Hostos Community College is a small college in the South Bronx, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). CUNY is a system of 11 senior colleges; 7 community colleges; and 6 graduate, honors, and professional schools serving over 275,000 students in the New York City area (CUNY, 2019). Hostos is a Hispanic-Serving Institution that primarily educates underserved, underrepresented students. Hostos students are mostly female, Hispanic and African-American, first generation, full-time, and more often than not in need of remediation (Hostos Community College/OIRSA, 2018) (see Chap. 4). Despite the challenges that Hostos students face, and the challenges that Hostos faculty and staff face, and working without the resources afforded at private colleges, the EdTech team saw a resounding success in meeting the technology adoption goals.

Over almost a decade, the number of course sections offered online has more than quadrupled (fall and spring semesters combined, including both hybrid and asynchronous courses), from 50 in 2010 to 231 in 2018. The number of hybrid courses almost doubled, increasing from 37 in fall 2012 to 73 courses offered in fall 2018. Additionally, the number of asynchronous or fully online courses more than doubled, increasing from 18 in fall 2012 to 50 courses offered in fall 2018. Currently, nearly 78% of faculty have activated their Blackboard courses, up from 25% in 2010. Given that educational institutions tend to be steeped in tradition and often have byzantine paths of communication among departments, offices, and the different layers of faculty and staff, this level of technology adoption is laudable. By 2018, technology had clearly permeated multiple departments, from Humanities to Behavioral and Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Math, English, Language and Cognition, and Education. Educational Technology has seen an increase in use by all members of the Hostos community—faculty, staff, and students. Faculty members are taking risks to use new hardware, software, and approaches in their pedagogy and their research. Additionally, while the number of full-time staff members in the EdTech office has remained consistent at approximately seven staff members, the office has increased the number of faculty members working as faculty liaisons and in other roles that offer release time from their regular duties to focus on projects for the office. Hostos also collaborates actively with other CUNY campuses, such as Lehman College , Bronx Community College, and John Jay College on educational technology projects and has received several awards for these collaborations.

Guevara, who describes his background and leadership strategy in more depth in Chap. 2, managed the EdTech office through the decade of change that began in 2010. His story is especially relevant to Hostos, as he began his career as a student at Hostos after arriving in the United States from Ecuador. He completed his bachelor’s degree at City College (CUNY ), and his first full-time job was in the Office of Educational Technology at Hostos. Guevara’s background is representative of how many of our students come to this college. His transition from Hostos student to his first position at Hostos, in Educational Technology, was a formative moment for him as it began a history of nimbleness with work expectations and a background with a flexible, emerging field that would require constant learning. The way he learned to be adaptable, and his willingness to see challenges and struggles as opportunities to think outside the box for an innovative solution, gave him the background to be open to innovation, willing to take risks, and taught him the mind-set needed to succeed.

In order to meet the objectives set by the provost and associate dean, Guevara and his team would need to change the way faculty members at Hostos thought about teaching with technology. The team considered their values and the values they wanted to espouse, and they recognized that the technology adoption they needed to see would depend, at least in part, on encouraging the organizational culture to align with the EdTech team’s culture. The foundation for creating this change was well established. Previous directors of the Office of Educational Technology had been full-time, tenured faculty members who were released from teaching to manage the office. The most recent director had stepped down to go back to teaching, and the EdTech office had recently reopened (fall 2010) after a more modern renovation of the space, making it more conducive to group interaction and collaborative practices. For Guevara, who had been a staff member in the EdTech office since its creation, his appointment to the position of director was a promotion, but, most importantly, it was also an opportunity for him and all the faculty and staff members working with EdTech to reassess the office’s programs and structures and propose and implement forward-thinking modifications.

Appointing Guevara as interim director was a pivotal moment as he and the EdTech team galvanized a shift in the way educational technology fit into the college’s culture. While most of the EdTech staff remained in place after this initial moment of change and stayed relatively stable over the decade that followed, there was a reorganization of roles, as well as the creation of faculty liaison as a job title.

Along with her appointment of Guevara to the director position, the provost and associate dean asked Professor Kate Lyons, a reference and technology librarian who served on EdTech’s Committee on Academic Computing, to be released part-time from her duties in the library to be a faculty liaison to EdTech. The role of faculty liaison began as a way to help build a community of practice around online-course development, as well as meet this daunting goal of 100% of faculty using Blackboard. Because the office was previously led by a faculty member and because faculty members have specific concerns in terms of promotion and tenure, having the faculty perspective on EdTech initiatives provided a much-needed and balanced viewpoint for the office. CUNY librarians have faculty status, sharing the same requirements for promotion and tenure as teaching faculty. Librarians, however, are on a 12-month contract and work regular 35-hour work weeks. Thus, librarians tend to straddle well the work culture of teaching faculty and full-time staff.

Guevara and Lyons, realizing that they were looking at the need for organizational culture change, sought out management literature to determine how to encourage technology adoption by faculty at Hostos and at the same time promote innovation and risk-taking. They prioritized establishing a culture of collaboration and innovation, and researched how ideas are spread, focusing primarily on the diffusion of innovation theory, which explains how, when, and why new ideas are adopted in an organization (Rogers, 2003), as well as theories about organizational change. Their goal was to mindfully plan initiatives and to create teams that would infuse educational technology across the curriculum at Hostos. They wanted to select management theories to guide their planning and match Hostos’ organizational culture. Upon reflection a decade later, Guevara’s leadership encouraged those who worked with EdTech to cultivate a culture of risk-taking, innovation, and collaboration. Looking back over the last ten years, Guevara turned out to be the change agent that EdTech needed at that time—one who would inspire a culture of risk-taking and collaboration.

Technology adoption and culture change at Hostos are challenging because of the difficulty communication can pose in a large organization and also because of a lack of administrative consistency among all of the college’s divisions and departments. More than half of the course sections are taught by adjunct faculty members at Hostos. Because adjunct faculty are not on campus as often and are less likely to attend campus-wide committees and meetings than full-time faculty, communication with that group can be especially challenging. While adjunct faculty may read email and written memos, they are often engaged for far fewer hours each week than full-time faculty, and their focus is more on teaching than on research or becoming a part of the campus culture. Additionally, each academic department has a different way of encouraging compliance with Blackboard use. Adjunct faculty, as well as full-time faculty who engage in projects or teach with faculty on other campuses, might have challenges stepping from one organizational culture to another, even within the same CUNY system. Another significant challenge in many higher education institutions is the lack of structure for the support and sustainability of projects. A short-term planning mentality can end up terminating or abandoning promising initiatives that only start showing results once the funding runs out. Hostos’ EdTech experienced that as well, and funding has itself proven to be challenging.

In 2015, after analyzing the progress on the different fronts, Guevara needed to create a systematic structure to promote communities of practice and reward risk-taking and innovation; therefore, EdTech decided to reimagine the role of the faculty liaisons to help build this structure. As the position’s responsibilities grew with the office, the position split in two. Lyons took on the role of Coordinator of Community of Practice, with the objective of encouraging faculty members to try new things and at the same time keep the momentum going among those early adopters. The Coordinator of Online Learning Assessment position was created to more intentionally assess the initiatives and the approach to developing and delivering online teaching at Hostos. This position had a heavy focus on researching faculty and student perceptions to inform EdTech about necessary enhancements to its initiatives and approaches. Dr. Kate Wolfe, Assistant Professor of Psychology, was appointed as this second faculty liaison for the ...