Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The RIOS (for a Racially-just Inclusive Open STEM Education) Institute presents an interview podcast where Dr. Bryan Dewsbury of the Science Education And Society (SEAS) lab converses with individuals who do social justice work in science education and education in general. We hope people enjoy the conversation itself, and consider new ways in which education can be transformative whatever your situation may be.
Welcome to Knowledge Unbound. We're trucking along.
Segev Amasay:We're still trucking along as we always have.
Bryan Dewsbury:I I wish you would show a bit more enthusiasm. We are trucking along. But next time to
Segev Amasay:your listeners.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, if I was mean, I would make you do this take again. Right? But I want people to see that I had to instruct you to show enthusiasm, which is unacceptable as my podcast producer. Especially since especially since today, we I had a chance to talk to a college president president. Yeah.
Bryan Dewsbury:That's that's a big deal. Impressive. And I mean, it's you know, I don't wanna, you know, overblow it because doctor Joianne Smith is a very normal human being, and once you listen to this conversation, you will see at the end of the day, we are we are all academics. We all, you know, take this job on because we believe in the better angels of students, and so we do what we can to bring those better angels out. But but, yeah, it was really, really nice to to have her articulate the mission and values and practices of Wilkton College.
Bryan Dewsbury:You're giving me a look. Alright. There's a that's your way of getting on to it. Anyway, I'm I'm not gonna delay anymore. Welcome to Knowledge Unbound.
Bryan Dewsbury:I hope you enjoyed the conversation, and, you know, we talked to so many people in different spaces in academia. It is really, really impactful and powerful to talk to someone who oversees it all. So enjoy the conversation. I'll see you at
Segev Amasay:the end of the show.
Bryan Dewsbury:I've lost track of what episode we're on, but it doesn't matter. What matters are the guests, and I'm very, very excited today. We are going to have a conversation with Doctor. Joianne Smith, President of Oakton College. I'm gonna say it again.
Bryan Dewsbury:I don't introduce my guests, I let my guests introduce themselves because they tell their stories way better than I ever could. So Doctor. Smith, thanks for joining us. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Joianne Smith:Sure. First, I wanna just thank you for inviting me to be a part of your podcast. So I am privileged to serve as the president here at Oakton College, a position I've now held for over ten years, which is hard to believe. I've been
Bryan Dewsbury:Is that a good thing? Or
Joianne Smith:It's a it's a wonderful thing, but it's you know, time goes so quickly. I've actually been at Oakton now for twenty three and a half years, which is extremely hard for me to believe. Wow. Because prior to coming to Oakton, had not worked anywhere for longer than two years, and I've now been here for twenty three and a half years. Started as the dean of students and then became the vice president for student affairs, a position I held for ten years, and now serve as the president here at the college.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. I wanna give people a little bit of context here about how I got introduced to Oakton. And with all due respect to you, it wasn't because of you. It was because of one of your wonderful faculty members, Doctor. Stephanie Blumer, who I do a bunch of projects with.
Bryan Dewsbury:And then I had the pleasure of giving a keynote here, but also more recently doing some some writing around relationship richness with my my buddy Peter Felton and a bunch of other people. And one of the things that drew us to one of the many things that drew us to Oakton was the persistence project.
Segev Amasay:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I'll let you detail what it is, but I wanna tell people why that project means so much to me. Write and do a lot of research around student success, And I use that too very broadly, right? When you walk into the classroom, the campus, my goal is for you to walk out there thriving human being, right? Traditionally in academia, we think of that as high grades, high GPA. And I don't wanna be dismissive of that, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:But intuitively, we all know it's so much more than just that. And as I've read through the details of the persistence project, and I don't know who wrote it or who came up with it to be honest, right? But it seems like they got it. Right? Like, you got it.
Bryan Dewsbury:You show up in class and be a good human being. It's not that hard. We don't need to make this rocket science. So so tell us a bit about some of the details of what the project is, what it has accomplished, what you've seen in the years since.
Joianne Smith:Yeah. It's been magical, but I think really what it's done is capture what we've always believed in at Oakton, which is creating connections that matter. I'm a psychologist by training, so I didn't say that as part of my early introduction, but that is my background, and so I know how important relationships are to allow all of us to thrive. We all want to feel like we are known, that somebody sees us, believes in us, that we feel like we belong, and we can thrive. And I really think what the Persistence Project has done at Oakton is operationalized how to develop those kinds of relationships in the classroom.
Joianne Smith:And so, we've been engaged in the project for ten years now. It started with a challenge from our Achieving the Dream coach, so Oakton is a part of Achieving the Dream, which is a national reform network for community colleges, and our Achieving the Dream coach challenged us, challenged one of our department chairs, to engage in this project, and it required three things from faculty.
