Janet Spriggs (Forsyth Technical Community College) on Reducing Barriers for Students in Higher Education

On today’s episode of the Illumination by Modern Campus podcast, podcast host Shauna Cox was joined by Janet Spriggs to discuss the barriers students are facing when it comes to their educational journey and the steps required to help them succeed. 

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Voiceover: Welcome to Illumination by Modern Campus, the leading podcast focused on transformation and change in the higher education space. On today’s episode, we speak with Janet Spriggs, who is president of Forsyth Technical Community College. Janet and podcast host Shauna Cox discuss the barriers students are facing when it comes to their educational journey and the steps required to help them succeed. 

Shauna Cox (00:02):Janet, welcome to the Illumination podcast. It's great to be chatting with you today.

Janet Spriggs (00:06):Thank you so much, Shauna. It is my privilege and honor to be here with you today.

Shauna Cox (00:11):Awesome. So we're here to talk about the importance of student services and reducing academic barriers. So I kind of want to kick off our conversation and first ask you, what are some of the common barriers that you're seeing when it comes to learners pursuing higher education?

Janet Spriggs (00:28):Yes, that's such a great question and something that we talk about and deal with every single day at a community college, particularly because we have such a diverse population, which is one of the best things about community colleges. It's also one of our greatest challenges because that diversity is so rich in so many ways and adds to the learning experience and the culture in significant ways, but it also means that we are faced with having to mitigate such diverse barriers. A few of the things that we see most commonly are financial barriers. We have a high population of lower socioeconomic students, so financing is always an important issue for our students. Sometimes it's not that they can't afford our incredibly affordable tuition when we are able to get them things like Pell Grants or other scholarships, but they can't afford the kinds of ancillary kinds of things that go into needing to be a college student.

(01:35):So they have trouble with gas, they have trouble with transportation, which is another barrier. They have trouble paying for daycare for their children because we have a very large population of student parents who attend community colleges. So a lot of times the barriers that we see are academic related in that maybe they are coming directly out of high school, but they are unprepared or under-prepared even though they just came from high school. Maybe they need some developmental math or English to get them college ready, or they're coming back to college after being away from their higher education away from schools for quite a while, and they just need a little bit of refreshing and refresher types of things to get them ready academically. So there's those academic type barriers, but honestly, the more significant barriers that I think our students face have nothing to do with their academic preparedness and everything to do with their life situation. So life happens kinds of barriers, if that makes sense, Shauna?

Shauna Cox (02:40):Absolutely. And I want to flip the switch here because you just mentioned many of the barriers or most of the barriers aren't academic related. So when it comes to the institution side of things and the faculty helping these students out, what are some of the challenges that higher ed leaders face when it comes to addressing this achievement gap?

Janet Spriggs (03:02):So we have to remember again, that diversity, our faculty in particular are charged with teaching in classrooms that have students who are as young as 15, sometimes even 14 years old. And as an example, let me share it this way. We had our youngest graduate this year was 15 and our oldest was 74. There's a lot of generational differences. There's also so many cultural differences within that span because we've got such, again, rich diversity. So our faculty are challenged immediately by how do I engage every learner in my classroom, meet every student where they are, which is what the community college system in North Carolina is built upon that premise that we should meet each and every student where they are and take them as far as they can go. So if I'm a faculty member, I'm trying to do that, but each of those students are at such different places and I'm having to understand how to teach in that kind of environment.

(04:09):All those different age groups, all those different cultural backgrounds, people from different expertise levels, if you will, academic preparedness levels. So it's a real challenge just being able to build lessons and teach and engage students when you've got that kind of diversity. I think the other thing that's really important that we have to always remember too, is that as a non-selective institution, we want everybody to come here. We might have students that end up in our classrooms and they have chosen to enroll in a class that they're not quite prepared for. So our faculty have to be very skilled at how do I recognize that immediately or quickly so that I can get the students into the right place and they don't just sit in a class that they're never going to be successful in. So there's a lot that comes from a faculty perspective of having to be culturally competent in their teaching pedagogies and finding new ways to engage students who are at all different levels of preparedness, but also different age groups and different backgrounds. And at the same time, they're having to also watch out for those non-academic challenges that our students are having and be able to recognize if students might be struggling with life happens kinds of things. And having to really be skilled in connecting students to those other resources that are not typically things faculty at universities, for example, are generally worried about.

