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MONTAGE Serving the St. Louis Community College - Meramec community since 1964 • ACP Award Recipient VOLUME 59, ISSUE 2
OCT. 5, 2023
WWW.MERAMECMONTAGE.COM
College Reorganization Prompts Concern Among Faculty Vice Chancellor Langrehr tries to clarify misconceptions Jacob Politte MANAGING EDITOR
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TLCC hosted several forums across its campuses recently regarding a reorganization of its programs and department under the umbrella of Academic Affairs during the week of Sept. 18. The reorganization is set to be drafted over the next two months, formally presented to the Board of Trustees in December, and be fully implemented by July 1, 2024. The forum at the Meramec campus took place in Lecture Hall Room 103 on the afternoon of Sept. 20. Campus President Moore-Davis and Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs Andrew Langrehr hosted and led the forum, with Langher’s portion taking up most of the presentation. Langrehr said he attended all sessions across the campuses excluding one session at the Florissant Valley campus. When Langrehr finished his presentation, he opened the forum up to questions. The faculty present in the Lecture Hall that day had many questions to ask him. And some who spoke up were not thrilled with what was presented.
guidelines for reorganization provided in a presentation given by Vice Chancellor Langrehr Langrehr gives some background Langrehr said that reorganization isn’t a new thing for the college. “This isn’t the first time that Academic Affairs has been reorganized,” Langrehr said. “Not long ago, rather than campus presidents and CCAO’s, we had provosts. We’ve changed some departmental structures and some division structures over time.
BA First Up for Demolition
PHOTO PROVIDED BY STLCC Demolition of the Business Administration Building began in mid-September. For full updates, see p. 2 for the STLCC Transformed story.
We’ve been talking about ‘One College’ at St. Louis Community College and what that means. So, there’s been structural changes, not just Academic Affairs, but in other units.” Langrehr said that he considers the most significant reorganization of Academic Affairs in recent times occurred between 2015 and 2018. Langrehr, however, acknowledged some shortcomings that persisted in that model. “In that model, what you get is a kind of campus siloization,” he said. “Where Meramec students get different opportunities and resources and things that students on other campuses [may not receive],” he said. “Maybe even different answers to questions about the same program, because it’s kind of silo’ed by campus.” Langrehr said that the goal of “One College” is to make it where students across campuses have “the same responses to questions, the same opportunities where the same programs exist for assistance and tutoring and the same access to courses and faculty.” Regarding the benefits to ‘Pathways’ and ‘Meta Majors,’ Langrehr touted the positives. “Sometimes the terminology may get a little nebulous,” he acknowledged. “But, many students may not know exactly what they want to do.” Langrehr then said that they do know what they’re interested in. “The benefit of the Pathways approach is that students can get to that degree or credential by taking fewer classes. And taking fewer classes that don’t count toward the degree.” Dr. Moore-Davis was seen speaking with several faculty members after the presentation’s conclusion, but she declined to give comment to The Montage citing time constraints. Langrehr, an STLCC veteran of over 22 years, first came to Meramec as a faculty member of Chemistry, ascending to various roles over the years before landing the job of STLCC’s Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs.
He said that the college takes faculty feedback “very seriously.” “The college takes it very seriously,” Langrehr said. “That’s why we’ve had multiple sessions on each of the campuses on this particular issue, to get that input.” Langrehr said that the session was primarily about receiving feedback from the faculty before beginning to draft specific plans. “We’re not making any structural recommendations until we get that, and until we collate that and see what’s there,” he said. “From my perspective, on this issue, I think it’s pretty obvious that we care about folk’s input.” He continued, “The purpose of the forum was, pretty directly, to talk just a little bit about ‘Pathways’ if people needed a little bit of a refresher on it. Most of the folks in that room have heard some about it because we’ve been working on it for a while, but it was primarily to do a little bit of a refresher on that.” Langrehr says he also provided data about STLCC’s current system during the presentation, which was provided to every faculty member and was also displayed on the projector screen in the Lecture Hall. “The thought was that there would be some time to ask some questions and also maybe to work together in thinking about that,” he said. “In most of the sessions [...] most of the time was spent in that kind of conversational aspect with the leadership and the group. Asking questions about what’s possible, what things are on the table and off the table, as opposed to really getting into ‘how many leaders do you need over this size group’ and that kind of stuff.” He continued, “For Academic Affairs, [this is] possibly a big change. We want a lot of smart people thinking about it, so that we can make the change work the best in the future. For faculty, staff and students.”
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