Bryan Dewsbury:So just to interrupt, it started with one department?
Joianne Smith:It started with the philosophies and humanities department as a pilot. Okay. What faculty agreed to do was learn the names of students in the first week or two of class. Names are so important. People underestimate the significance of somebody knowing your name.
Joianne Smith:So learning the names of students seems so small, yet so significant. Then within the first three weeks of class, and I think this was the other really critical piece, the faculty member would meet with each student individually for fifteen minutes outside of class, not to talk about the syllabus or the course requirements, but to learn a little bit about the student. What are your hopes and dreams and goals? What will what are you worried about in this class? Tell me a little bit about your life circumstance.
Joianne Smith:And and through those conversations, faculty members really got to know their students. Mhmm. That they were working multiple jobs before coming to class, that they took public transportation, that they were caretakers, and so really understanding who students were as people. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Joianne Smith:And then the third piece was to provide a feedback early so that students knew how they were performing in the class. And what we found after that first pilot was the level of engagement of students in the class was significant. Students persisted to the next semester at much higher rates
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Joianne Smith:Than students who had not been in these sections, and we expanded it to all of our faculty the following semester.
Bryan Dewsbury:As in as in throughout the entire college?
Joianne Smith:Yes, voluntarily. So it was open to all faculty to participate. And consistently, every semester, we've seen that students in those courses persist at higher rates, complete at higher rates, and it's an even higher percentage for students from minoritized communities. So it's a powerful, powerful process.
Bryan Dewsbury:So I I know you found out some things from those conversations, The faculty student conversations. What can you tell us a little bit about the general Oakton student profile? That just at a high level.
Joianne Smith:Sure. Know, obviously Like who comes here? Yeah. We are a comprehensive community college, which means we see students who are coming to us either direct out of high school, or actually early college students, all the way up through students in their 60s and 70s, Wow. To be Right?
Joianne Smith:Our average age is about 26.
Bryan Dewsbury:What's the deviation?
Joianne Smith:Yeah, you're right. The majority of our students are in that 22 to 35, probably range, and But then there's we see students, some who are coming to get that first two years, and then transfer to a baccalaureate institution. We have students who come for short term workforce development training and a certificate to go directly to the workforce. We have returning adults who've either had some college, no degree, or they have a degree and they want to change careers. So we have students at all ages and stages.
Joianne Smith:We're also very diverse racially. We're a majority minority institution. About 22% of our students identify as Asian American and Pacific Islander. A growing Latinx population, about 17% of our students identify as Latine, Latinx, and about 9% black or African American.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay, very nice. So let's go back to the faculty conversations, right? Because it's one thing to just, know, it's a great thing to get to know your students, to meet them, there's value just in having that interaction. But when you open that door to have that conversation and you learn that information, I'm curious as to what the faculty's reaction to that information was, right? So now that they knew these details, how did their teaching change?
Bryan Dewsbury:How did their approach to students change? What different things did they do with their approach to the classroom that you know of because of those conversations?
Joianne Smith:That's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there.
Bryan Dewsbury:We have time.
Joianne Smith:Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. So, you know, one of the things that we heard repeatedly, faculty were overwhelmed in some ways by hearing some of the very challenges and barriers that our students faced.
Bryan Dewsbury:In that they didn't know before, or it's just like, you kinda knew, now that And you're hearing it out loud,
Joianne Smith:they were compassionate and caring, and at times felt like, I don't know how to help this student, right? Like, I know how to, I know my discipline, but
Bryan Dewsbury:I don't
Joianne Smith:know what to do when a student tells me that they're, you know, couch surfing, that they're essentially homeless, or they're hungry. And so part of what we learned institutionally from some of those conversations was that we really needed to think more about how we supported students holistically. I mean, we'd always cared about students and student success, but we began to learn more deeply some of the barriers, and so we added a caring closet, which is essentially a food pantry with
Bryan Dewsbury:I think I passed it on the way.
Joianne Smith:Yeah, think you did, non perishable food We added a care coordinator. We've always had counseling services, but in addition to counseling services, we added a care team. So we have a social worker who is able to help students access resources both on campus, as well as off campus, now added a second care coordinator expanding that team.
Bryan Dewsbury:In
Joianne Smith:to In response knowing that it's hearing, this is a need, and it came, some of those identified needs really came from faculty who were having these conversations with students. So those are some of the institutional changes. I think we also, I credit the persistence project of helping our faculty really understand equity. Yeah. Yeah.
Joianne Smith:That realizing that not all students are starting at the same place, or have different needs. And so, you know, when you have policies in a classroom that everybody's treated the same, but then you recognize, like, okay, this student doesn't have WiFi or a computer or is working three jobs. So developing more flexible policies at times for handing in assignments, coming late to class. You know, I can think of a faculty member early on in the persistence project who used to have a penalty for students who came late to class. And then through conversations with students realizing students who took public transportation to get Right,
Bryan Dewsbury:that CTE is unforgiving.
