By Chloe Fox
Staff Reporter
Julie Leidig
Julie Leidig is currently the Provost of
the Loudoun campus of Northern Virginia Community College. Her previous
experience also includes being Vice President of Instruction at Lone Star
College and Director of Instructional Programs, Community College Division at
the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Leidig has 4 degrees, including
a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from The University of Texas at Austin.
Q: One of the things that CNM is doing now
is developing a Spanish language humanities program, which is different from
other programs in that the goal is for students to get a degree in their native
language. If you were president here, would you support more initiatives to
look at the possibilities of programs like the Spanish language program, which
are there to serve the population where that language is always going to be
their strongest language?
A: I think it’s our job to serve the
community where the community needs to be served. If it serves students, if
there’s a niche for them, if there’s employment for them in the Spanish
language and they need skills in Spanish, I think we’d eventually like to
encourage them to become bilingual and learn English, but I assume the college
did research on this and there’s a need. I don’t see myself coming in and
reversing that. When I was in Texas there were state laws against programs like
that, but I am glad you have the ability.
Q: The South Valley campus is one of our
smaller campuses in our system, and the campus has struggled with enrollment
and having a campus identity to serve the community in a thoughtful way. If you
were selected to be president, what might you do to help address the concerns
of this community, and this campus?
A: I have a real heart for small campuses.
I currently have a small campus attached to my campus, and I also had one at
Lone Star College. I’ve grappled with those kinds of issues before. A couple of
strategies that I’ve tried that have worked are taking a program that everyone
wants and putting it specifically at one location so everyone has to go there.
It might not be the best approach for this campus specifically, but it is one
way to boost enrollment at a certain campus. The idea here would be to look at
the population that lives around this area and ask what the best programs are
to serve that population, and the draw to the campus. Having toured this campus
today, I think it could probably use some renovation. I think you’ve already
got some great programs here. I’d want several strong programs that would be a
draw, to build on, especially for the population that either lives or works
close by. You have to be realistic about what will draw people to a particular
location. You aren’t really obvious just driving by, it would be easy to drive
by and not even notice that you’re here, so that may be a factor as well.
Q: Recently, Governor Lujan Grisham
announced her plans for free college. What are your thoughts about that
proposal?
A: I think free college could be a great
thing, depending on how it’s done. I think free college is most important for
those who could not afford to go otherwise. I’m one of those people who think that
free college isn’t the best thing for people who could afford tuition. Your
tuition at CNM is very low, so making college free for people who could easily
afford your tuition means you’re using state resources for that rather than
other important things. I would like to see college be affordable for everybody
that needs to go. If it’s going to be free then I want it to be done well and I
want to see the college be well supported. My biggest concern about free
college is does the college continue to get the support it needs to be an
excellent college that can deliver everything with quality? I want to see
anything that will encourage people to take advantage of education.
Q: You have experience in Texas and
Virginia, what attracts you to New Mexico and CNM to look at for being
president?
A: Well, I’m going to start with what
attracts me to CNM. I’m really looking for a place where I can make a
difference, and CNM has done some amazing things. You have a great balance
between technical programs that have excellent equipment and great
partnerships, and also with the general education and transfer programs. I love
that you’re in a wonderful, vibrant community, which is a creative place and a
beautiful place as well, which doesn’t hurt either. To me, the thing that
really attracts me to CNM is that you have your values statement. I love the
way this college talks about itself. Since I’ve been here, people have told me
that they love the values and they apply the values, they weren’t just written
down and forgotten. I would like to work with a group of people that has those
values.
Q: The DC metro area that you come from
has a much different socioeconomic climate than Albuquerque. What are your plans
for increasing the amount of job placement for our students once they graduate,
and what are your plans for any partnerships with any local businesses in order
to increase that number?
A: I think you’ve got a lot of good
partnerships going on already, so there’s a lot to build on there. A lot of it
is working with the chambers of commerce and all the local business groups and
finding out where the employer needs are, and then showing how the employer
needs connect with CNM’s programs. At my campus, we are perched on the edge of
some of the millions of square feet of data centers. We started a program to
train people who are the operations techs, or the critical infrastructure
people for the data centers. Everyone is dying to get the graduates of this
program, because the people they have been employing are mainly veterans that
worked on nuclear submarines, as they’re the ones with the closest experience.
You want to find employers that are hungry, and say hey, we have this program
we’re going to give you. The ideal thing would be to find employers who will
guarantee that they’re going to hire if students graduate in good standing from
your program. The other thing is if you have limited resources and you’re
trying to decide where to put them, I would put my resources where it’s
benefitting students the most.
Q: What is your experience with non-credit
instruction, workforce development, and workforce training and revenue
generation?
A: I have had, at both Lone Star and NOVA,
workforce development under me. When I had it under me, I started quite a few
programs in that area. At Lone Star, we started a personal trainer program,
front as well as back office for medical offices, and we did an innovative
thing where we did a dual credit program for welding on the CE side. People
would graduate from High School and get certified in welding, but not with
credit, with an industry certification. At NOVA, I started with workforce
development under me and we run a lot of cyber security programming, and we’re
doing apprenticeships. Right now, because our workforce development is focusing
heavily on IT, they could be focusing on other potential programs but they
don’t want to spend the time. I’m very supportive of workforce development and
work with them a lot.
Q: What’s your leadership style, and what
do you value in a team to support you?
