at the fairs of approximately 40% for the two-day fall fair and 50% for the two-day spring event for the academic years 2021/2022 to 2022/2023. Employer numbers remained the same at approximately 50, the maximum capacity for employer tables at the venue. There is typically a waitlist of roughly ten employers hoping to attend the fair for each day each semester. In addition, students have complained that the current venue needs to be ADA-friendly, and the overcrowding worsens the situation.
Julie, the Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, wants to take the fair from an “ok event to a great event.” She wants everyone on campus to know about the fair and to feel they can’t miss it. The idea of companies wishing to recruit Elkhorn College students for jobs but not having access because the career fair venue is too small is frustrating to her. She has taken her frustration to Bart, her Vice President, who agrees something must change. In turn, all the AVPs are in agreement, unbeknownst to Jim, the Director of the Career Center.
In regular weekly meetings with Jim, Julie brings up the career fairs and her wish to grow the event. Jim hears this but doesn’t understand the extent of what Julie wants when she says she wants to grow the fair. She never mentions a change in venue or her frustration with the waitlist. Jim is also unaware this issue has been discussed with the other associate vice presidents and vice president. Due to staff turnover and perhaps some unwillingness on Jim’s part, Julie’s requests for analysis of the current fair and opportunities for growth go unanswered. Growing frustration and a lack of communication between Julie and Jim create an environment of resistance and skepticism on both sides.
A further breakdown of communication and trust follows when Julie does not include Jim in the decision to hire a consultant and does not communicate the identified goals of bringing in an outsider. Jim and his staff felt Julie’s decision to hire a consultant was a power play which made them dig in further and openly oppose any change to the fair.
As the Director in charge of the Career Center and the fairs, Jim thought he wasn’t being given a chance to do the job he was hired to do and had the expertise to handle. He believed he wasn’t being given the time to let the initiatives he had implemented take hold. He also felt confused and undervalued because he was not included in discussions with the Vice President and the Associate Vice Presidents regarding the career fairs and their concerns. Other than one or two staff members acknowledging the ADA issues, the Career Center staff were against a change in venue for the fair.
Options to alleviate the overcrowding and ADA issues were adding a day to the fair or changing to another acceptable campus venue. Jim and his staff push back on these ideas. Adding a new day to the already two-day fair would keep them out of the office for an additional day requiring the Career Center to be closed and be another day students could not get help from the Career Center. They also expressed concern that three days of the fair would burden students’ time.
During an onsite campus visit, Julie arranged for the consultant and Jim to tour several venues on campus. Jim expressed concern over the cost of the various venues as the current venue is free, but the administration told the consultant that the cost of holding the fair is not a concern. Jim also voiced concern over noise issues because the current venue is carpeted, and the new venue is a concrete concourse that would not absorb sound well. Another fear that Jim and his staff conveyed was the energy in the new location would be flat compared to the energy in the old location due to the increase in space and employers being more spread out. Employer satisfaction is very important to Jim and his staff. They are worried that customer service to their employers would be sacrificed with a venue change. Examples of their stellar customer service include consistent correspondence before the fair, individualized attention once at the fair, and the quality of students attending the fair.
Jim also expressed concern that students would be confused with a new location. Students are accustomed to the old location, which happens to be just across the street from the new venue. Funding for non-paid internship scholarships comes from career fair revenue, and the staff fears that money will dry up, impacting students. In the past, any student who completed the application has been awarded the funding. The fund came about because the department had an excess of revenue.
Discussion Questions:
- How did the lack of communication and transparency impact the willingness to transition the fair to a new location?
- What steps need to be taken by the administration to ensure the career center staff will not be resistant to change?
- What factors need to be considered in a venue change? What stakeholders are affected by the change and how?
- How could the Director of the Career Center advocate for his programs, staff, students, and employers while showing the Administration he understands their concerns?
- When does hiring an outside consultant cross an ethical line?
Author Bio
Lisa Bundrick (she, her, hers) is the Director of Career Engagement at the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business at Clemson University. Prior to her role with the Powers Business College, Lisa planned and executed the University-wide career fairs. Lisa holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University and an undergraduate degree from the University of Kansas. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from Clemson University.
Reference
Boettcher, M. L. & Salinas, C. (2024). Law and Ethics in Academic and Student Affairs: Developing an Institutional Intelligence Approach. Routledge.