Joianne Smith:Especially on a day like today where Right, there's snow, right, And so when you know that, you interpret student behavior differently. So if a student comes late to class and you don't know why, you think, oh, this student doesn't really care, it's not a priority, I'm gonna penalize them. But when you realize, wow, this student showed up today on a cold day taking public transportation, the fact that they're here is something to celebrate, not penalize. And so I think it shifted some of that mindset in terms of really understanding who students are, and really helped us deepen, I think, our equity commitment broadly, thinking about situational equity in classes. How can we create course requirements that allow students to meet the course learning outcomes, are successful in mastering the material, but recognizing that some students need different things, need some flexibility in order to be able to demonstrate their learning.
Bryan Dewsbury:I want people to understand that when President Smith talks about it's cold outside, it's currently eight degrees Fahrenheit. We're recording on Wilton College's campus right now. Big shout out to Eric for letting us use his studio. So cold is different. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:I live in Miami. But I wanna zero in on that a little bit because not to put too much of a timestamp on the time in which we're recording this conversation, but we're having an unfortunate national conversation right now around the E word, equity, right? And one of the things as you know, the big pushback is special favors like, you know, anti white, you against this other group, you you know. And I'm wondering in the context of the ten years or so that the persistence project has been in existence. Sir, I'm very happy that you had a department willing to pilot this.
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm very happy that you were able to scale it to other people. I imagine without deficitizing your faculty, but I imagine there will perhaps some people who are on defense, little bit resistant, right? And you know, I'm curious as to what those conversations sounded like to say, look, you're not giving people an extra advantage they don't deserve, right? You're just responding to the statistical reality that when 20 kids walk into your room, they're not walking in at the same starting point. And how have you been able to convince people to sort of sign on to that mentality without them feeling like I'm watering down the discipline?
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm sure you've heard that too.
Joianne Smith:You know, I think it's person by person having conversations and having faculty speak with other faculty. I mean, I think this has really been a faculty led project, rather than a top down administrative I mean, it really came from faculty speaking to one another, compelling their peers, sharing the power, and what they've learned, and how they've made changes. I think that's really the most influential. More of the, not pushback or resistance, it requires more time and energy from faculty to engage in this project. Both time, in terms of those fifteen minute conversations with a student.
Joianne Smith:I mean, think about it, you got 35 students in a Yeah. Class, let's say, And if you're gonna add another fifteen minutes, that's time. So recognizing there was additional time required for faculty, as well as emotional energy. I mean, I heard that loud and clear from faculty that our faculty care about our students. I have no question about that, But they always when you know more about the students in your class, and you care more deeply, that's a lot to carry.
Joianne Smith:And, you know, I think I said, I'm a psychologist,
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, so you I was about to
Joianne Smith:ask, right, I As a psychologist, was you learn how to create boundaries so that you don't become overwhelmed in sitting with other folks' pain. If you're a faculty member teaching biology or mathematics, you might not have those skills to learn how to put in some of those boundaries. So part of what we've even helped faculty understand is like, we don't expect you to be a therapist for your student. Here are the places to refer. But it's heavy emotional work.
Joianne Smith:And so we also, over time, have realized we need to compensate faculty for doing some of that additional work. And so now in both our part time and full time faculty contracts, there's additional compensation for faculty who agree to participate in these projects, recognizing there is more work involved, both in terms of actual time, but also the emotional investment and time as well.
Bryan Dewsbury:Who's the we who's teaching the faculty to do that emotional management? And I'm asking these specific questions because one of the things I worry about with projects like this, and as much as it's been a success story for your institution, is that not enough people know about it. Right? And I hear a lot of, you know, I have the privilege of traveling lot and I go to different campuses, you know, faculty development and things around student success. And the amount of times people ask me things like, well, who's doing this well?
Bryan Dewsbury:Like who I'm like, well, there's so many examples. But for whatever reason, people don't know of these examples. Even when they do know it, they knew it at a 30,000 foot level, right? They knew it. Oakton College in Chicago does this great stuff, but yeah, you know, it's different out here in Vermont or whatever it is, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And I think what could help them is some of the details, right? So when, if I go to somebody and say the president and her team provide support for faculty to do better emotional management, what does that look like specifically? Who does it, you know, do this in workshops? Do they, okay. You're nodding this.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay.
Joianne Smith:So there is a a co led team of faculty, a part time faculty member and a full time faculty member who lead this initiative. Okay. They also have a team of faculty from across the college who work with them. They regularly engage with faculty about best practices, how to provide support, give them resources, so there's a regular outreach from the faculty leaders to those engaging in the work about how to support them. We also have a Center for Teaching Innovation, Mary Joianne Smith is the faculty member who leads that work.
