William

Hanff DC Council Testimony for UDC Right-Sizing Hearing October 11th, 2012 Id like to address you as a native Washingtonian and Ward 5 booster, and as an Assistant Professor at UDC for the past six years. As a Washingtonian, I am amazed at how the city is growing and evolving, and disappointed that UDC hasnt kept pace. As faculty, I am Instructor in Communications; a Researcher in Media Theory; and an Outreach Activist online and here today. With your support and patience UDC can catch up with DC. There is another debate raging in DC: the Taxi Commission vs. Uber, the town-car service. Its a great metaphor for a functional taxi service that recently updated and now faces a new way of doing things: mobile phone applications. Uber has changed the way we think about taxi service not by changing cars, but by changing how we find them. Like the DC Taxi commission, UDC has only recently pulled itself into the 21st century. Weve launched a Community College, begun to restructure Undergraduate Programs, begun a part-time Law Program, re-envisioned how we teach agriculture with CAUSES. Were moving forward, but were facing our own Uber. Were facing for-profit colleges, the TAG program, and online programs at peer institutions. And these are actually good things for UDC to face! Competition makes us stronger. UDC needs your trust to follow through with deep institutional redesigns that can lead to better service to the population. As faculty, we dont end our education with our degrees. We must continue to evolve, retrain and be two steps ahead. We can move within UDC and continue the evolution toward interdisciplinary study. The old silos are antiquated: they dont reflect the job market, our students dont want them, many faculty want more fexibility. While some of my faculty colleagues respectfully disagree with me, I believe that many at UDC are ready for these changes. Our students are changing along with the population of DC. We need to engage multiple communities of the population at multiple points along their careers. We must adapt to the fact that many of our undergraduates want to earn their BA in six years, while others want to earn the same in three. For them, UDC must become a pioneer in online education across all programs, across all Wards of the city.

Some of the redesign and right sizing will not be easy. But if we put front line education first we can continue to grow enrollment. It will require smaller, leaner administration; more nimble academic departments; and an investment in online education and new hybrid models of learning. Flexible AA programs, the Step-Up programs, Professional Science Masters programs, Masters of Arts in Teaching programs, strong liberal arts BA programs. We need to take advantage of our unique location to offer more certification programs and professional seminars where our city can provide a working lab for our students. UDC is in a precarious position as an institution. Its beginning to outlive its founding generation. Forged in the progressive era of the 60s, my senior colleagues impart a true progressive fire and excitement for urban education. Dr. Meredith Rode addressed the city council frequently when UDC was in dire straights. She has passed away now but what she believed in has passed on to us faculty, her students, and to alumni your constituents. She believed in change measured change to best educate, inspire and enlarge the understanding especially during change. In just the last few days, some DC cabs have begun to use and install mobile phone applications that allow them to respond quickly to the location of potential customers. The DC cabs can exist, and thrive, side by side with Uber. But they need the time, support, and the competition, to adapt. With your help and support UDC can meet our students where they are and take them to where they need to go and sometimes places they didnt expect. Dr. Meredith Rode taught us many things: to see beauty and art in urban landscapes; to fight and make noise for what you believe in; to be patient but critical so students learn to improve and evolve; to trust the process and support others who do too. These bits of wisdom I will bring to your constituents when they come to study at UDC. Not only because I am an Assistant Professor, but because I am a Washingtonian. I hope you will use these bits of wisdom when considering your continued support of UDC and its current plan for restructuring and redesign. Thank you for your time and attention.