Joint Leadership Council meets to build communication

Since March, Mt. Hood’s Joint Leadership Council (JLC) has been meeting to discuss how to make the college more beneficial and efficient for its students and employees.

The JLC has a history, but with different names and functions. “It’s had different iterations in the past,” said Rick Doughty, MHCC vice president of administrative services, who serves as JLC chair.

The JLC is a council of councils. It consists of representatives from several other councils from around the campus, including the Budget Review Council, Sustainability Council, People Strategies Council, Community Engagement Council, and Facilities Council, among others, according to MHCC President Debbie Derr.

The JLC is an assembly “where information can be shared about the work of all of the other individual councils,” said Derr.

Doughty explained a recent meeting. “We got together and we said ‘Okay, what’s going on on the Sustainability Council, what’s going on on the People Strategies Council’ … (It) allows us to understand, allows us to communicate, allows us to input back,” he said.

Mt. Hood’s administration has been working to make the college one in which everyone has a say in how it is run, said Doughty. The council setup is “an important aspect, in that we envision a participatory type of governance taking place over the years here,” he said.

Not only do MHCC staff members participate in the councils and in the JLC, but Mt. Hood students also contribute, said Derr. “They (the councils) are representative of all the employee groups and students are also assigned to be on those groups,” she said.

Administrators say the JLC is one of the tools in place to allow MHCC to function effectively as staff turnover occurs, over time.

“We have a concept here, that we want to promote systems here that are resilient and outlive persons and personalities, so that 20 years from now, Mt. Hood is a thriving, energetic, successful college,” said Doughty.

The JLC is a way to give more influence to the other councils, Derr noted. “The idea is to provide a level of authority to those councils, that they don’t have to come to the president or the board for every single thing they do,” she said.

“It really is a governance structure to provide a way in which employees and students can be involved in decision making of this college. The idea is to empower our stakeholders in that decision making process,” she said.

The JLC held its final meeting of the academic year on Tuesday. Its next will come in the next academic year, to consist of planning for a proposed MHCC general obligation bond.

This story contains information contributed by Sam Krause, assistant news editor at The Advocate.