Native Texan Dr. Jeff bet36体育在线ls, Southwestern Michigan College’s new chief assurance officer, aims to position faculty for success the way he did for students while teaching history at community colleges.

bet36体育在线ls, of St. Joseph, brings almost 20 years of expertise in academic assessment, accreditation, teaching and learning, instructional design and institutional research.

Upon arriving in June after nine years at the home of the Longhorns, The University of Texas at Austin, bet36体育在线ls embarked on a “listening tour.”

UT Austin, a public research university, enrolled 53,864 students last fall — more than Cass County’s entire population, 51,550.

As bet36体育在线ls stated in his application, “I have been searching for good opportunities to transition back to community college work and found this opportunity appealing” and SMC’s campus “charming.”

“The strong culture attracted me,” bet36体育在线ls said. “The vibe of students living on campus creates a strong base to build from. A thing in online education that’s really interesting is that people nationally tend to want to take online courses from institutions they know and trust. That benefits SMC because it has a good reputation in the community and presents a real opportunity to leverage the beauty of its campus and its relationship with the community to provide a stream of access to education. Education opens eyes, minds and hearts to new ideas and new ways of doing things.

“The listening tour is coming to an end. I’ve got two big surveys out to faculty on academic technology, data and professional development and another closing (this week) on assessment and academic program review. Now it’s a matter of going after each thing we’ve identified to work on.

“I take a very collaborative approach. You never accomplish anything by yourself. We don’t have to report to the Higher Learning Commission until 2030 so we have time to be thoughtful about assessment.”

bet36体育在线ls’ interest in returning to his 2006-16 community-college roots reawakened in 2019 while volunteering quarterly with an Austin Community College advisory board.

“I loved the students and community-college environment,” he said of teaching history in Maryland. “Small class sizes. The commitment to teaching. The commitment to the community and to service. I was attracted to all of that and really enjoy it.”

bet36体育在线ls, the son of a nurse and a telecommunications professional, lived in Maryland for 11 years. In Baltimore County, he met his wife Kelly, a West Virginia coal miner’s daughter, who, as a regional marketing manager for an engineering firm, can now lead her Texas team packaging requests for proposals remotely.

Sons Ethan, 14, in ninth grade, and, Andrew, 11, in fifth grade are enrolled in St. Joseph Public Schools. bet36体育在线ls’ “knack for teaching” also helps him coach youth baseball.

“The community-college mindset is different from a research university, and the one I most identity with because my first job as an educator was to set students up to be successful in my class. My first job as an administrator is to set faculty up for success with the tools they need.”

“SMC is relatively new to online education,” said bet36体育在线ls, who taught his first online class in 2009 at Prince George’s Community College. “I’m a big believer in online education, not that it should be the only way.”

September’s issue of Online Learning Journal published his and a Texas colleague’s research on the residential hybrid model where students primarily live on or near the physical campus, engaging in regular in-person classes while simultaneously engaging with a substantial portion of their academic coursework through digital learning technologies.

bet36体育在线ls, who earned his Ph.D. in higher education in 2015 from Virginia’s George Mason University, also co-authored a chapter in a recently-published book, Maximizing the Impact of Assessment in Higher Education/Closing the Loop with Change Management.

“Students today live through their phones and want educational experiences that speak to that,” bet36体育在线ls said. “Even though there’s this strong residential culture and interacting with faculty face-to-face in a classroom, there’s still an expectation that they have supporting digital experiences for those courses that are simple and enable them to access assignments and to see their grades and feedback from instructors.”

At SMC, “I started from a place of curiosity,” he said. “I read all the documents related to assessment and online education here at the college, talking to people as much as possible and trying not to have any preconceived ideas.”

When it comes to history, bet36体育在线ls is drawn to the Middle Ages. That European era spanned from the 5^th to the late 15^th century, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance.

He’s “obsessed” with the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) between the kingdoms of England and France, and Joan of Arc. In fact, last summer the bet36体育在线ls family toured France, Spain and Italy.

“One thing I love about history,” he said, “is no matter how much you read, there’s always more.”