Joianne Smith:I remember you met her.
Bryan Dewsbury:I just saw in San Diego last week, Wonderful, two weeks
Joianne Smith:wonderful. So through our Center for Teaching Innovation, we also provide support for faculty who are engaged in this project and some of our other relationship rich work. So I think there are lots of opportunities for faculty to come together and learn from one another, as well as learn from others about how we can help support them in engaging in this level of work.
Bryan Dewsbury:So let me use, you brought up Mary Anne, so I'm gonna use to pivot a little bit to data. Right. And I know, believe you have a position where somebody oversees institutional effectiveness, right? So they use data to kind of answer these questions. And I have a few wonderful colleagues across the country who have similar type of types of positions.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I know one thing that comes with that, that really have to, you have to kind of think through, is when you're looking at institutional data, broadly speaking, right, qualitative and quantitative, and you're going to use that data to have conversations with, I'm just going to use faculty as an example, right, you know, that's a thing, right, because not everybody's ready to sit and look at here is the output of what I've been doing, right? And so those conversations need to be carefully managed. You know, it's almost a sense in which I love the asset based framing of persistence, right? And it's a very nice way to get people on board. But then at some point, if you have to have the hard conversation, like I'm glad you agree with us, but here's what's happening in your room right now, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And sure that those conversations, the hard ones that is, was integral, right, to kind of getting over some of the humps you've had to get through.
Joianne Smith:For sure.
Bryan Dewsbury:Talk us a little bit about those.
Joianne Smith:So the data is critical, and I like to say that Oakton is a values driven, data informed institution. And so our data helps tell us whether or not we are living out our values. So we have a data warehouse, and we have shared a lot of data with campus partners and leaders. We had equity summits where we have an equity plan, and we would look at data, including the Persistence Project and others, and share, like, this is what the data's telling us. What do you see?
Joianne Smith:And it's like, what, so what, now what, for the three questions. Like, what do you see in the data? What does the data mean? What are we gonna do about it? Where are there gaps?
Joianne Smith:Are we really fulfilling what we say that we want to do? The Persistence Project started because I was deeply concerned by our persistence data. When I became president, I did a call to action, my first all college meeting, and said, We are not living our mission. Our fall to fall persistence was 45% at that time. That meant we were losing, on average, five students a day.
Joianne Smith:When we broke it down and disaggregated by race and ethnicity for black students, it was like double that. And that really is what was the call to action to even engage in the And Persistence we have slowly made progress, and so the call at that time was we were gonna move from 45% to 54%, which was for community colleges at the time, our higher performing peers, and we accomplished that last year, in part, I think, because of work like the Persistence Project and other initiatives.
Bryan Dewsbury:When you broke that data down, right? So there's a quant stuff, right? You looked at the different groups, etcetera. Did you have a chance to talk to the students, especially the ones, the five a day who you're losing as to why. They're like, yeah, this is not my scene.
Joianne Smith:It is hard to gather data from students who've Right. I read it, right? Reasons. We've certainly done focus groups with students, and we would often hear it was not academic things that we were losing students, it was life got in the way, often. It was financial, you know, financial situations, works changed, they weren't sure this was the place for them, they weren't sure they were cut out for school.
Joianne Smith:So some of that sense of, I can do this, there are people here along the way to support me in that process. So that's really part of why the persistence project, again, I'm gonna go back to that, when students were engaged in that, especially those who were engaged in their first semester at Oakton, they knew that there was somebody at Oakton who knew them and cared about them. So if they were experiencing one of those challenges, and they were contemplating whether or not they were gonna return, they had somebody who knew them, who they would reach out to as a resource that would help connect them. Because this was my frustration. We have so many resources at Oakton for students.
Joianne Smith:So many people want to help support them, and yet students don't always take advantage of those resources. Sometimes they don't know. Sometimes they're like, oh, is it really for me? Right, right, right, right.
Bryan Dewsbury:If we build it, will they come
Joianne Smith:It's to like these passive invitations. Mhmm. And I think when a student has somebody who knows them
Bryan Dewsbury:Mhmm.
Joianne Smith:And they're having a challenge, if they can go to that person and that person can connect them to the right resource
Bryan Dewsbury:Right.
Joianne Smith:It makes all the difference.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. I'll and I know we're talking about persistence project a lot, but I think that I think it matters.
Joianne Smith:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:And I'll and I'll tell you why in my view. I've always been moved by the great jobs, great life study, Purdue Gallup, I think 2014 it came out. And frankly, to the point where I'm actually surprised that it doesn't, to me didn't have as much traction as I thought it would have, right? For a couple of reasons. One, we don't have a great history in higher education in this country of data collection that's long term.
