OCCRL Welcomes Dianne Bazell, New Deputy Director, Illinois Board of Higher Education

by Jason L. Taylor

Dr. Dianne M. Bazell is the most recent addition to the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) where she serves as the Deputy Director of Academic Affairs and Student Development. Dr. Bazell comes from Kentucky, where she served as the Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Council on Postsecondary Education, which she joined in 1999. OCCRL interviewed Dr. Bazell to learn more about her role at the IBHE and her vision for college and career readiness.       

UPDATE: Welcome to the state of Illinois. How long have you been here and what attracted you to the state?

Dr. Bazell: I have been in my position officially since January 5, 2009, but many things attracted me to the state. For one, I was born and raised in Illinois; I’m from Chicago. I never expected to come back to Illinois in this capacity, but I’m not unfamiliar with Illinois. I was attracted to this particular position because of the interesting policy issues. The IBHE has recently led a public agenda for higher education which we had begun in Kentucky 10 years ago, so I’d been through this process before. Many of the same national policy experts and approaches were used in Illinois that were used in Kentucky. I’m coming into a set of similar issues, but at a much larger scale. There are so many more colleges and institutions of higher learning in Illinois. Illinois has such a wealth and gamut of higher learning institutions—both public and independent.

UPDATE: What are your duties as Deputy Director of IBHE, and are they similar to your role at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education?

Dr. Bazell: They are very similar, in the sense that we approved academic programs in Kentucky. In Illinois, however, IBHE has a much larger role because of the number, variety, and span of colleges and institutions. The board [IBHE] itself has program approval jurisdiction over so many more of them. The Kentucky coordinating board had jurisdiction only over the public institutions, and here we have the private for-profit and not for-profit institutions in our purview, so there is a much broader range of responsibility, and that’s a great part of what we do as an agency.

My responsibilities in Kentucky also included P-16 work.  When I arrived in Kentucky, I was charged on Day three with P-16 work. I was told, ‘You’re in charge of P-16: make it happen.’ Of course, Illinois doesn’t have a state council yet, nor does it have many official local councils. Right now, I’m making visits to all the public institutions in the state and as many of the private institutions as I can. When I go to meetings, I’m trying to get as much on-site introduction to Illinois’ campuses as possible. Prior to my visits, I have encouraged institutions to invite a superintendent or two from their feeder districts, a community college leader from one of the leading transfer districts, or a civic leader. So I’m trying to get the institutions to begin thinking about starting those [P-16/P-20] conversations. Even if they’re just conversations, they are conversations that in some cases have never taken place. Many of the institutions have done some work, but they’re not those conscious cross-sector planning interactions that need to take place to make systemic change.

So my main functions will include program approval for the public and independent institutions and overseeing the P-20 initiative. I will be working with the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) on the American Diploma Project1 in Illinois.

UPDATE: What is your vision for higher education in Illinois?

Dr. Bazell: My vision for higher education in Illinois—that is a big question. One vision is ensuring that more Illinoisans are ready for postsecondary education and that’s not just the high school graduates but adult learners as well. I think this ADP initiative is very important to gain clarity and transparency about what one needs to know and be able to do to be ready for college level work. I think if we can accomplish this in Illinois a lot of our issues with transfer and remediation would be considerably aided.

There’s such a wealth of intellectual capacity in Illinois that other states don’t have. I would like to see what the IBHE can do to help to support the research and the applied research function of higher education at our institutions. We’re all about access but we’re all about excellence too.

There are so many more things that higher education institutions are being asked to do. They’re being asked to supply the traditional rite of passage for 18-22 year olds. They’re being asked to draw in and support nontraditional learners—adults coming back into the system after a few years. They’re being asked to prepare themselves for incoming students who are not traditionally prepared through adult education. They’re being asked to furnish research and the development and creation of new knowledge. They’re also being asked to be entrepreneurs and to sell that knowledge—and that’s controversial but they’re being asked to do it. So if you think of all the functions, and there are more, that higher education institutions are being asked to fulfill, I see myself and our agency as being a kind of midwife to the development of new forms for higher education.

We have a very different population, demographically, than we are used to. We’re all living longer and we’re all working longer. I think our institutions have to be open to providing not just the traditional basket weaving or wine tasting outreach courses that continuing education departments provide but real significant professional development—intellectual refreshment for mid-career professionals. We also need to consider “encore careers,” a term I’ve recently learned from Phil Minnis at John A. Logan College. For example, there are engineers, lawyers and business retirees who might be willing to go in and teach middle school math at the age of 65, or younger. This is not just Teach for America for the 22-year-old; this is alternative certification for the well-seasoned experienced person who is now retired and willing to take on the classroom or another career in social work for example. Who is going to prepare that kind of well-trained, experienced and educated individual who needs specific job training in a new way? Who is going to certify these people?