A: I’ve worked very hard to build my team
at the campus, and it’s taken some years. I’m very proud of the team that I
have. I really like to have a positive group culture. I like for people to feel
comfortable coming to talk to me.
Q: CNM’s values are caring, courageous,
connected, exceptional, ethical, and innovative. What’s your favorite?
A: I think caring undergirds all of them
because if you care, then that springs into all of the rest of the values. If
you care then you become connected, and if you care enough to be ethical,
innovative and courageous, I think courage comes from caring also. So, I would
say caring is the one that underlies all of them.
Q: Would you support the transition to
student owned computers/iPads/phone technology?
A: Is that being proposed? What about the
students who can’t afford that? I’ve heard that proposal before, the reason we
never did it was because we were always concerned that not all students can
afford that. I might support it if there’s a way of financing it for the
students who simply can’t afford that. And then the question is how do we make
it equable? Because if you’re buying something simple for students when there
are other students who can afford something really…I don’t know. I would have
to see details on that one. I’d want to know why you’d want to do it.
Q: Across CNM’s campuses, our enrollment
is about twice that of your current campus. What do you see as your biggest
challenge in adapting to the large number of students that we have across the
city?
A: I think the biggest adaptation is that
it’s so spread out. I would not be able to be as directly engaged with the
day-to-day with everyone. I would really have to look for ways to keep
connected with students, and I would have to work at scheduling things at the
different campuses. Every job I’ve had has been a big change from the jobs I’ve
had before, so I’m not concerned with my ability to adapt. But, I recognize
that it would not be the same.
Q: Many of our CNM students are single
parents. How would you develop strategies around this group to address barriers
to college completion?
A: I think the biggest one is childcare,
and I think I would probably not be an advocate of CNM providing childcare on
its own because I know colleges that have done that. Colleges that have done
that on their own, through their own childcare programs, had to back out of it.
Once you back out of it, it becomes very contentious. But, I’ve seen our own
college at Lone Star and I’ve seen other colleges effectively partner with local
childcare in order to provide childcare in some way. I’ve desperately wanted to
do this where I am right now but I haven’t been able to make it happen. The
ability to either provide vouchers for local childcare or on-site childcare
would be the biggest step you could take toward helping single parents achieve
their education. I would really try and find a partnership that could provide
some kind of childcare while a student is in class.
Q: What role do you believe CNM plays when
it comes to economic development?
A: A huge role. You have a higher
unemployment rate here than in some parts of the country, so who else is going
to step up and help unemployed and underemployed adults achieve a better life
for themselves if you weren’t going to do it? The community college is the
entity that always provides hope and new opportunity. Sometimes there’s a
post-baccalaureate credential that individuals need that isn’t a masters
credential per-se, it’s a higher level of skill. I think the community college
can really step in and offer credentialing to professionals who need a new
skillset.
Q: We have a collective-bargaining
agreement here amongst faculty, do you have any experience with that aspect of
supporting faculty?
A: I do not have direct experience with
collective bargaining. At Lone Star, the AFT was there. Texas is a
right-to-work state so we had the AFT as a voluntary union. I did work with the
AFT, our faculty who were members of the AFT, if there were any situations they
were involved in in terms of disciplinary action when I was Vice President of
Instruction, then I would work with the union representative together and we
would partner. So, it would be new to me.
Q: What’s your experience with pathways?
A: In terms of various kinds of pathways,
I am a pathway provost as well as campus provost. We have sort of a matrix
structure now. In addition to being kind of a campus president, I am the
provost for the lab sciences at NOVA, which means I am responsible for the
pathway councils. We look at curriculum revisions. We’re also looking at
enhancing equipment for all labs across all of the different campuses. The
pathway deans and I have been doing tours of the different campuses to see
where we have disparities. We put five million dollars last year into enhancing
lab equipment for lab sciences across the college. We have negotiated with our
closest partner, George Mason University, called NOVA-Mason advanced, so we
have a seamless transfer into Mason in a number of pathways. We’re up to almost
85 pathways now, so students at NOVA can opt in to Mason, and once they hit 60
credit hours they roll seamlessly into Mason, become a Mason student, so it’s
almost like a co-enrollment plan. We’ve been working on those for the past 3
years. Before I was with the sciences, I worked on the initial IT and Computer
Science pathways also. Before we had those pathways, we also worked with four
other of our transfer partners in Virginia on what we call Guaranteed Transfer
Partnerships. We have guaranteed admissions agreements. Students who finish an
associate’s degree at our college with a certain GPA, and meet certain
requirements, they have guaranteed admission to any university. Guaranteed
transfer partnerships are better because they take the courses, and every
single course transfers and applies to their degree. So we now have those
agreements with four other universities along with George Mason. Another type
of pathway partnership that we’ve had for a long time that we’re now revising
is called Pathway to the Baccalaureate. This is with George Mason specifically,
but this goes into the high schools. It starts in the last year of high school,
and in our county, we’ve had this, until recently we had it with every single
high school because that’s how our country wanted to do it. You have a
counselor who is embedded in the high school, and this is focused on
first-generation, low income, minority, or otherwise at-risk students who are
recruited into the program in their senior year of high school. They receive
extra counseling and extra supports, and testing assessment while they’re in
their senior year at high school. Then they get a lot of extra supports and
mandatory advising during the years they’re at NOVA, and then they
automatically would roll into George Mason if they wanted to.
