Edison State College: Organization, Leadership

Edison State College: Organization, Leadership and Community Orientation Educational and Community leadership require a sensible balance between commitment to the strategic interests of a school and to the human interests of the community. In the discussions here with Washington Barqueo, MD, Chairman of the Board of Trustee's at Edison State College in Florida and with personnel affiliated with him, the research here will seek to better understand organizational leadership.

Using the Board of Trustees as a research context, we will draw conclusions regarding the quality of leadership as derived from vision, culture, communication and community orientation. Edison State College is a unique educational organization. Constituted of four Florida based campuses, it attends to the variation of cultural needs reflective of Florida's diversity. Edison is a public, comprehensive community college that has provided a high-quality, contemporary education to a large and diverse community for the last 47 years. Lee Campus serves Fort Myers within the state of Florida.

Edison's annual enrollment is around 17,000, with a 10,000 person majority located on the Lee Campus. There are several critical external factors that affect the organization, including: the local economy, high school graduation rates, college and university enrollment rates, state budget & accreditation review, all of which are discussed in some capacity on the website. In contending with his demands as a board leader for the trustees, it is the responsibility of the board director to ensure that relationships between the school, the outside community and private industries are fostered and maintained.

Likewise, the board leader and other members of the board of trustees will be responsible for seeing to the proper distribution of gifts, contributions and grants throughout the academic institution. Hereafter in this discussion, we will address the primary focus at present for the college, for the Lee Campus specifically and, by extension, for Dr. Barqueo and his staff. To this matter, Dr. Barqueo takes a fairly progressive stance on providing the necessary oversight to helping the campus develop and improve.

Maintaining a private medical practice in addition to his work with the school, Dr. Barqueo has long sought to bring a consistent and grounded value system to his approach with campus matters. Indeed, there is good evidence in discussion with Barqueo, through his friendly and informative staff and by way of many of the available school-website based sources on the director to help us understand his elevation as part of the leadership structure on the campus.

Our research endorses a leadership environment that contends, "if leaders pursue moral purpose, understand the change process, develop relationships, foster knowledge building, and strive for coherence - with energy, enthusiasm, and hopefulness, the rewards and benefits will be enormous." (Heritage et al, 123). Quite so for the campus itself, which under the oversight provided by Barqueo and his colleagues, would help to bring a great many positive changes to Lee. Beginning as a member of the board in 1997, Barqueo would begin with a focus on the bigger picture.

His goals for the school would be longterm, and he would, according to his own report, bring a certain degree of sustained confidence to his role. It would be clear that others both within and outside of the organization responded to his assumption of such trajectories, elevated him first to the role of vice chairman in 2006 and, for the 2008-2009 academic season, to the role of Director of the Board of Trustees.

The implications of his leadership would be extensive across that period of time, demonstrated clearly by the integration of two new facilities into the Lee Campus infrastructure. Barqueo and his colleagues would help to usher in a new era for Edison in terms of modernity and student functionality with the Richard H. Rush Library, which opened this October. According to Lee Campus President Dr. Robert R.

Jones, "the completion of the Rush Library $7 million renovation, which includes state-of-the-art information retrieval systems, multi-media display platforms, a cyber caf?, private study areas, a dedicated Learning Lab for the Edison State School of Education, a Teaching and Learning Development Center for Edison State faculty, and a 200 seat auditorium for classes and community use" has helped to give the campus a new face.

(Edison State College, 1) Indeed, the new library promises to bring expansive new opportunities to the students of Edison and to the Fort Myers community that will simultaneously benefit from the addition of extensive new research and computing lab facilities. Barqueo's profession also has factored into his point of focus in developing the prospects of the campus.

Projected plans right now denote an increasing emphasis on answering to one of the communities most pressing needs, both educationally and professionally, by helping to improve the availability of healthcare and nursing professionals in the area.

Thus, also according to the Lee Campus president, "early next year we will break ground on a new nursing building to house our highly acclaimed and recognized nursing program - ranked 13th in the nation." (Edison State College, 1) By emphasizing an area where it has already experienced a nationally recognized degree of success, the campus has the opportunity to truly strengthen its role in the community.

Particulary, its interest in further stimulating enrollment and improving access for aspiring nurses will be an important part of helping to address the state and region's issues with nursing shortages. Here, an opportunity for students, for the college and for the community in which it operates to help collectively to reach solutions to widespread social problems impacting all of said parties is demonstrative of the value of figures such as Barqueo, without whom, the necessary contributions and contributors could not be lined up and distributed correctly. Dr.

Barqueo would characterize the particular functions of the board of trustees as being very broad and central to the experience which students have in their attendance of Edison. Particularly, he would characterize it as a compass for contributors seeking to improve the facilities and functionality of the school. The Director would characterize its responsibilities as contributing to the image and actuality of a reliable, responsible and accessible school where the community, state and students all feel that their investments are being put to good and notable use.

According to his report, the domains of his leadership include embracing improved student life experiences that anticipate emerging trends in global education, effective leadership in supplement to academic life and a core integrity in serving admitted students and making a conscientious community presence felt to attract prospective students through the contributions of those outside of the college. In telephone contact initially with Dr. Barqueo's secretary, I was able to learn a little bit more about the Board of Trustees at Edison.

The secretary would inform me that it was the charge of the board as a whole to help make a place for private donors, private organizations, community agencies and others at the table where decisions are made. Such decisions would include the manner in which available monetary resources are to be spend and which longterm priorities can be seen as realistic, attractive or appropriate for the college and for the community.

This characterization is echoed by the school's website, which features a page devoted to information about the trustees and the larger foundation for which they provide staff and leadership. Accordingly, the site denotes that "the Edison State College Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation chartered under Florida Statutes to serve as a direct support organization of Edison State College.

The Foundation accepts gifts in support of the activities directly related to the mission of Edison State College, including cash, property, securities, bequests and trust and life income arrangements." (Edison State College, 1) For Dr. Barqueo, this means a widely distributed array of charges relating to the organization and administration of policy. Thus, his office holds a number of responsibilities which help to channel the input of the many groups which are invested in the school.

As an individual who is responsible for the administrative oversight of a number of employees as well as chairmanship of a board, Dr. Barqueo is directly concerned with the quality and validity of his approach to leadership. Based on the phone interview administered, the Director would identify several core values which direct his leadership approach. In no particular order of priority, Dr. Barqueo.