Hearing Every Voice

When I was young, my grandfather and grandmother asked my cousin and I to shepherd their sheep. This was a position of honor and trust. our basic responsibility was caring for the sheep, taking them to different pastures every day to protect the long-term productivity of the pastures, watching out for coyotes or places they could get into that could injure them, and taking them to the windmill where they could drink. But we also had to take care of the two dogs and ourselves. During the summer months, we slept in my grandparents’ hogan on sheepskins and were expected to be ready every day.

Becoming a tribal college administrator, I thought that managing a tribal college was like sheepherding, even if students, staff, and faculty don’t always act like a flock of sheep. I believed everyone had clear jobs to do and understood the responsibility of those jobs. I acted, like my cousin and I had acted, to meet expectations inherent in the mission of TCUs in general and my tribal college in particular.

What I didn’t understand, at first, was that a tribal institution of higher learning is complex, filled with different voices, many non-tribal, and that pressures come from a bewildering number of directions ranging from tribal, national, or state politics to the personal challenges that different individuals face to passions that roil up the faculty.

Sheepherding was a formative experience in my life, and fulfilling my grandparents’ expectations is still something that fills me with pride. However, learning how to be an effective TCU leader requires a different approach to responsibility. The Higher Learning Commission, the accreditation authority for New Mexico, insists on something called “shared governance.” Shared governance is like preparing for a major ceremony where everyone has their chore and meetings are held with those participating. A facilitator pulls everybody and everything together so that the ceremony fulfills its cultural and traditional purpose.

But it is also not exactly like that. At the heart of shared governance, the administration and faculty are equal partners responding to the pressures, visions, plans, dreams, and purposes affecting the college or university. As in holding a major ceremony, you have a facilitator—a president— but what he or she is facilitating is not an agreed upon set of tasks and processes that lead to healing or celebration. Rather, a president leads discussions, culled together into responses to challenges, and develops processes that ensure the TCU meets student and community needs.

Shared governance demands formal structures designed to allow everyone a voice in decision-making: committees; strategic planning sessions; ways to enable outside voices to give input; and regular meetings of administrators, faculty, and students. The cacophony can be complex, but the purpose, as in sheepherding or ceremony-making, is clear. A facilitator who can bring it all together is necessary, but every voice is an important part in making key decisions.

Shared governance is not always easy for a college or university to learn or to maintain, but when done right, it sure can help make a powerful learning organization. Sincerely, Elmer Guy, PhD (Diné) President, Navajo Technical University Tribal College Journal Advisory Board