As we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, education is more important than ever for comprehending the modern world. Whether it is teaching students or instructors, analyzing the role of education in leading and driving change via policy, practice, and ongoing innovation for a more inclusive education is essential in the creation of new and improved educational systems across the world.
Patti France has worked in the field of post-secondary education for more than 35 years. She has had direct responsibility for several important College departments over the past ten years, including the Registrar’s Office, Human Resources, Student Services, Information Technology, Health and Safety and Facilities Management. She has also handled formal College interactions with both unions as well as the majority of College interactions with the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development. Patti France, the College’s President, serves as head of many committees, including the Senior Operations Group, which is made up of members of the senior management team.
Patti France participates on numerous committees and sub-committees. She is the Board Chair of the Ontario College Application Services (OCAS), the Board Vice-Chair for Windsor Regional Hospital and is also the Chair of their Quality of Care Sub-Committee. Patti is a Board member of the Windsor Family Credit Union and also sits on their Audit Committee. Patti also currently serves as a member of the Ontario Colleges Committee of Presidents.
Journey to Becoming an Educational Chief
President France was raised in Essex County’s northern region, close to Windsor, Ontario. When she graduated from high school in the 1990s, she decided to enroll in the diploma program in Computer Programming because she was interested in the still-relatively-new but fascinating field.
In fact, Patti was a bit of an anomaly when she was chosen to lead St. Clair in 2015. President France was one of a select group of Canadian college presidents whose first tertiary education had actually occurred inside the college system as opposed to having gone to a university. Additionally, over the course of more than twenty years, she had spent her entire professional life at the same organization: from being a student at St. Clair to a Computer Lab Technician and lecturer, to managerial positions in the school’s I.T. Department, to Vice-Presidential appointments overseeing nearly every division of the College, and finally to St. Clair’s Presidency. The fact that students and potential students could see how their own President used her College credentials to advance inside the school was a fantastic marketing and recruitment picture.
President France had earned degrees in adult education while still pursuing her work (a B.A. from Brock University in Ontario and an M.A. from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia). That was another important message to students, demonstrating that “I practiced what I preached” when she spoke about the importance of life-long learning.
Stepping into the Education Sector
President France wasn’t overly ambitious when she first began at the College and certainly would have never thought she would one day be President.
But when President France took on new troubleshooting tasks, she established herself as a “go-to” problem solver. She was a person who worked with or oversaw every single operation at the College, including Academics, I.T., Labour Relations and Human Resources, Governance, Community Relations, Facilities Management and Student Services. As a result, she became a generalist rather than a specialist over the course of her administrative career.
As per President France, her love of education and of St. Clair’s students and colleagues has driven her and brought her joy every single day of her career.
St. Clair now maintains campuses in three different locations in Ontario: Windsor, Chatham, and Toronto. It also has a “sister school” affiliation with a private college in Toronto. Currently, it serves about 14,000 students throughout its several campuses.
Through its Schools of Business, Information Technology, Media, Art and Design, Community Studies, Engineering Technologies, Health Sciences, Nursing, Skilled Trades, and Apprenticeships, the institution provides over 120 programs in a variety of disciplines in Windsor and Chatham.
Most of those are intensively practical, two- to three-year programs that are quite technical. The College is also currently providing a number of four-year applied degree programs, including a brand-new hybrid that combines business and computer studies, in an effort to develop I.T. experts who are thoroughly acquainted with the procedures and requirements of commercial and manufacturing enterprises.
St. Clair’s mission and mandate have remained practical and fundamental throughout its 55-year history: to train students for the jobs of today while also looking ahead to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow—and to retrain current employees with the evolving new skills required in their workplaces.
The provincial government’s first goal in developing the network of twenty community colleges in 1967 was to meet local demands for employment training. Today, however, St. Clair and all Ontario colleges find themselves welcoming the world in the form of a huge influx of international students. Approximately half of its total enrolment now consists of international students from over 60 nations around the globe.