We also need to think in new ways about integrating the liberal arts and technical skills. They’re not antithetical. We’ve got a lot of liberal arts majors graduating who are unable to get jobs. A lot has been said in recent months about plumbers. My plumber was an English major, reads Greek, and subscribes to the New Yorker. He apprenticed with a master plumber after college, and became one, because he needed to support himself. He can work anytime, anywhere in the world, and makes a very comfortable living for himself and his family. One of the highest-growing areas for community and technical colleges is post-baccalaureate enrollment to gain technical skills. How can we systematically address this need?

So my larger vision for higher education is to really think widely about what it is that people need from education. And it’s not just getting jobs, although that’s part of it. It’s having the opportunity to think, read and learn widely in a lot of different ways that we don’t yet have programs to address.

UPDATE: Kentucky has had tremendous success with college and career readiness initiatives with their work on standards, placement policies, the ADP, etc. What lessons have you learned in Kentucky and how are they transferable to Illinois?

Dr. Bazell: I think that it is possible for colleges and universities at all levels to come to agreement on defining college readiness.  This is going to present different challenges in Illinois, but I think our institutions are ready to address these challenges. I have met with the chief academic officers twice formally and several of them again on their own campuses. One of the lessons I’ve learned from Kentucky is that you don’t have to win the whole game at once. I would rather have a few early victories to let myself and everyone I work with know that the goal is attainable and then move on from there. 

I’ve also learned the importance of listening, how to broker agreements and how to reach out to secure external pressures. I learned very clearly in Kentucky to have both state level policy work occurring as well as grassroots initiatives—and national pressure. If, for example, a state-level board member says, ‘We really can’t require Algebra II in all districts because not everyone can do it’, and then you find out that two thirds of the local districts are already teaching Algebra II, you can say, ‘Well look, they’re doing it.’ So you learn what’s possible from the grassroots initiatives and then you provide guidance at the state level, and leverage pressure from national initiatives. It was very helpful in Kentucky to be part of several national initiatives—some with the ADP, some with adult learners through the Lumina Foundation and Jobs for the Future.

UPDATE: What is at the top of your agenda for college and career readiness in Illinois, and how do you reach out to institutions and build buy-in?

Dr. Bazell: Well, if we can get an agreement, at least an agreement on the knowledge and skills to be ready for college credit-bearing coursework at any Illinois institution I would be thrilled. We’re starting that now, and I think that’s probably the most important thing we can do for college readiness—agree on what it means.

We already are reaching out to institutions and building consensus. I’m working with chief academic officers of all our public institutions and with the ICCB. I’m asking them to name a representative of their placement standards in math and English to join the ADP content work groups. If we can get buy-in from math and English faculty at the public institutions and some of the independent institutions (the people who are placement decision makers), then that is getting a lot of buy-in. It’s finding the institutional leavers and that’s working with the chief academic officers.

UPDATE:  How do you build awareness of college and career readiness in the state and reach out to potential students and the public at large?

Dr. Bazell: We probably need a wider and more concerted communication venue than what we have had. In fact, some of our faculty advisory council members are communication specialists and have offered to help us. It would be nice to have a one-stop shopping venue for college. I don’t know that we were part of the Lumina “KnowHow2Go”2 initiative, but it would be helpful to have something similar.  The Illinois Student Assistance Commission has a website, but I don’t know how well known it is.  It would be nice to have all of the materials in one place with a highly visible profile.  This type of initiative is larger than my role in academic affairs and is a statewide initiative but it is something to which I can contribute.

The other huge issue now in the legislature is the P-20 data capacity. It’s hard to make a case for a particular policy or program when you have no data to support that it is effective. We need those student unit-level identifiers where we can tell which curricula are most effective for college readiness, where students go after they graduate from college, if they are employed inside or outside the state, etc.  We need to know which interventions and which programs work best. All we have is anecdotal and subjective assessments. We have no hardcore data. So we really need P-20 data, and I’m pleased that the legislation is making progress. The hopeful thing is that President Obama and the federal government have mandated this—we have to do this if we want stimulus funding.

Dr. Dianne Bazell can be reached at bazell@ibhe.org.