Efforts to Address IT Deficiencies at Metropolitan Community College

Based in Kansas City, Missouri, Kathy Walter-Mack is an experienced higher education administrator who has worked at as Metropolitan Community College (MCC)since 2009, including seven years as chief of staff to the chancellor. Kathy Walter-Mack’s achievements there include her prominent role in bringing the institution back to financial sustainability amidst a decline in attendance and revenue as well as reduced appropriations. 

One aspect of this process involved an MCC IT audit and facilities review, which resulted in a consolidation of services from separate IT groups at each of the five MCC campuses to a unified "help desk" model. Volume purchasing allowed the standardization of connectivity systems and equipment, while a number of functions previously handled in-house were outsourced.

Among those areas outsourced were PeopleSoft development capacities, email system management, and enterprise application hosting. In addition, students’ wireless coverage and network was completely reimagined, with Dell offering a lease-purchase financing model that defrayed upfront infrastructure costs. 

In addition, the MCC board of trustees undertook a bond refunding that achieved lower payments and set in place funds for classroom technology updates and the provision of laptops to faculty members.

The Basics of Crisis Management

Kathy Walter-Mack is an experienced public administrator, legal consultant, and project manager who currently serves as chief of staff to the chancellor and associate vice chancellor of human resources at Metropolitan Community College (MCC) in Kansas City, Missouri. Experienced in crisis management, Kathy Walter-Mack played an integral role in MCC's removal from the federal censure and sanction list.

Crisis management involves mitigating damage in the wake of catastrophic events. Although these events can be difficult to predict, companies can develop contingencies to address potential threats ahead of time and reduce uncertainty when treats arise. These contingencies typically attempt to protect stakeholders and anticipate changes to the ways that companies conduct business.

Harvey Schachter, a contributor to the Globe and Mail, has identified 10 basic tenets of crisis management. These tenets include immediately accepting responsibility and demonstrating great concern for affected members of the general public. Mr. Schachter also encourages companies to dramatize their accountability and concern through highly visible pubic actions, such as removing unsafe products from the market or working at the sites of environmental disasters.

Reach Out and Read - Reading Services for Military Families

 


In Kansas City, Missouri, Kathy Walter-Mack fills several positions at the popular Metropolitan Community College. As chief of staff and associate vice chancellor of human resources, Kathy Walter-Mack is responsible for all human resources services at the college. Equally committed to education in her personal life, she supports the Reach Out and Read program.

Reach Out and Read partners with health care professionals in order to put books in the hands of children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The nonprofit organization was established in 1989 at Boston Medical Center, and it has since grown to serve children in all 50 states. The organization currently distributes 6.5 million books annually, reaching 20 percent of children who live below the poverty line.

While the nonprofit group primarily focuses on underserved communities, it also runs a special program for military families. The pressures and duties of a military career can make it difficult to focus on literacy at home. Reach Out and Read helps service members acquire books for their children and operates high-quality reading programs on military bases around the world.

A Kansas City research project has direct MCC ties

Dr. Jennifer Friend, Dr. Loyce Caruthers, and Kathy Walter-Mack 

University of Missouri Kansas City faculty members are working on a collaborative research project titled, “A Quest for Educational opportunities in Kansas City’s Desegregation Era: Listening to the Voices of African American Administrators, Teachers and Students.”

As you may recall, MCC history links back to the Kansas City Public School District. In 1915, the Kansas City community was asking for local higher education opportunities. In response to the growing need, the Kansas City school board approved the post-secondary education experiment called the Kansas City Polytechnic Institute. The Kansas City Polytechnic Institute was officially established by the Board of Education on May 29, 1915, as the first public institution of higher education in Kansas City.

In a building located in downtown Kansas City at 11th and Locust, classes began on September 7, 1915, with an estimated 200 students.  In the beginning, the school included a junior college, a teacher training school, a high school, a mechanic arts school, a trade school, and a business training school. A nurse training school was quickly added.

The institution was governed by Kanas City Board of Education until 1964, when seven suburban school districts -- Belton, Center, Grandview, Hickman Mills, Lee’s Summit, North Kansas City and Raytown -- joined forces with the Kansas City School District to create the Metropolitan Community College District. That year, the College Board of Trustees was also elected to govern the district and relinquish governing authority from the Kansas City Board of Education.

An interdisciplinary team of faculty at the UMKC School of Education received a Dean’s Small Grant for the 2016-17 academic year to initiate a multi-platform digital video and website design project. This month the team began collecting video and audio oral history interviews with African American educators, students and community members who formed the legacy and struggle for educational equity during Kansas City, Missouri’s school desegregation era (1971-1997).