Preparing Students for the Outer World
While the delivery of knowledge and theory is, of course, part of the St. Clair curriculum, the most distinctive element of an Ontario college education is its “real world,” hands-on, technology-laden practicality. There are three items that implement that element of this education:
First, faculty members engage individuals who are professional practitioners in the academic fields. Many – most – of St. Clair’s professors don’t have extensive backgrounds as lecturers, but the College has professional development programs to “teach them to teach.” President France states, “What we want, more than anything, is their professional expertise and experience, because it is that “real world” information that will allow graduates to enter workplaces and meet employers’ expectations.”
Second, students spend just as much time outside of class in labs, clinics, and workshops, applying what they have learned in lectures through practical activities. Additionally, President France is pleased to note that the College’s labs, clinics and workshops are outfitted with cutting-edge technology, most of it kindly provided by business and industry so that St. Clair’s graduates may join the workforce with a solid understanding of modern technology.
Third, each program at the institution includes a work-integrated learning component, some of which lasts for many months. These components might take the form of a work placement, an internship, job shadowing, or a requirement to participate in an off-campus community initiative. That not only provides additional knowledge and skills acquisition, but it also helps to develop the “soft skills” expected by all employers, such as punctuality, teamwork, individual initiative, courtesy to customers, regard for health and safety, etc.
According to President France, are we doing a good job of all of that? Are we meeting students’ expectations? The only way to know is to ask. Every year, either on St. Clair’s own or via a provincial process, the College surveys the satisfaction levels of students, recent graduates, and the employers of recent graduates. The findings generated by those surveys are extensively analyzed and responding to any shortcomings or critiques constitutes a key component of President Frances’s administration’s work plan for the following year.
Leading with Transparency and Open Communication
The best way to understand President France’s management style and philosophy is to look at how she created St. Clair’s risk management process, which involves identifying an issue, analyzing it, coming up with a solution, watching how it affects the situation, and keeping the solution in place if long-term control is necessary. Of course, if monitoring indicates that the problematic issue has persisted, a fresh analysis and set of measures may be required. In light of all of this, openness and communication are essential for corporate performance and employee engagement.
President France is a manager who supports her policies and processes but is also aware of the risk of institutional paralysis. In fact, her first major task at the College involved precisely that sort of thing, when she volunteered to put her fresh-out-of-school computer programming education into practice by converting the record-keeping of several departments from paper to electronic processing and storage. She states, “I constantly heard the “But we’ve always done it this way/You can’t do it that way” criticism, but my bosses and mentors at the time encouraged me to give it a shot.” It worked, and that led to my first major administrative job: to computerize all of the College’s information gathering and storage processes. “So, as an employer and an administrator—and as an educator—I love those who challenge the status quo, looking for opportunities to improve education and services.”
As part of that, too, President France loves employees and students – and all people, really – who volunteer for tasks that are outside of their comfort zones. That’s something that she did throughout her career: volunteer for troubleshooting jobs in areas that she wasn’t really that familiar with. President France figured that she could always educate herself or assemble a team with the necessary expertise to get the job done, and that the main task is just to provide the leadership to get the problem-solving underway and keep it on track.
Working to Bring Improvements
Computer programming was not, at least in the 1990s, a common academic or professional field for women, so President France was something of a “women in STEM” pioneer as a student. As a female educator and administrator, President France has strongly advocated for women in trades and technology. But she has looked at the other side of the coin, too, and advocated that more men should pursue education and careers in the health sciences and social services. She says, “Basically, I’d love to see all gender considerations scrapped when it comes to academic and occupational aspirations.” “If you’re interested or passionate about something, forget the stereotypes and just go for it.”
President France is also adamant in her campaigning for more young people to consider education and careers in the skilled trades. These are tremendously challenging, rewarding, and lucrative careers, with ample opportunities for employment and personal entrepreneurship. She opines, “Our economy and our quality of life are very dependent upon those who work in these fields, and we must encourage young people to explore such careers.”