Shauna Cox (05:41):I want to dive into a little bit more and kind of look at the playbook for how we address these challenges. So what are some of the best practices to overcome this achievement gap and start to at least begin removing barriers for students?

Janet Spriggs (05:59):So I think you have to start with looking at your practices and your systems and everything that you do and center the voice of the learner in the conversation around how do we enhance or completely redo all those things, listening to our students and centering their voice and helping us understand what will work and what isn't working. I think that's the biggest thing we've learned at Forsyth Tech over the past five and a half years that I've been here as the president, is that we think we know what our students need, and we've built our systems around thinking that we understand our students. But when you actually start looking at disaggregated data and seeing that you've got these significant achievement gaps, you recognize that no matter what your best intent was, you have not been able to create systems that are responding to each student in the way they need for us to respond to them and respond to their challenges.

(07:01):And so one of the things that we've done quite successfully, and I think is a secret sauce if you will, is to think about human-centric, equity centered design when you're talking about designing classes, but also when you're talking about designing all those things outside of the classroom that are so vitally important to helping students be successful, whether it's academic solutions to helping them be successful or solutions to helping with those life happens non-academic challenges. So bringing the student in to the conversation in a meaningful way and facilitating a process that allows their voice to be heard. We did this for the first time with something very simple. It was a group of focus groups of adult learners that we were reengaging with. These were students who were 24 and older who had been at our college over the past two or three years and had finished about 50% or more of their degrees or diplomas or certificate programs, but had not completed.

(08:06):And we were trying to get them back in to college so that they could finish. They were so close to the finish line. And so the first thing that we did was we wanted to understand why they left in the first place. And we brought 'em in to start talking to them about that. And that's when we realized that that conversation was golden and that they not only told us why they left, but they gave us incredible insight into what we needed to do to now get them back, but also keep them back and keep them moving forward and being successful. So I think the key to overcoming our gaps and barriers is designing our systems to meet the needs of our students. And that means that different students need different needs. And so it does become complicated too, Shauna, because it's not a one size fits all model at all. We very much have to look at what the student parent needs differently than what the high school graduate who just came to us right out of high school needs versus what the gentleman who's 54 coming back to start a new, to be skilled for a new career after getting laid off needs. So it's a lot of different things and a lot of different voices that have to be centered in this conversation. But the key is centering them in the conversation.

Shauna Cox (09:25):And I want to dovetail off that because you mentioned your secret sauce because we're going to talk about a little bit more. How is your institution addressing the equity and economic mobility gaps within the community?

Janet Spriggs (09:40):So what we are doing it for Cytech, and I think what is certainly not a new idea, I think every community college in America strives to serve the community where they are. That's the beauty of a community college is that middle name community is so important to us. But one of the things that I think we're doing slightly maybe better than I've done at the other institutions I've worked at over 28 years doing this work is that we are truly immersing ourselves in the community in new and different ways. When I came in 2019, we spent five months, four or five months building a shared vision, talking to all stakeholders, both internal and external to determine where we were trying to go, what is this destination? That's what the shared vision is about. And we created that. Forsyth Tech is a catalyst for equitable economic mobility, empowering lives and transforming communities.

(10:40):And that means we're going to be change agents. It means that we're going to be leading the conversation, not just following along behind what is happening around us. And that really set us on a journey that's a little bit different sometimes than what we do. We are the ones who are convening the conversations. A lot of times we're actively engaged with public entities and our public elected officials while at the same time leading in partnerships with our nonprofits, with our business partners, with our economic development entities and partners. So it's really all about partnerships and it's about accepting a leadership role and understanding where those gaps are, what those gaps are, what's causing those gaps, and then how do we connect the right people linking and leveraging the assets we bring from the community college with the assets that all of our partners bring to the conversation around why do we have 25% of our five and under children going to bed hungry at night?

(11:49):Why do we have a zip code that has the highest levels of poverty in our community? And within that zip code, also the highest levels of students of color and low income first generation students. And then taking education to where those communities live has also been something I think that is really helping us be leaders in the community and also helping us find new ways to remove those achievement gaps. And I just want to go back for one second and say something I said at the beginning probably is the first thing in addressing equity and economic mobility gaps is to look at your data and not try to make excuses for it because it is what it is. And I firmly believe we can own the data and what it's telling us without having to make it punitive, without having to say someone didn't do something right or making excuses for it.