Bryan Dewsbury:Like we tend to care about like year to year, four year graduation rates. And to an extent that's appropriate because that's when we see them. In many of our missions and strategic plans, we talk, we wax poetic about preparing students for life. Right. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:How do you know you're doing that? Right? And so when I, when I, you know, when I look at studies like that, when I look at people like Rash Chetty and their work, this sort of what happens, you know, what do you carry into your adulthood? And you might remember from that study that it was being able to identify a mentor or doing a major project was the biggest predictor of your happiness and success at
Joianne Smith:work. Exactly.
Bryan Dewsbury:So in my mind, things like persistent project are ways to bring that thirty year outcome into like, no, it actually matters now too. Right. And we can do those kinds of things now, can show the effects of that, you know, in a fall to fall time span, but also they will take that into their adult lives.
Joianne Smith:I
Bryan Dewsbury:totally Was that the thinking? Was that Absolutely. Did that factor into it?
Joianne Smith:It's about that connection, right? I mean, is about having a connection, somebody who knows you. We all wanna matter. We all wanna be seen and known. And so I think the Persistence Project operationalizes that in a way that we can scale it.
Joianne Smith:We also have lots of other ways at Oakton that we build connections through high impact practices, and I can think of a number, but the Persistence Project is probably the one that is most scalable. Some of the others are on a smaller scale.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna out you a little bit here because I know, albeit this information is recent, that at a graduate level you studied intercultural or interreligious couples, right? And one of the things that you shared with me that you found was what made it successful, which perhaps also make polyamorous groups successful, right? Well, any relationship really is good communication. But I want to extend that to even your professional relationships, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, there was a provost once told me that she learned pretty quickly she has to stop bringing facts to a feelings fight, right? Like you can't just come with a spreadsheets and the charts and stuff like what people want to is they wanna be heard, they want their feelings acknowledged. So tell us a little bit about the kind of communication culture that you had to build in selling the values of the persistence project and the values of, well, even the new strategic plan that I think launched this year, 2025. Yeah. Correct.
Bryan Dewsbury:Tell us a little bit about building that culture.
Joianne Smith:I think how do I define that? It's helping people hear the impact of the project and the work on themselves and on their students. So it's telling stories, like real authentic stories. That first year when we engaged in the Persistence Project, we had an end of the semester celebration, and we asked every faculty member to come up and talk about the impact in the class. We had faculty members who were in tears talking about how it changed them and their teaching, and that they felt more engaged and connected, and the class was more engaging.
Joianne Smith:So when they're able to tell their peers, that's powerful. Right. Right. And so I tell student stories. Mhmm.
Joianne Smith:I'll meet I I meet with students. I love students. Mhmm. And as being a president, sometimes I could spend all day in meetings
Bryan Dewsbury:Yep.
Joianne Smith:And not spend much time with students. So I try really hard to be intentional about spending time with students, to really hear directly from students. And I would hear from students who were in persistence, they didn't always know it was a persistence project class.
Bryan Dewsbury:Which is important. Yes. Which is important.
Joianne Smith:They didn't always know, but they would talk
Bryan Dewsbury:about It's spotlighting effect.
Joianne Smith:Wow, you know, I know this faculty member, I wish this other faculty member, this other class, like all my classes did this. So when I would tell other faculty, like, we're hearing from students the value of these experiences. So it's really the power of telling stories that changes hearts and minds, changes hearts and minds. And also listening to the concerns. I mean, think that's the other piece.
Joianne Smith:You know, I did listen to concerns from faculty about, we don't have time to do this, I'm not prepared to respond to students who are in this level of need. That's not my training. And so listening to that and trying to be responsive by providing resources, by adding positions at the college that faculty could seamlessly refer. So listening as well, like being responsive to concerns, not just saying, oh, you know, it's not that big of a deal, come on. Right?
Joianne Smith:Like, but really listening. Buck a
Bryan Dewsbury:lump sum.
Joianne Smith:Right, right, really listening.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know it you know what this sounds like? This sounds like you're still very much a psychologist. Right?
Joianne Smith:It's it is a part of it is a part of I tell people that sometimes they say, You're not getting president joy. You're
Bryan Dewsbury:getting Right.
Joianne Smith:Right. Right. And although I have not formally practiced in in years, I still maintain my license. And it's a part of who I am and how I show up. I just you can't take that part away.
Joianne Smith:Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. I mean, selfishly, I have a lot of criticisms of academia, but it's one of the things I actually love about the job is it's it's so fluid. Right? Your your your disciplinary identities. You know, I tell students, you know, when you're going for a PhD, like my grad students, it's a doctorate in philosophy, not a doctorate in biology, not a doctorate like, you know, you you're learning how to think and pursue knowledge and be open to different methods and and approaches.
