It's been over a year since Dr. Bernard Franklin became President of Penn Valley Community College, and it's been nearly as long since Spectrum has asked him how he's doing. So it seemed time again to the track the Big Guy down, or up rather, to his aerie somewhere on the cloud-shrouded and mysterious fifth floor summit, above which all elevators fail to fly.

Through back-channel negotiations with one of Dr. Franklin's trusted lieutenants, Theola Cheatham (also known as his administrative assistant), Spectrum was able to arrange a sitdown powwow with the man who commands the instructionary forces occupying much of Penn Valley.

Clad in an American-style shirt and tie and bearing gifts of grapes, Dr. Franklin pulled up a chair and lost no time opening the floor to questions. He spoke candidly about his first year as President, and looked with measured optimism to the future of Penn Valley.

Dr. Franklin, where did you grow up, and where did you go to school?

In Wichita. Went to Kansas State University for my undergrad, in political science and pre-law, minored in English and Spanish. Did my masters work at the University of South Alabama, in Counseling and Behavioral Studies. I worked there as Director of Student Activities, left there and went to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, which is a suburb of Orlando. Stayed there for a year, then came back to where I graduated from, Kansas State, and stayed there for six years, and that's where I got my Ph.D., in Counseling and Family Studies.

What were you doing before you came to Penn Valley?

I was working at the Kauffman Foundation, Vice President for Education, and director of a program that was designed to encourage underperforming seventh graders to move to grade level performance and graduate with their class, and then we would pay for their college education. That was a good program, it was a demanding program. I have a higher education background, but the Kauffman work was for kids from kindergarten to grade twelve. I was almost like a fish out of water. This position came open at Penn Valley, and it was more like what I was created for. I applied for this position and I got it, and I came here, May 16, 2005.

Has it been a good fit?

Very good fit.

One of your initial concerns was to build connections with the business and civic communities to support and boost Penn Valley. How has that worked out?

Bernard Franklin

In fact, we were meeting today, doing a feasibility study. That helps you understand if the money is available, and does Penn Valley have the name recognition in the funding community to get that kind of money. So we're trying to understand that and get a picture. I bring all my contacts in the business community with me here, and I'm optimistic that we're going to do well in the next few years, but it takes time to get a project that you think people would be interested in. Then you go and groom those people to come alongside you. So, I would say we're at least 2-3 years out before we really fully know.

Do you work with the Civic Council?

We work with them, or its members. I'm not a member of that group per se, but I know a lot of people on the Civic Council.

Are you comfortable now with the people on your staff?

I think so. This is a great place. There are a lot of committed faculty and staff here, who do really good work, and they're good people to represent, good people to work with. I think I've gotten very comfortable in my role here. I like it.  I want to stay as long as I can.

When you first came to Penn Valley, you said there were a lot of meetings off-campus that you felt you could avoid and spend the time better here. Do you still feel that way?

Yes. I've been able to avoid a number of meetings off-campus. There are a lot of meetings for community colleges in the state of Missouri. They meet as presidents, to develop funding strategy through the state - Jefferson City. But there are five presidents in our district. My presence in Jeff City is not that critical, if the other four are going. And I think the nature and complexity of our campus really requires me to be here a lot more than away. So I really struggle to make sure I'm on campus, doing the things I need to do here, instead of being off-campus, in meetings that don't have much value for us.

What are the FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] "safe rooms," and when are they coming to Penn Valley?

We've just finished the drawings and preparation for FEMA safe rooms for tornado shelters. FEMA, in a way trying to raise their profile after the Katrina disaster, decided to give millions of dollars for tornado disaster relief. So we have one of those facilities. Our groundbreaking, in fact, will be October second, here.

Is the Nursing and Allied Health Facility something we're building as well?

They're estimating that two to three out of every five jobs in the next 20 years will be in health care and life sciences. So we want to be ready for that. Which requires us to build state-of-the-art facilities that come close to what students will be working at when they're in the real world. Our facilities now are adequate, but they won't be in ten years, just because of the technology that's out there. We have some of our Nursing and Allied Health programs at the Pioneer campus, so in some ways we're duplicating staff and facilities right now. But we're going to bring all those programs right here, and build a four- or five-story building that will be state-of-the-art. That'll be really significant. Check out the Johnson County facilities - ours will be comparable to theirs. We're talking about training the next generation of nurses, anesthesiologists, physical therapists, phlebotomists. Even new areas, such as sleep studies.  Folks who deal not with synthetic drugs but herbal drugs, which is a whole new field. We'll be looking at all those areas- how to advance the cause of medicine in our facility. This is major. There's nothing else that I'm putting more time into.

If you have a great idea, how do you bring it about as President? Do you talk with the faculty, try to get a consensus, or can you act on your own?

