Grand Rapids Community College hosted the last of three presidential candidate question sessions on Wednesday, Dec. 10. Jason Rivera, currently serving as the Vice Provost for Student Success and Dean of University College at Ball State University, placed emphasis on collaboration, conversation, and community.
The Collegiate attended the faculty session, followed by the student session. Below are the highlights of both sessions.
Student Government President Eldin Causevic led the student session.
What does student success mean to you in the context of a community college that serves students from a wide range of goals, from certificates, to workforce, to transfer?
I really believe student success means that we meet students where they are, and we understand what their aspirations are, why they’re coming to GRCC. And then we work with them to actually create a pathway to meeting those goals and those aspirations. That is not necessarily how the institution might measure success, or the federal government might measure success. But I believe that in order to really help students achieve their full potential, we have to be in conversation with them about their “Why?”– what it is they’re hoping to do. And sometimes that’s informed by family, and sometimes it’s informed by career and career aspirations, but really engaging with students around that conversation becomes incredibly important. At a community college, there’s– I think– a different nuance associated with it, right? But in all aspects, we should be thinking about how we help students take their experiences and use those to translate them into living wage-earning jobs and opportunities for them as they think about the next step, whether that be transferring to a four-year institution or going right into the workforce for others. Some may not be coming to us with any expectation that they’ll actually finish with a degree, and that’s absolutely fine, too. We should be able to be in conversation and develop success markers for everyone who’s here as they navigate their experiences. I would want to make sure that as we’re thinking about students and their success, if transfer is their goal, what types of institutions do they want to transfer to? Do we have articulation agreements with them? Do we have partnerships with them? How do we make that pathway seamless? If work is their goal, how might we be able to provide them with opportunities for internships, experiential learning, or apprenticeships to make sure that they have on-ramps to those opportunities or build relationships with employers where that becomes seamless. So, whatever their goals are, figuring out how we leverage institutional relationships and resources to support them as they navigate those.
I’ve heard from students with concerns for the future and fear for their safety to their race, national heritage, political beliefs, given the current political climate in the U.S. How would you reassure them that they belong in our safety at GRCC?
Well, my first step would be to be in conversation with students, to invite them to discussions about why they feel unsafe and what is creating the feelings of not feeling safe. There’s a difference between physical safety and psychological safety. And, you know, as I engage in my work, I oftentimes am asked to create group norms and one of the things I always shy away from is that we’re cultivating a safe space because as an Afro Latino male who’s also openly gay, higher education has never been able to be a safe space for me, just being transparent about that. And so I would never want to create an expectation that we are able to create a space where people are fully safe. What I do want to do is figure out how we actually create a space where everybody feels like they can fully show up, bring their full selves, and that we will do everything we can to support them and ensure that they have the full breadth and depth of resources from the institution to make sure that they can be safe on our campus, right? That is challenging in a climate like this. And so what I would really be looking to do is, again, understand the student experience, what their challenges are, why… they feel unsafe, and then figure out how we actually cultivate resources and communications and things to help students understand that we are walking alongside them. That we are navigating this experience with them, and that we will do what we can to create safe spaces on our campus, for them, clearly defining what that means, so that we’re not navigating any false expectations or creating any false expectations about what we can actually do in this environment.
Presidents have different styles in their engagement with the campus community. How do you or how will you engage with students, given all the other demands on your time?
So I’m going to be really transparent about this, and I’ll share this with you. I think I mentioned that I have an 8-year-old, right? So I would imagine that my 8-year-old would be at student events with me running around and creating all kinds of chaos for people. But that would be a priority for me, right? And trying to figure out how I balance my role as a dad, and being in community with students. So I think that would be really, really important to me, to just make sure that I am president, that I am accessible, that I am visible, and that is a priority. And I shared with the leadership team today when we were in conversation that for me, really prioritizing being visible to students and being available to students is important, because I think that was one of the most transformative experiences that I had seeing my president and understanding that he was invested in the success, not only of my work, but of the students– you know– that I was working with as we navigated some of those experiences.
As someone who is committed to student success, how do you feel about the recent closure of our Student Success Center? And what are things you think could be a replacement for that to help insure students’ success?