Bryan Dewsbury:And so whenever whatever your next position is, that's gonna be the expectation. Not just that you know a bunch of, you know, plant species or whatever. Right. None of that's not important. So I know it's currently on pause, but I know when I came here last year, I was really moved by seeing a couple of graduates of the prison education project that you had and selfishly, back at FIU, I am a contributor to and a supporter of our own prison education project called Exchange for Change, a nonprofit that does that work that sends faculty members into the prisons.
Bryan Dewsbury:They're just such beautiful stories that come out of that. So it was exciting to see that happening here. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of that and some of the things that you've seen
Joianne Smith:It's over that a powerful program. So Northwestern has a prison education program, and now I'm trying to remember what year it was, but several years ago, they approached us and said that they really wanted to allow students in their pathway to achieve an associate's degree on their pathway to a bachelor's from Northwestern, and we were very excited to partner with them in that project. And so we have graduated two cohorts of students with their associate's degree, and actually the third cohort is completing their last course right now, and will graduate in the spring. It has been transformative, I think, for our faculty who have had the privilege of, and challenge, of teaching in these incarcerated individuals. The transformative power of education, I cannot even speak about how impactful it is.
Joianne Smith:Know, the first commencement, I think I might've shared this with you. I've been to lots of commencements, I love commencements. One of the special things we do at the Prison Education Commencement is each student graduate gets to say a few words about the impact of the program. And I have to tell you, I had a tissue in my hand, we were all crying on stage, listening to these men talk about being treated as humans for the first time in years. How learning and education had allowed them to feel free despite being incarcerated, and for some of them, without ever, you know, life without parole.
Joianne Smith:They will never leave, and yet feeling free because of what they have learned in the program. It's powerful. We have a distinguished alumni program, and this year, one of our distinguished alumni is one of the students who graduated from our program, and then went on to complete his bachelor's degree, and was the first formerly incarcerated individual to walk across the stage at Northwestern and achieve his bachelor's degree. So the first cohort of students have now completed their bachelor's from Northwestern. One of them is currently in law school.
Bryan Dewsbury:I think I know you.
Joianne Smith:Yes, so it's incredibly powerful. And it has also helped inform us, you know, this is unique. Oakton's a community college, right? So we have districts. There is no prison, jail, correctional facility in our district.
Joianne Smith:So in order to be a part of this program, our faculty travel almost an hour correctional facility to engage in this work. But what we have learned through this process is how many individuals who are justice impacted live in our community. And when you
Bryan Dewsbury:So hear they're there, but they came from this community?
Joianne Smith:No, they've been released and are living in
Bryan Dewsbury:our community, Oh, okay. Got it.
Joianne Smith:And how challenging it is for individuals who have been in the carceral system to return to with so few opportunities and so many barriers. And so we have included in our current strategic plan a priority to support justice impacted individuals who live within our community, who have been in the carceral system. How do we help them find pathways to success through our career and education programs? Because I do think education is transformative. And there are lots of barriers.
Bryan Dewsbury:Hard do you?
Joianne Smith:Well, one is figuring out where folks are. So working with not for profits who support individuals who are returning so that we can come to them and talk about some of our programs. Actually, one of the most successful programs right now is our CDL program. It is a short term program. It's four weeks commercial driver's license.
Joianne Smith:Oh,
Bryan Dewsbury:there you go.
Joianne Smith:And that for many employers, having a former record is not a barrier to employment, because if you come out of the system, you need a job, and getting a job that pays a living wage is very challenging. So in four weeks or less, you can get a CDL, begin to make a living wage while you figure out your future. And so that's probably been one of the most successful short term programs for serving that population.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right, and in developing that, like you would, you had to do your due diligence, right? To know that those justice impacted people and were what their needs are to then kind of have a response to that. Is that like a good exhibit, a good example of how you think Auckland has responded to the community in which you'll, in Des Plaines, am I saying that?
Joianne Smith:Des Plaines is where our primary campus Right, right. We serve 17 communities from Evanston to Des Plaines.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay, wow.
Joianne Smith:Yeah, so it is an example, I think, of knowing who is in our community, who's being served, who's not, where do we need to do more intentional outreach so that we are serving people who really need us the most. I mean, as the community's college, it is our commitment to provide opportunities for those who live in our community. It's often the people who don't come here who don't know about us that need us Right, the right. And so really being very intentional about how we do outreach to parts of our community that we really know we need to do a better job of serving.
