change. Finally, the Team was charged with drafting the preliminary vision, mission, and values statements for Valencia, and they were given two and one half months to finish. The Core Process Action Team was to determine exactly how Valencia operated and how those chief or core operations needed to be aligned with the proposed changes and forthcoming collaborative relationships. This Team had five months to finish its work, assimilate its findings into a plan for achieving consensus, and propose how to re-position Valencia internally to achieve its BHAGs. The fourth action team was the Core Competencies Action Team. It was charged to examine the lifeblood system of the College, the educational processes that would allow the Learning-Centered Initiative to create even more successful students at Valencia. It, too, was on a short time frame, five months, and at its finish, it, too, was charged to produce a plan for consensus and collaboration on the learning outcomes (core competencies) for Valencia graduates.
In December 1996, Paul Gianini published an article on Valencia’s change efforts in Community College Week. With input from the LearningCentered Initiative Leadership Team, Gianini provided some very useful insights into “the how of change” for institutional transformation. The lessons Valencia had learned about change, according to its President, had not been achieved easily, but rather by hard work. And, he hoped they were worthwhile examples to other institutions grappling with change for the coming new century and its demands. First, said Gianini, change serves to preserve and perpetuate a core purpose and values that do not change. What the President, drawing upon the work of William Bridges, meant is that educators (and by extension others in a similar change process) will fear change less by determining first what is worthwhile and should be kept. “We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Gianini wrote, “but we need to make changes to do a better job of serving those values.”
The Orlando Sentinel published an editorial in 1998 praising Valencia for being designated as “Community College of the Year” by the National Alliance of Business.
99