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Work-life 'integration' is a priority for community college leaders-but it's not always easy Sarah Parker, president of Washington State College of Ohio (WSCO), has four children in elementary and middle school. Mordecai Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora (Colorado), has two children in elementary school. Kim Barnett-Johnson, chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College's Fort Wayne & Warsaw campus, has a son who turns 14 this year and two grown children. 'Take Care of Yourself' Parker became interim president at WSCO last July after serving as vice president of academic affairs for six years, a role she has continued to hold since being named permanent president in November; although Jona Rinard, who has been academic dean of technology and transfer, is poised to take over the vice president role.
Work-life 'integration' is a priority for community college leaders-but it's not always easy
Sarah Parker, president of Washington State College of Ohio (WSCO), has four children in elementary and middle school. Mordecai Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora (Colorado), has two children in elementary school. Kim Barnett-Johnson, chancellor of Ivy Tech Community College's Fort Wayne & Warsaw campus, has a son who turns 14 this year and two grown children.
Given their competing, ongoing and time-consuming, demands, these leaders-none of whom has a stay-at-home spouse-and others like them need to strike and re-strike the right balance for themselves, their families and their employers. Tough decisions continuously present themselves about where and when to look for a job, attend after hours work-related events, and go on work-related travel-as well as when and how and to delegate some of those leadership-related tasks to their direct reports.
'Take Care of Yourself'
Parker became interim president at WSCO last July after serving as vice president of academic affairs for six years, a role she has continued to hold since being named permanent president in November; although Jona Rinard, who has been academic dean of technology and transfer, is poised to take over the vice president role. Parker's family is blended-she has two biological children and her current husband, who is WorldStrides embedded regional director for nearby Ohio University, also has two. Her ex-husband and his parents live nearby.
"Im lucky that I have so much support," she says, adding that her husband has some flexibility in his work hours. "For him, that's really important. Raising four children is not easy. On a podcast once, I heard the phrase 'work-life integration. It made a lot more sense to me [than work-life balance] in terms of how work and life actually works. Work ebbs and flows. There are really busy times, with certain things I need to get done. Other times, things slow down a little bit and I can maybe prioritize my family a little bit more."
For example, the college gives Fridays off during the summer, which gives everyone more family time, Parker says. "If I can shift needs to make my family a priority when possible, I try to do that, especially if there's something important going on in the children's lives," she says. "I miss a lot of practices but try to make it to games."
If there's a weekend college event, Parker might bring her children along. "I like to have my family involved in things that go on at work," she says. "It depends on what kind of event it is." For example, she brought them to an event last fall called "Pumpkin Chuckin'," at which engineering students flung pumpkins skyward using a medieval artillery device called a trebuchet. "I have to be there, but I can bring the kids," she says. "Other times, my kids have been with me to donor events. They get to hear Mom talk. I try not to drag them to everything. But they are at some things, sometimes, that they probably aren't the most excited about."
Work-related travel also involves triaging; Parker attended the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) annual conferences this spring, and she'd like to attend others. "But I cant do all of them," she says. "I pick the ones that are most important to me right now and focus on those. Next year, maybe it will be two different conferences."
Before leaving for the HLC conference, Parker had dinner with her two daughters and talked about the fact that they wouldn't see one another that weekend. "That's a little hard," she says. And attending AACC required her to miss her youngest child's first soccer game, "which really stinks." She adds that "it seems like a lor of times, it is the family thing that has to get sacrificed, unless I can find somebody to fill in [at work] ."
Parker has delegated when she can, beginning when she took on the interim role, before it became clear whether she would stay on as president. "I didn't think I wanted to [take the permanent position] because of this very thing," she says. "I was concerned about whether the integration would work. Another VP sits on the SE Ohio Port Authority board. A dean sits on the chamber of commerce board. I'm not sitting on every single board. But were such a small team. We talk all the time. It helps them to be in the community and getting involved."
That teamwork brings about an alignment of purpose and strengthens the college's overall leadership structure, Parker believes. "Sure, the president could do all of those," she says. "But it helps to give other leaders the opportunity to sit on those boards and do all of those things. That's something I have continued to do when I took on the [president] role permanently."