Bryan Dewsbury:I had the director of Exchange for Change on a podcast, I think in the first season, Kathy Klaritch. And one of the things she was seeing is, is how much you have to kind of really work with what people's current paradigms about incarceration are. Right. And as you probably know, because you've, you've kind of overseen the program, the default thing is you did some bad, go away, goodbye. Right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Like and and you mentioned about that person whose life, you know, parole no no parole. Right? Life in jail. But talking about feeling free. Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:And what that brings up for me is this notion that when when when these things happen, and by these things I mean the evil, the incident, the whatever that led to the situation, there are a lot of people being imprisoned at that moment. Mhmm. Right? Right. And and it's it's hard to maybe think of the perpetrator as also a
Joianne Smith:victim. Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:But these programs work almost with I don't wanna say that assumption, but that understanding. Right? That there is still something in this person that is worth rescuing and given an opportunity to access that. Is that a dialogue that you've had to have with people who've chosen to be a part of I mean, if they're willing to drive an hour, obviously they've drunk the Kool Aid, but I know it's still a journey, right, to get people into that space of, now I'm going to give time and resources to incarcerated It justice impacted
Joianne Smith:is definitely a journey. To your point, this is a voluntary opportunity for faculty, and so most of the faculty who choose to participate already are in somewhat of that space, and yet it is still a journey, but I think it comes down to seeing people as humans. None of us, you know, none of us wanna be judged by the one thing that we did, our worst moment in life. And I think for many individuals who are incarcerated, yeah, they made a bad choice, and they're paying the price. Does that mean that they're not redeemable?
Bryan Dewsbury:I don't
Joianne Smith:know, right? We've all made, I know I've made bad I don't wanna be judged on the worst choice I've Right. You know, I don't think I've made any choices that would end me up in incarceration at this point. Maybe a few speeding tickets. But but I think it's really just seeing people as humans.
Joianne Smith:Mhmm.
Bryan Dewsbury:Why do you have speeding tickets?
Joianne Smith:You can ask me, I got a bit of a light shot.
Bryan Dewsbury:Chicago is I'm just saying, like, there's so many lights here. There's no reason to anyway.
Joianne Smith:I didn't get any in Chicago.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. But once I get, because I mean Right. Each town is, like, 20 Exactly. Miles
Joianne Smith:That's where I got up to.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. Right. I'm gonna ask you to be president of Spitz for a while. Right? And I'll tell you why.
Bryan Dewsbury:I actually have a lot of love and sympathy for administrators. I know that's not something you hear a lot. And I'm not saying that they aren't administrators who make bad choices, who are tough people to deal with, but I'm a faculty member, right? I have a research lab, I teach my students, I write grants, I do this stuff, right? And I go home to my kids.
Bryan Dewsbury:And it's somebody else who keeps the lights on on campus, somebody else hires and fires people, somebody else responds to board of governors and president and sorry, governors and think not board of trustees and So somebody has to be there to make those tough decisions. And I've found sometimes with all the love in the world that people I've known who've gone from faculty and as they move up the ranks into administration, sometimes there's a shift, right? Because you go from wearing a polo shirt and jeans to class to having to wear suits and a university pin every day and clicking on Zoom links, right? And you're kind of gone corporate and different people have reacted differently to that. But here it is, you've overseen, a couple of projects, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:That requires you to maintain. And you did mention earlier in the conversation that you make sure you still meet with students, It for requires you to maintain that kind of basic understanding of why we educate.
Joianne Smith:Right.
Bryan Dewsbury:And maybe I just would love for you to speak to those out there who are administrators or who are aspiring to be, you know, how you've been able to maintain that and why that's important to you and how you've been able to maintain that now and going forward.
Joianne Smith:I think it's really important as an administrator to always know what grounds you and and why the work we do is so important. And for me, it's always been centered on students. Mhmm. And so the very first day I was president, I made an intentional decision that I was having lunch with students the first day. One, it was a way to inform the college community that students are my priority.
Joianne Smith:Mhmm. I want to always know and hear from students, and also from faculty and staff who work here every day to help support our students. Mhmm. And so I spend as much time as I can being intentional about, being in the community, being in relationship with students, faculty and staff, listening and understanding so that I don't ever become disconnected. It would be easy to just be meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, and when I have those weeks or days, I find that I'm not my best self.
Joianne Smith:And that when I intentionally take time to go sit in a room with students and hear about their projects, like, later today, I'm gonna Oh, yeah? Go, hear from students in our RICE program, a new undergraduate research program, to hear about their capstone projects.
Bryan Dewsbury:Oh, very nice.
Joianne Smith:I know there are lots of things I could do during that time.
Bryan Dewsbury:There's a Zoom link.
Joianne Smith:There's always a Zoom link, or memos I need to write, or what have you. But I know that the investment of time in sitting there this afternoon, I will leave more energized, grounded, and reminded of why we do this work, and I'll be a better leader as a result Yeah. Of
Bryan Dewsbury:I'm gonna make take a leap of faith here and say that I see a lot of similarities in you and I, right? And I think we found out recently, maybe there's a reason for that, right? We are both preachers' kids. We're both married to Jewish spouses. We both have two kids about two to three years apart.