The team is working to draw on the past, to seek new ways address social justice in educational communities.

MCC’s current chief of Staff, Kathy Walter-Mack was interviewed for the project about her experience and her role.

Before joining MCC, Walter-Mack served as general counsel for the Kansas City Missouri School District, where she was responsible for a staff of 13 and an annual budget of $3 million, as well as oversight of the district’s five out¬side law firms. She provided legal advice to the superintendent and senior administrative staff and directed the strategies that led to the suc-cessful resolution of the district’s decades-long school desegregation case.

“When I look back, I think it was a daring and courageous endeavor and Judge Clark was courageous for implementing some of the orders he called for, when some portions of the community were often highly critical. In the end, everyone was working together to create something truly unique for Kanas City. While there are many lessons to learn from the entire era, the ultimate focus was trying to address the educational needs of minority students,” explained Walter-Mack.  

The research team is working to document 30 to 40 similar oral histories, collect historical artifacts, images, and other important memorabilia and then will design and launch an interactive website with teaching guides that will provide free access to those resources.

MCC faculty will have access to those teaching guides. Also,  MCC is one of 19 partners who have a small role in the grant participation.

The public website, kcdeseg@umkc.edu,  is expected to launch in September of 2016, but for now you can follow the project on Twitter @kcdeseg and Facebook at KC Desegregation.

Reach Out and Read Puts Books in the Hands of Children in Need

As the chief of staff and associate vice chancellor of human resources, Kathy Walter-Mack oversees staff at five Metropolitan Community College campuses. In addition to her professional work, Kathy Walter-Mack has a long history of volunteerism in her community. She has donated much of her time to her local Reach Out and Read chapter.

Research has shown time and time again that the single most important step parents can take to give their children a head start is reading aloud in the early years. Reading aloud helps children develop their word-sound awareness and build their vocabularies.

Unfortunately, research also has shown that many children from low-income backgrounds fall behind early because they are not given this valuable learning opportunity. Reach Out and Read works with primary care providers across the world, giving books to physicians so they can place them in the hands of children.

This leads to 4.5 million children each year receiving a total of 6.5 million books. Many children touched by the program get their very first book from Reach Out and Read, which can transform their educational future forever.

Three Emerging Trends to Consider for Crisis Management

Kathy Walter-Mack has served as chief of staff and associate vice chancellor of human resources at Metropolitan Community College since 2009. In this capacity, she acts as spokesperson for the chancellor to media and the public as required. As a key component of that role, Kathy Walter-Mack has become an authority in the realm of crisis management.

Crisis management trends are rapidly shifting. Below are three to watch.

In the past, a scientist with favorable data added an air of credibility to a narrative. Today, scientists more easily find themselves under fire, especially if they are privately funded by closely related industries. In fact, any sort of industry-funded research has almost unilaterally become invalid in the eyes of many. The moral? Vet the scientists whom you look to for support, to ensure their research is above reproach.

On a related note, one of the reasons industry-funded science, in addition to other once-common practices, has come under fire is the rise of the citizen journalist. Prominent bloggers, who aren’t restrained by the impartiality ethics of more traditional media, often seize upon the most innocent association to call an entire crisis narrative into question.

The social media tide is turning. The once hush-hush approach applied to crisis management is slowly shifting to a more humanizing trend in which the people at the center of the crisis maintain an active social media presence. Obviously, there will be some conversation topics that are off limits, but as Martin Shkreli and Charlie Shrem have proved, being vocal on social media can become a valuable tool in the face of a crisis.

Communicating With Young Children and Promoting Literacy Skills

Kathy Walter-Mack is a longtime Kansas City educational administrator who engages with the Metropolitan Community College as associate vice chancellor of human resources and as chief of staff. Kathy Walter-Mack has been involved in her community for a number of years, volunteering with Kansas City Hospice and with Reach Out and Read. Extending nationwide, the latter nonprofit was established at Boston City Hospital in the late 1980s and is a strong advocate of childhood literacy.

A recent Reach Out and Read article focused on the importance of parents taking the initiative and becoming their infant’s first teacher on the road to literacy. The first few years are critical in the development of learning habits that last a lifetime. Significant growth occurs in the baby’s brain in a short space of time, with receptiveness extending to everything seen and heard.

Talking, singing, and reading to the pre-verbal child directly affects the facility with words he or she possesses when entering school. The more the child has been exposed to a variety of words and sounds, the better he or she will be able to adapt and take these skills to the next level: reading with enjoyment and a sense of exploration.