Pros
Students, serving community, location, diversity
Cons
RCC is a highly dysfunctional fiefdom ruled by CYA survival artists and despots. RCC and its current leadership team have failed the community they have been entrusted to serve. This is an organization with no practiced strategy, mission or values. Past and current leadership teams at RCC have squandered financial resources through a pattern of mismanagement, general incompetence, and lack of oversight. Given RCC’s numerous challenges and toxic environment, morale has long ago left the building. There is no vision for success at RCC. The Administration continually misleads the Board of Trustees, MA Department of Higher Education, and NEASC by presenting a false narrative of improvement and progress. The truth is that RCC is a failed organization and should be taken over by the Commonwealth to be reborn in another format (satellite campus of another community college, sold or repurposed for another use). The current Administration should be ashamed of its performance. It is painful to watch a community resource as important as RCC flounder as the Administration lurches from one crisis to the next. The time has come for those in power who oversee RCC to muster the courage and political will to acknowledge that the institution is irreparably broken. As a first step, the current Administration of RCC should be removed and a transitional leadership team appointed. Some of the many challenges at RCC: • Abysmal retention and graduation rates • Insufficient revenue generation (zero discussion or strategy for updating and improving outdated academic programs- including offering online courses and expanding scope and quality of credit- and non-credit-bearing courses- to meet current and future workforce demands) • Non-existent safety protocols and procedures (emergency evacuation, active shooter, suicide prevention, mandated reporting, etc.)- the non-working security cameras say it all • Lack of evidence-based processes, practices, and systems to inform decision making and strategy (no institutional discussion of metrics, benchmarks or standards) • Failure of Administration, RCC Board of Trustees, MA Department of Higher Education, and NEASC to foster organizational culture of accountability and urgency • Disrespectful, discourteous treatment of students, faculty, and staff by Administration • Non-communication and non-engagement by RCC Board of Trustees with students, faculty, and staff • Financial mismanagement of institutional grants and fundraising • Poor budget planning • Non-secured and unaccounted for physical assets- come on down to the lawn sale at RCC! • Countless failed and seriously strained relationships with community partners (employers, nonprofits, agencies, etc.) • Non-existent staffing in key development, grants, institutional research, and compliance positions • Skeleton staffing (Academic Advising, Career Services, Student Life, and others) • Nepotistic and discriminatory hiring practices by Administration • Unilateral hiring by Administration of unqualified and non-credentialed faculty and staff • Scapegoating of junior employees by Administration • Alarmingly high rate of staff turnover