It depends on the project. We do take some things before the faculty, and some things I can accomplish just in the nature of my work. But there's what we call here at Penn Valley and MCC a "shared governance," meaning that no one body or individual has all the power. We share it. And there is a lot of sharing that goes on, a lot of "What do you think about this?" There are very few decisions that I make by myself. A lot of it I take input, get feedback, share concepts from other people. The Faculty Senate approves the curriculum, makes decisions about the courses we offer. In fact that's the group, if we were to change our schedule, we'd have to take it to them. They would make the final decisions about what we would offer in the afternoon. The Faculty Senate has a lot of power, but not all the power. They're part of the power structure, and we take things to them on occasion, and they bring things to us. We work back and forth.

Are you interested in giving students more responsiblity in decision-making here at Penn Valley, since many students are adults who might have valuable input?

I think one of the areas we're weak in is just giving students a voice, to say what works around here, what doesn't. I often say that students are the only consumers that don't demand their money's worth. And I believe that. We pay our tuition, we submit to a process. But here, we don't have enough ways for students to share in how that process impacts them. So I know one of the things we're looking at is a student government that would be a vehicle to allow students to voice their concerns and their issues. To me, that's really important, and I'm encouraging that process. You can't treat 27- or 28-year olds, or 30- to 35-year old people, like children. You have to treat them as adults. But we may not do that now as well as we should here.

How do you feel Penn Valley students compare to UMKC [University of Missouri, Kansas City] students?

All the data we get back from UMKC and MU [University of Missouri, Columbia] indicate we do a pretty good job of preparing students for those two environments. The number of students who flunk out is low. So we must be doing something right, to prepare students for a tougher campus, more rigor. If we had a model, we'd probably have one like: We prepare students for a four-year college. Parts of us are tough, but other parts not so much. Is it a place where students can do relatively well? Yes, given they complete assignments and attend class. For chemistry and other higher level courses, we prepare students well for the four-year institution level.

In the afternoon, Penn Valley sort of cleans out. Do you anticipate any scheduling changes to use that time, or is that something we should keep?

Part of it is that we have to determine the education and work patterns of students. In our early analysis, it appears that students prefer to have classes in the morning, and be off in the afternoon to go to work. If we offered afternoon courses, we probably wouldn't get many students here. But does that mean we couldn't offer some? We're in the process of further analysis, to see which courses could we offer that might ease some of the morning load. Maybe some of the English or college requirements courses, we might be able to spread throughout the day, instead of having them all clustered. We're looking at it. I'm not sure we're going to get a formula, but we're looking. The challenge is that so many of our students work, and you try to fit their work schedule around their class schedule. Some of them come and take courses in the morning, go to work, and then some even come back in the evening. It kind of rounds out.  But we're looking at it to try to find what's the best mix of classes for the best group of students.

Recently, the Black Studies program at UMKC was apparently undermined by racial undercurrents. Would a Black Studies program be good for Penn Valley?

We do have Black History, and several other classes. I'm teaching a course, the Psychology of the African American Experience, next spring. We're diverse here, without the kind of tension UMKC has. People get along here, and there's a lot of different points of view that get expressed. The atmosphere is much different from that at UMKC.

What about developmental and repeat courses for students who might be lagging already when they come to Penn Valley?

We continue to talk about that. One of our highest concerns is the number of students who come here unprepared for college-level work. That number is probably getting higher. It's really sad, that students are graduating from area high schools without basic abilities. Many can't write, can barely read, and are doing only basic arithmetic. You can't get ahead in this highly skilled world, functioning at that level. So that is a great concern for all of us: How do you move a student that's so far behind? There are really no good techniques, apart from a miracle. I don't mean to be cynical about it, but when you're functioning at the sixth grade level, and you're enrolling in--technically--grade thirteen or fourteen here, there's not a lot a campus like ours can do. We're very concerned about it, because increasingly those students are coming in needing remedial math, remedial English, remedial reading. We're providing as many of those courses as we can, but we're not helping everybody.

Do you think the student body at Penn Valley will grow?

We grew one percent this fall, and I think we can only handle manageable growth. I mean, we couldn't handle 10% growth a year. We're limited on campus because of our parking situation, and classes too. We could increase students by increasing the number of courses we offer in the afternoon, but we're maxed out from 9-12 in the morning, and again from 6-9 at night, meaning every classroom we have available is booked. The only growth we could really have would be in the afternoon period. We're pretty maxed out where we are now.

Anything else you'd like us to know about?

No, I've had a good experience at Penn Valley. I enjoy my work and the people I work with. We've made some progress, such as with food services this year, including the new coffee kiosk in the Campus Center. There'll be more changes people are going to see over time. We're trying to bring this campus into the 21st century. We want to make it modern and convenient, and relevant, and over time people will see progress and change.

Copyright 2006 Metropolitan Community College