I didn’t know there was a recent closure, so that’s news to me. And I would love to understand why that was the case. Space continues to be a significant challenge on every college campus, especially as we continue to compete for funds and resources and such. I think there are ways for us to cultivate support in different pockets on campus that still do things that a student success center would do. I’d want to be very intentional about making sure that that’s happening in various spaces already that students congregate in. I’d want to capitalize on the spaces that students are actually using, and figure out how we actually use that environment to cultivate the types of support that we would want to see in a student success center so that we’re meeting students where they are.
What is one way you would prioritize student education in your role?
It would be every way. I mean, that is my job. That would be my primary focus, right, is to elevate and to prioritize student needs, right? And everything as a president that I would be doing would be in service of that. That would be critically important. That doesn’t negate the responsibility that I would have to faculty and staff, to our community partners, to our workforce partners, but we are here in service of students, and that would be a primary driver. When I talk about creating a student-ready and a care-ready institution, that is real, right? In order to do that, we have to make sure that we are centering students as the conversation, not part of the conversation.
Do you think AI is more helpful or hurtful?
I think AI has a very significant role to play. And I think it is very helpful in some regards, but I think we have to do some work in helping students understand how to use it ethically and how to use it responsibly. You know, I teach a class right now on student success and higher education, and at the very start of the class, I tell my students that I fully expect that they’re going to use AI, right? And I want them to actually use AI. But I want them to use it as a tool, not as the thing that drives how they engage in the work. My job, and I think faculty’s job, is really to help you figure out how to actually do the deeply human work associated with learning, right? How to discern, how to critically think, how to problem solve, AI can’t do those things. They can help you write a paper, but you have to determine whether or not that paper is actually articulating your perspective and your thoughts and your voice, the way that it should, right? And I’ve had students who submitted a paper that AI wrote, and they didn’t read (it), and it was very clear to me, right? It made a reference, for example, to a chapter in a book that we didn’t read. We should have conversations about how you do that more responsibly. We should be creating parameters and guidelines for students, and quite frankly, with the onset of AI, there’s been a lot of resistance from faculty and others to actually incorporate AI into instruction. But our job is really to prepare you for what’s coming, right? It’s to prepare you for the next step. AI is not going away, right? It’s already here. So we have to figure out how we incorporate it and again, how we train you on how to use it ethically and responsibly.
What is one way you think GRCC should support students outside of a traditional educational role?
Just one? I think the most profound thing we can do for students is to help them understand that we care about them. And that, to me, means so many things. It is not just that we want you to learn about the curriculum. It is not just that we want you to be on our campus and to be a part of our community. But we care about your holistic wellbeing and your holistic success. We care about your experience, right? We want you to be a part of our community, not just for today, but for the lifetime of your experience. And we want to cultivate that relationship with you, because we deeply care about you, and your success as a reflection of our success. For me, it’s really about us engaging and learning from one another, about how we support one another. And that’s when I talk about care, that is exactly what I am talking about, right? I am deeply invested in your well-being, and I am going to stop what I am doing to make sure that you feel valued. You feel seen, you feel heard, you feel like this is a place where we want you to be here, and we do want you to be here for however long that it takes for you to do what it is you’ve come here to do, and we want to continue to stay connected to you beyond this institution, because again, your success is our success. They’re inextricably tied once you start to come here.
Students want to know, will the next President have transparency and consistency, and are they willing to stay here at GRCC and Grand Rapids, or is this just another plot to get more experience and resume building?
I can answer that question, and I’ve given that a lot of consideration. I’m at a stage in my life and in my career where I don’t have many moves left in me. And so I’ve been very discerning about where it is that I’m pursuing a presidency. But there’s a more important driver about the “Why?” associated with that, right? For me, the real driver is that I have an 8-year-old who needs stability. When I was young, I didn’t have stability, and I do not want to put my child through the experience that I had when I was young. Wherever the next place is, it needs to be somewhere I’m willing to stay for the long haul, so they can go through their middle school and high school experiences and feel like they’ve had an ability to set roots and call a place home. I’ve done a lot of research and work to figure out if this is a place where that could be, and I believe it is. And that’s why I’m so committed to being a part of the process. I will share with you, and I don’t know that you all know this, at this stage in the process, it’s very public. And so that means folks where I work now know that I’m in this search process. And that’s an investment. And that should demonstrate, for all of the candidates, that we are committed– you know– to being here through the process. But for me, the stakes are higher. I really believe that, because of my son, and wanting to make sure that he has that stability, and my commitment to that.