According to President France, the stress and pressures that confront teenagers and young adults in this era have led to an alarming mental health crisis involving depression, anxiety, substance abuse, self-harm and suicide. She says, “If they’re anything like St. Clair, I’m sure that almost all educational institutions now have additional and enhanced services in place to both identify and provide counselling to those in need of mental health services.” If I could say anything to young people, it would be simply to reach out to almost anyone at your school for help when you need it because it is available to you.
The Great Risk
The biggest risk that President France has taken and that the College has taken during the past three decades occurred in the 2021–22 academic year. She shares, “We were one of the first and few postsecondary institutions in Ontario, perhaps in Canada, that fully reopened for in-person instruction during the last half of the two-year-long COVID pandemic.” She further adds, “That year, most colleges and universities maintained their online-only curriculum delivery. St. Clair had operated primarily online in 2020–21, and it was okay but not ideal. “A college education, especially, needs the face-to-face interaction between teacher and student in clinics, labs, and workshops in order to be truly thorough and effective.”
So, based upon the very stringent recommendations of public health authorities, the institute returned to in-person instruction in 2021–22. IT developed, applied, and policed protective measures involving vaccination and testing, social distancing, masking, and personal protective equipment. President France states, “We brought staff and students back to campuses safely and had a somewhat different but wonderfully successful year.”
The Responsibility of Providing Education
Fortunately, in terms of enrolment growth, the last five to seven years have consistently been the best in St. Clair’s history. This is mostly attributable to a significant increase in the number of foreign students as a result of Ontario’s and Canada’s initiatives to recruit immigrants in order to increase the workforce for economic growth. St. Clair had several hundred foreign students enrolled seven years ago. Today, it has around 7,000 students, including those at their sister school in Toronto, which is 10 times as many. Surprisingly, St. Clair had an increase in enrollment even during the epidemic, as many foreign students were able to continue their studies while in their home countries. That enrolment growth has meant significant new tuition revenue. Coupled with spending constraints on the expenditure side of the ledger, St. Clair has recorded annual budgetary surpluses in excess of $25 million during the past half-decade.
That solid financial situation has permitted St. Clair to vastly expand services and facilities throughout Patti France’s presidency, including the creation of new academic, athletic, and residential facilities. A significant portion of the surpluses have also been set aside into long-term reserves as “rainy day” funds to cope with any downturn in either enrolment or the general economy.
View for the Next Five Years
In the next five years, President France sees St. Clair under a new president. After what will be 35-plus years of employment with the College, almost ten as its President, she has announced her intention to retire effective in August of 2024. President France is confident, however, that she will be leaving the College in excellent academic and corporate shape.
As it has throughout its half-century of existence, President France knows that St. Clair will continue its role as an educational institution that is highly responsive to economic, employment-marketplace and technological trends. She asserts, “We’ll enhance programs as evolving occupational demands warrant and create new programs as completely new businesses and industries emerge.” “And we’ll increasingly involve both our faculty and our students in research and development projects, either on their own volition or in partnership with private-sector companies.”
Advice for Young Education Leaders
When the COVID pandemic first arose in serious fashion in Ontario in 2020, the College was ordered by public health authorities to shut down campuses in mid-March. The order was handed down on a Friday. The following week was scheduled to be St. Clair’s March Break, a vacation for students. In the subsequent nine days, the institute’s faculty and staff converted every single course to an online delivery format; cameras and home-based equipment were distributed to faculty members; and online software was made available to students for logged-in lectures. By the Monday after March Break, St. Clair was up and running in a virtual manner. President France shares, “Six weeks later, the academic year concluded on schedule, and in June, we staged an online convocation for one of the largest graduating classes in our history.” She further adds, “On that Friday in March, when the health authorities told us to close our campuses, I might have heard, “Well, that’s it for the year.” Teaching in person is the way we’ve always done it. “We can’t do anything else.”
President France believes the best way to develop young education leaders is not just to review them but rather to question and challenge them. Is that policy or procedure still sufficient, realistic, or even necessary? Is there a better, cheaper, simpler way to do it? If any class of administrator should seek out new ideas, it should be those in education, don’t you think? President France’s advice to young education leaders is to constantly be aware of and beware of institutional paralysis.
Written by Steve Sanchez.
