Increasing Collaboration Between Noncredit Staff and Credit Faculty

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) focused on two specific stakeholder groups within a liberal arts postsecondary institution in western Canada: the noncredit faculty (NCF) and academic faculties. A third group, the external community, is also a key stakeholder that will benefit from the OIP through relevant programming for work-ready graduates. The NCF, in which noncredit certificates, diplomas, and professional development programs are offered, is tasked with revenue generation. It is an outward facing arm of the organization, with a strong focus on building relationships with the business and nonprofit community. The goals of the academic faculties are to develop and grant undergraduate programs and degrees. The problem of practice is to develop more organized opportunities for both stakeholder groups to better collaborate, understand each other’s work, create relevant programming opportunities for students, meet faculty and institutional goals, and work closely with external stakeholders in the community. Various potential solutions are explored, while documenting the challenges and benefits of each. Working to provide a solution to the gap in collaboration across campus, and the impact which that may have on program development, the OIP used a combination of distributed and behavioural leadership approaches, as well as the four-stage change path model. Using institutional and provincial strategic planning documents, an outline of the current and desired future state is identified, as well as the framework to lead the change process. A communication plan and implementation process are outlined to address the changes and create fundamental change. As the goal is for the change process to be iterative, next steps and future considerations are also outlined. Keywords: collaboration, distributed leadership, change path model, continuous learning, noncredi