Bryan Dewsbury:You're a little bit older than mine, not that much, but a little bit older than mine. But I actually wanna focus a little bit on on being a a preacher's kid. I know your your your dad died a lot younger. And you know, the way I explain to people, like I didn't grow up thinking, oh, I'm gonna use the ways in which I went to church every week and the way my dad ran his church and have it impact being a professor. I didn't even plan to be a professor, professor, I had planned to, I wanted to be a conservationist, environmental conservationist, whatever the hell that meant, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:Just, and it's only really when I got to college and undergrad advisors, well, if you really want to do that, you should go to grad school. And then one thing led to another, here we are, right? But I've had the privilege to be in a classroom for now, you know, fifteen years plus, right? And be that as it may, I've found that the way in which I was raised, the notion of pastoral care, right, even though I don't do it in a Christian sense, obviously, an intro bio class, but I do it in a humanist sense, right, in that, know, pastoral comes from rearing sheep, a shepherd who oversees sheep and and the thing about that that relationship is the shepherd is responsible for their sheep, right? You take them out of pasture and you are responsible that all 25 come back whole, right?
Bryan Dewsbury:And that is sort of the mentality he had with his congregation. It is the mentality I have with my class, right? And I've heard sort of threads through our conversation of that notion of care that I think you would have grown up with.
Joianne Smith:Absolutely. Am
Bryan Dewsbury:I reading the subtitles Absolutely.
Joianne Smith:I mean there is no question that that has informed the way I live my life, the way I lead, it absolutely has.
Bryan Dewsbury:Yeah. Well, I know we could go on and on, but it's eight degrees Fahrenheit, and I have a plane to catch soon. Mhmm. I I know you I know you you meet with students and you do a lot, but and but you're a president, so you're a very, very busy person. So I really appreciate you taking an hour to to have this conversation with me.
Joianne Smith:I appreciate you flying to Cold Chicago to have this conversation with me.
Bryan Dewsbury:You know, if if it was just a few degrees warmer here, I would consider moving my family. It's still not off the table, but I do it actually is my I'm serious. It is my favorite city in The US. Like, hands down, it's my favorite city. So any excuse to come here, I take it.
Joianne Smith:Well, you're always welcome back at Oakton.
Bryan Dewsbury:Okay. Thanks a lot.
Joianne Smith:Thank you.
Bryan Dewsbury:Knowledge Unbound is brought to you by the Rios Institute for Racially Just Inclusive Open STEM Education. We are generously funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Very special thank you to our guest today, President, Doctor. Joianne Smith, President of Oakton College. Thank you for being here and thank you for allowing us to record that interview on the campus of Oakton College in Chicago.
Bryan Dewsbury:Our producer as always, mister Segevam Assai. Segevam Assai. You interrupted me. Let me at least say an
Segev Amasay:Allegedly lacking enthusiasm. I will not take this lying down. And let me say oh, I'm just gonna bring in the enthusiasm here. This was a very human episode and let me clarify what I mean by that One of the things that really stuck out to me in this particular episode was how Doctor. Smith was talking about how they went with this department as testing grounds, if you will, to learn all the students' names within the first week or two and then just meeting with them separately.
Segev Amasay:I think that it really shows her effort to get to know the students past them just being one more human in the classroom.
Bryan Dewsbury:The simplicity of it. Right? That's you know, it's not like you're asking people to go and get a degree in something. It's like, well, let's just learn the name. Let's just know who they are and see where that takes us.
Segev Amasay:Exactly. Because at the end of the day, it's, you know, another human with their own life story that enters classroom.
Bryan Dewsbury:Right. And I and I guess that's, you know, maybe like to leave us with that reminder in in that I would I would like people listening to this or who've listened to this episode to think of the people in your life, maybe be at maybe besides family, who took the time to really get to know you as a person and how that impacted the way in which you engaged in your educational experience or your work experience. Not saying they have to be your best friend, but just these little ways in which they strengthen relationships, it really matters a lot. Right. So I wish for all of you strong relationships.
Bryan Dewsbury:I wish for you all a meaningful week. I'm glad you're here for this episode. See you next week, and please be excellent to each other.
Joianne Smith:None of us wanna be judged by the the one thing that we did, our our worst moment in life. And I think for many individuals who are incarcerated, yeah, they made a bad choice, and they're paying the price. Mhmm. Does that mean that they're not redeemable? I don't know.
Joianne Smith:Right? Right. We've all made I know I've made bad choices. I don't wanna be judged on the worst choice I've made. Right.
Joianne Smith:You know, I don't think I've made any choices that would end me up in incarceration at this point. Maybe a few speeding tickets. But but but I think it's really just seeing people as humans.