In addition to the support Parker has from her husband, ex-husband and his parents, having lived in southeast Ohio for 20 years, she has friendships and a wider community that she can count on for support. "Community is really important to me," she says. "There's no way I could do it without people who support my children and my life. I have strong friendships. That, to me, is key. I dont know how other presidents with young kids do it, otherwise."
As part of prioritizing, Parker ensures that she makes decisions as her best self. That means "getting enough sleep- sleep has been my number one priority for the last 10 years, since my children have been able to sleep through the night," she says. "I make sure I'm eating all of my meals. I make sure I am taking care of my mental and emotional health. I see a therapist and talk through stress and difficult personalities. Тат active at my church. I sit on the vestry. I don't know how I do it, but I do it because that spiritual community is important to me."
If she doesn't make decisions about priorities from a healthy place, she sometimes needs to "clean something up that wasn't a priority before, but now it is," Parker adds.
"I cant say 'yes' to everything. The institution shouldn't say 'yes to everything, either. ... When I was a VP, going through a divorce, trying to finish my dissertation, there were so many things going on in my life. It was important for me to stay focused on my job because a lot of people depend on me. But my biggest piece of advice to people thinking about leadership is: take care of yourself. You have to lead a team and an institution. I cant do that unless I'm taking care of myself."
'My life is my family'
Mordecai Brownlee became president of Community College of Aurora (CCA) about four years ago, after spending five years as vice president of St. Philip's College, part of the Alamo Colleges District in San Antonio. He and his wife Daphne met as work-study students at what's now called Lone Star College in Kingwood, Texas, near their joint hometown of Humble. After moving multiple times-CCA is Brownlee's seventh institution-they wanted to slow down and stay in one place while raising their children , Mordecai Jr. (10) and Lauren Machelle (7).
And they had a certain type of place in mind. "We purposely chose Colorado," Brownlee says. "There's a cultural landscape that is more in alignment with what we wanted to raise the children around. And also having an opportunity to work in an emerging market that has grown and is evolving and deeply rich in diversity. That's important to us."
Brownlee, whose wife is a licensed professional counselor in private practice, also is familiar with the concept of worklife "integration" and strives to meet that goal at all times, while maintaining a commitment to aim for excellence in his professional role.
"I do not seek "balance," he says. "No one should ever do more for an institution than they would do for their own family. Just as we establish mission statements for our institutions, in strategic planning summits, double and triple of those efforts need to be placed on our own family. With that understanding and that approach, family is truly the priority. Everything revolves around that. My life is my family. My role of service is as president of the college"
Raised by a single mother who worked as an educator for more than 30 years, Brownlee says he learned how to target work-life integration through her example. "The seed was sown back then," he says. "My mom worked it out with her principals that if she couldn't find a babysitter, I would be in the back of her classroom, where she could keep an eye on me."
Similarly, Brownlee has toys strewn around his office for days and times when he and Daphne both have professional commitments and no babysitter is available. "They can come in here and play with the toys, color here, spend their time," he says. "Гуе got iPads, coloring books and board games. ... Гуе coached my children's little league teams. I've done the bring-a-kid-to-work day. I pick them up from school."
Brownlee sometimes has brought his children to advisory board or foundation board meetings, and "they do a pretty darn good job" of entertaining themselves, although "my 7-year-old sometimes runs to me. We have to work on that," he says with a chuckle. "This Saturday, there will be two board meetings that I'm going to be attending. I will have the kids with me." He does not bring his children to state-level board meetings, however.
The entire family joined him for the Phi Theta Kappa student honor society conference in April in Kansas City, although Brownlee is quick to note that they drove together and "that's not on the college's dime," he says. "Other events, on my own accord, I've brought my family with me so we can have those experiences together. Then, other times, l've got a parent-teacher meeting, so I wont be at 'X' community event because it's important for my kid's teacher and us to get that time."
In those cases, Brownlee trusts vice presidents and others to attend in his stead. "It's important that presidents build а culture of trust, and they enable their executive teams to also be the face of the institution," he says. "Its not just the president's responsibility"
To ensure that the institutional culture will be accepting of work-life integration, Brownlee recommends that college president candidates state their priorities during the interview process. "It is very important that they let it be known that that's who they are; that they expect to see their children," he says. "That there may be some times they will choose the children's games or events over what may be a college event. Its very important to lead with that commitment, so people understand who you are and where you stand."