(12:53):Instead of that, we just say, listen, this is the starting point. This is where we're going to go Now let's build the roadmap that helps us turn that data around and get us to where we're trying to go. But first, you've got to understand what the data's telling you, and you've got to be willing to say, if we do the same thing we've always done, we're going to get the same results. And I'm pretty sure a really smart guy named Einstein said, that's the definition of insanity. So we are all about challenging the status quo too, in thinking of new and different ways to solve problems because the problems wouldn't exist if the solutions we've already created could solve them.

Shauna Cox (13:34):Absolutely. The work that you're doing is obviously going to have a ripple effect on the institution, it's learners, it's stakeholders, the community, and things like that. So what impact does addressing these gaps have on the institution and its learners?

Janet Spriggs (13:52):Well, what we are seeing is that it finally is helping us move the needle on some of these numbers that we didn't like that we were ashamed of. Quite frankly, it was when I came, our completion rate was overall 19% when I applied for the job and looked at the data, overall completion was 19%. We've been able to move that to 31%. Wow. It is a wow for us, and the impact it has had is that it has shown us that we can do things differently and achieve different results. We've also, when I came, 21% of white students were completing in three years while only 12% of Latina Latinx students were completing, and only, I think it was 6% of African-American students were completing in three years, we've reduced those achievement gaps. Our Hispanic students are completing at the same or higher levels than our white students, and we've reduced the achievement gap with our African-American black students by 15 percentage points.

(15:00):So it's working and the impact that has is that from an institution perspective, it gives you motivation. It makes you feel like you have made progress, and it gives you motivation to keep doing the things you're doing. But also it takes away some of the fear of doing things differently because we've certainly done things that haven't worked the way we thought they were going to do, and we just backed up. I say, look, we'll just back up and punt. We'll try again. We'll either change it so that it does work, or we'll say, you know what? That idea is just not going to work for our students. Let's try something different and we'll go in a different direction. But it takes away some of the fear. It gives you some really great psychic paycheck moments where you feel like that you're making a difference and you're seeing that difference in the lives of people.

(15:55):And then from the learner's perspective, oh my, that's where you really get the benefit, right? Because you see people that previously the odds were stacked against them. The numbers were saying, these low-income students are not completing as well as the students who have better ability to pay. And so they're going to probably, if I come in as a low-income student and I know that data, or if I'm an instructor and I've got this low income student sitting there and I'm thinking they're going to be a statistic and they're going to probably not be here in three years. Well, when you see that you're making changes that are lifting those students and helping them be successful, then you start to realize that the impact you're having on those lives, they're going to complete. They're going to get jobs, they're going to have careers with family sustaining wages, and it's going to help us do what we're really all about it for tech, which is getting rid of poverty because it does interrupt the cycle of intergenerational poverty when one person in that family makes it to a better career prospect and to a better financial situation.

(17:09):That just sets the ripple effect in motion for the rest of their family. They become the role model, and it's a whole lot easier to follow behind that first person.

Shauna Cox (17:20):Absolutely. Amazing. Well, Janet, that's everything that we have for you. But before I let you go, we're going to need a restaurant recommendation from you. And so you are based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, somebody's visiting town. Where do they need to go?

Janet Spriggs (17:36):So the first thing I'll say is I'm going to give you two for the price of one Shauna, if that's okay. I'm going to say that when I tell people about restaurants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and we've got a ton of amazing places to eat, and I've tried every single one of them, I think. But the Blaze Grill at Precise Tech is my absolute favorite. It's really good. It's open in the mornings until two o'clock. Great place to come have lunch, see what tech is all about. If you can't make it over to Precise Tech while you're here and you'd like to be out in the community. Elle's is one of my very favorite restaurants in Winston-Salem. It's like eclectic Southern, and it's just a great place to eat.

Shauna Cox (18:16):Sounds amazing. I love two for the price of one, so thank you so much for that. You're welcome. And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It was great chatting with you.

Janet Spriggs (18:24):Absolutely. Thank you, Shauna. I appreciate the opportunity.