These are daunting times for community college administrators.
MiraCosta College, under the leadership of President Sunita Cooke, has adopted a forward-thinking approach to planning that considers multiple scenarios, including not just a reduction in funding but also potential systemic collapse.
A “futures thinking” approach has MiraCosta well positioned to pivot quickly and adapt to dramatic changes—while continuing to serve the community in an equitable and inclusive way.
If community college leaders aren’t regularly looking ahead and preparing for various scenarios, “we’re always going to be a step behind in responding to a crisis,” said Cooke, who also serves as the American Association of Community Colleges’ board past-chair.
This article comes from the July/July issue of the Community College Journal, published by the American Association of Community Colleges.
Initiatives like futures thinking and the nation’s first bachelor’s degree program in biomanufacturing, which is making biotech careers more accessible to a diverse student population, demonstrate that MiraCosta College is at the forefront of innovation.
By enriching the northern San Diego County region and meeting students where they are, while also preparing for any challenges that might come its way, the college is serving as a model for others to follow nationwide.
‘A whole new way of thinking’
Cooke first learned about futures thinking when she chaired a statewide task force in 2015. As part of this experience, she was introduced to the nonprofit Institute for the Future (IFTF), a Palo Alto think tank that helps leaders and organizations become future-ready by integrating strategic foresight into their operations.
This approach involves using a number of tools and processes for anticipating future possibilities and making better decisions in an ever-changing world. One of these strategies is to look for what are known as “signals,” or developments that could indicate a paradigm shift is coming, and then take steps to plan for these disruptive changes.
Cooke and a few board members worked with IFTF to bring a futures-thinking approach to MiraCosta in 2019, beginning with in-depth training sessions and planning exercises for campus leaders that continue to be held at least three or four times per year.
“It’s a whole new way of thinking,” said Associate Vice President Wendy Stewart. “I don’t think any of us at the time had any idea of the journey we would be going on.”
Futures thinking now informs MiraCosta’s strategic planning process, replacing the college’s previous approach of relying solely on historic data. “The future isn’t informed by what you did three to five years ago,” Stewart explained. “You might be able to gain insights from some trend data, but this doesn’t allow you to plan effectively when you start to look at what the institution might look like 10, 15, or 20 years out.”
But futures thinking isn’t just limited to the college’s executive team. Faculty, staff, and even students participate.
MiraCosta offers a four-week course once a semester that employees can take to learn about the concept. The college also has a community of practice called Signal Spotters, which is open to participation from anyone. This community meets monthly to identify various drivers of change and discuss how these drivers might affect MiraCosta and its community.
Anticipating needs
Signal Spotters look for signals across a wide range of domains, such as labor markets, demographics, policy and regulatory environments, sustainability and environmental impacts, and technology. When the group identifies a possible driver of change that could impact the college, they pass it along to the department or task force responsible for overseeing that aspect of operations.
For instance, in looking at demographic and labor market trends, Signal Spotters noticed an increase in the number of people who are switching careers at some point in their professional lives, as well as an acceleration in how quickly the skills for certain jobs are changing. These trends have important implications for how the college caters to a growing population of adult learners.
“We don’t have repeat policies that would allow someone to take a course and then come back later and repeat that course,” Stewart said. “Now, we’re having conversations about a different type of student who might be returning to our campus. Are we flexible enough to accommodate them? It shifts our conversation around how we define credit.”
MiraCosta has placed special emphasis on futures thinking through a lens of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility as the college seeks to provide equitable learning opportunities for everyone.
Recognizing that members of Gen Z feel they lack physical spaces for interaction as the digital world has largely taken over their social lives, campus leaders have had conversations about what intentional spaces they could create for students to gather and talk in person. At the same time, leaders have noticed that students are using the school’s website at all hours of the night, prompting Stewart and her colleagues to consider how to meet students where they are and provide after-hours support.
“That’s a hard challenge to solve. We haven’t solved it yet,” she said. “But we’re thinking outside the box in terms of how we define our students and our institution.”
Preparing for the unexpected
While the futures-thinking approach can have immediate impacts, the goal is to plan for the long term—and prepare for the unexpected.
A few years ago, MiraCosta’s executive team attended a training session with IFTF in which they imagined a future amid four possible scenarios: collapse, constraint, growth, and transformation.
What would happen, for instance, if funding were constrained and the college had to operate with fewer resources? What would happen if the structures supporting the college were to collapse altogether?
“In a growth mode, it’s very easy for us to plan. We know how to navigate that one,” Cooke said. But if constraint or collapse were to occur, “what are the essential components we would need to have in place to do our work? How would we still deliver on our mission?”
In one exercise, leaders imagined what might happen as the climate changes and parts of the state become too hot to support life. How might MiraCosta’s campus serve as a climate shelter? What would happen if the college had to shift to using only sustainable energy sources?
This type of thinking has been helpful in preparing for the uncertainty arising from the current political climate.
“Under the Trump administration, we have executive orders coming out on almost a weekly basis that have huge implications for our campus,” Stewart said. “If we hadn’t had futures thinking, we would just be in a reactive mode. But we’ve already done some thinking about what collapse and constraint scenarios might look like. We’ve been able to assess alternate funding sources and program adaptations. It shifts people from a reactive, panic mode into more of a planning stance.”
She added: “It allows us to be more nimble.”