Leadership candidates also should ensure that their families would be on board with a move to a different city or state before getting too far into the process, Brownlee believes. "It is so important that significant others, your family, knows that they're a part of the encompassing picture of how you make that decision: where you serve and how you serve," he says. "That brings fairness to the candidate as well as the institution. Tve heard too many cases of people landing a job only to reject the job because their family didn't want to leave [their current location]. That's a discussion that should happen beforehand."
When Brownlee talks about a strategic planning summit with his family, he's not speaking figuratively-irs an annual event that takes place on a vacation, usually in an RV. "This may be unique," he says. "It's normalized in our culture; I normalize it for my family. ... What we do for these institutions, we need to be able to apply to our own family. We have a mission statement. We have values. We have a strategic plan every year. We ask the kids, What is it you desire to accomplish this year?" They set goals. At the midpoint of the year, we review those goals. We look at what they need to do to accomplish those things."
"Leave work at work"
The Fort Wayne & Warsaw campus of Ivy Tech serves 11 counties, the largest service area and second-largest campus in the Ivy Tech system, which means Kim Barnett-Johnson has a big role in just about every sense of the term.
"I try to be as present and active in each county as I possibly can," she says, while overseeing a team of 10 vice chancellors. "I spend time focusing on our outlying counties, hearing and responding to whatever they feel like their needs might be. On any given day, I can be in LaGrange County, 50 to 60 minutes away, and then in another county in the afternoon. I spend a lot of time in the community talking to businesses, talking to community leaders, making sure we're keeping abreast of what the changes are, and what we need to do to keep up."
Barnett-Johnson also tries to be as present as possible for her teenaged son, which has taken on added resonance because-shortly before she stepped into her role about four years ago, when she was serving as vice chancellor of academic affairs-her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away not long thereafter.
"As a single mom and widow, it's totally different than when raising the older two" children, who are 31 and 28 and live nearby, she says. "I had my husband to offset me. Taking on this role, the demand level is almost three times what I had before; and trying to make sure I'm present for my son is a huge challenge. My family is important to me. I dont want there to be regrets."
When her husband received his cancer diagnosis -while it was important for Barnett-Johnson to be present as a faculty leader -appointments with the oncologist were her highest priority. "I struggled with that," she says. "My team was looking to me for guidance on how to navigate Covid, teach their classes and meet students needs. At the end of the day, being with my husband won out. I knew his time was limited. It was important for me to be with him."
Though she had an understanding and "gracious" supervisor, "there was inner guilt," she says. "The pandemic was new; none of us had gone through that before. I needed to be present [at work] to help navigate those waters."
When her predecessor left, she had been preparing Barnett-Johnson to succeed her for a couple of years-but given the timing, only four or five months after her husband had died, she wasn't sure at first.
Her first thought about the job opportunity was: "Why would I take this on?" Her son was about to turn 10 at the time. "Did I want to take on this responsibility knowing that he had just lost a parent, and I was all he had left? I struggled with that. But he gave me the motivation. He was like, "Mom, go for it. I needed to hear him say that."
When her husband was still alive, he , supported and motivated Barnett-Johnson as 7 she was promoted through the ranks. Now, her older children, one of whom has a 7-year-old of his own, are her "primary village," she says. "When I need to travel, | my youngest is with one of the two of them. That dr is indeed a blessing to have, to have two older children to fill in the gap."
Some work-related commitments win out, Barnett-Johnson says. "If there's an important meeting out of town or out of state, I've got to go to it," she says. "There are things that have to be done, and of course I'm going to make sure I get it done. But I am very intentional, on a daily basis, that when I leave here, I do my best to leave work at work. It's important to me to be 100% present with my son. It's important for him to know that Pm not just there physically, but mentally."
If she's invited to an evening community event, Barnett-Johnson assesses whether it's one she needs to attend-and whether she wants to be away another evening. Her 10 direct reports "are all very capable of being out in the community and representing Ivy Tech," she says. "They are great about stepping up and going to some of those things as well. Working with my team and being strategic, I make sure I'm keeping at the front of my mind that family time is very valuable"
Ed Finkel is an education writer based in Illinois.
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