After the student session, the Student Government President reflected on how it went.
“It was an incredible opportunity for students to come out and represent themselves, being part of the process that would determine not just the president, but the future of our institution,” Causevic said. “I thought this whole process went very well. We had a good number of students at all the forums, and I also like to say that I think we had a good representation from a lot of different parts of the college. We had some people from athletics, from different departments, from the student leaders. And our questions and our discussions, they’ve all been very good. I think each and every single forum gave great insight into who the candidates are and what their view is on the student body and the future for students here at this institution.”
Causevic wants to remind readers that, “Feedback is due December 12th. I definitely recommend researching the candidates, and watching the live streams that are sent out to the students’ emails.”
Before the student session, the candidate answered questions from GRCC faculty members.
Could you elaborate on the AI short credential initiative you described earlier, and how will you ensure faculty have a contributing role in shaping the college’s AI policy, pedagogy, and professional development at GRCC?
That’s a very important question. And I think I’m going to take the second part of the question first… Faculty should be at the table as we’re having all of these conversations, and they should be included in conversations about any programs that we’re going to be developing. But as we think about the creation of these stackable short-term credentials, really, it’s about understanding the role that AI is playing in different industries and figuring out how we create these smaller, stackable credentials within the most particular industry. So, ethical use of AI is one example. AI for data analytics is another example, right? So thinking very intentionally about the fields that we’re working to support, what the needs are within those respective fields, and then building out programs for them. I’ve had experience doing this when we were building out a cybersecurity program at Montgomery College. Sometimes it’s about developing the whole program and then working backwards, thinking about what we can offer in packages and segments once we have the full package of the program that can actually lead to the end result. So, you know, that might be part of the discussion, but the full answer to the question is that faculty will be involved, intricately involved, in a lot of those conversations, because that’s how we actually develop the curriculum that we need.
When faculty feedback challenges an administrative plan, how do you believe that process should play out? How will you ensure faculty voices have a real influence and not just an opportunity to be heard?
I was the chair of our governance system, and there were things that came from our administration that we didn’t always agree on. I mean, quite honestly, that our faculty council may have actually championed that no other governance group was actually in support of. It’s really about figuring out how to stay in conversation, how to figure out where there’s alignment, and where we can actually continue to move the conversation. But ultimately, I don’t think an administration’s decisions should be the final thing if faculty haven’t been included in the conversation to begin with. I think faculty need to be at the table and that’s what shared governance is all about. It’s not about faculty making decisions, but being able to weigh in before decisions are made. So I would make sure that we have opportunities for faculty to be involved in those conversations before a decision is made. And if a decision has been made, because of time or expedience or some other external pressures, transparently articulating that, so that faculty understand why we forwent that process.
How do you see the provost’s role within your leadership team? And how might you handle disagreement at that level?
I believe that the provost is the actual face of the faculty. If you talk to anybody on my team right now, they will tell you that I invite opposing viewpoints. I think that is critically important. I don’t walk away, or think I know all the answers or have all the answers. In fact, oftentimes, I don’t have the best answers. But it’s through conversation and through those disagreements that we get to a better place. So I would welcome that as part of the relationship that we build, and I would welcome that actually from anyone on my leadership team, because I think it is really important. You know, one of the things that a president once said that was so meaningful to me, I still think about it to this day, is the idea that failure is an option. Now, that’s not something you typically hear from a president, but really what she was saying is that in order for us to do things differently, we have to be open to different feedback, we have to be open to opposing viewpoints, and we have to try. And if it doesn’t work, we have to know why it didn’t work and we have to talk about why it didn’t work. Making failure the option. But then we have to figure out how we pivot, right? Because ultimately, we have to honor our commitments to students. We have to make sure that students have the ability to use their experiences here to change their lives. And so I really do believe that opposing viewpoints are critically important, and I’m humble enough to know that I don’t have all of the answers, and those opposing viewpoints can help us get to a better place.
