Incorporating feedback into Final Report

Dear HMC Community,

The Task Force on Clinic and Corporate Partnerships is writing with an update. Before doing so, we recognize that many members of our community have been severely impacted by the wildfires and winds affecting Southern California. We offer our concern, support and strong hopes for your well-being during this incredibly challenging event.

Short version of update

The Final Task Force report will be released in late January and will incorporate feedback from the HMC community on the Second Interim Report, which was released in November, 2024.

Long version of update

Process and Schedule Update

The Task Force thanks the members of the HMC community for their feedback on the Second Interim Report and for their continued engagement with our process. 

• Over winter break, the Task Force has been refining and revising the draft recommendations.
• The final Task Force report will be shared with the HMC community, including the Harvey Mudd College Board of Trustees and President Harriet Nembhard prior to the Board’s January 2025 meeting.
• The purpose of this email is to give the community an update on how the Task Force’s final recommendations will be made, what we have heard in response to the Second Interim Report, and how we are incorporating community feedback on the draft recommendations.

Feedback Theme 1: Reactions to the Chapter on Defense and Dissent

• We thank the HMC community for their passionate and thoughtful feedback and continued discussion of the ideas, arguments, and recommendations presented in this chapter. Consistent with the survey results presented in the First Interim Report, a binary decision does not reflect the broad ethical convictions or aspirations of the HMC community. 
• While many themes and arguments in this chapter will remain similar in the final recommendation, we hope the community will thoughtfully review the revised version, which attempts to clarify arguments that the Task Force has heard from the community and respond to questions received during the feedback period.

Feedback Theme 2: Workload and Bureaucracy

• The Task Force heard significant concerns from community members about the faculty and staff workload needed to enact the draft recommendations. The Clinic Directors would need to participate in almost all of these new initiatives and committee structures, adding substantially to the workload of the role. 
• We also heard concerns about the prescriptiveness of some of the structures proposed, such as committees and advisory boards. Our final recommendations encourage departments to build structures that better align with department goals and existing operating practices. 
• There were also recommendations where it was unclear to the community about who would take on some of the roles and tasks recommended; we attempt to clarify this in the Final Report.

The role of the Ethics Advisory Committee, as described in the Second Interim Report, was particularly nebulous. 

• Some community members expressed concern about what would happen if there was a lack of community buy-in for the committee, while others were concerned about the committee’s scope and ability to be responsive and supportive to the community. 
• Our final recommendations propose new ethical structures, building on existing practices, to address clarity and workload concerns.

Feedback Theme 3: Faculty Agency over Curriculum

• At HMC, the faculty have ownership over the curriculum and the academic departments have ownership over their senior capstone programs. The draft recommendations made many proposals the faculty will need to evaluate and refine before adopting. 
• Community members also noted some disconnect between draft recommendations and departments’ learning outcomes for their capstone programs, such as the importance of working with external partners. In addition to curricular agency, feedback to the Task Force emphasized that departments also require financial agency to run their capstone programs in ways that align with their department’s learning objectives.

Feedback Theme 4: Biggest Opportunities

• The Task Force heard from community members that an Ombuds has the potential to broadly support the College, though some community members were concerned about the recommended scope of the Ombuds’ oversight. 
• We also heard strong and broad support for re-envisioning the Office of Career Services (OCS), though some were concerned about prioritizing new OCS programs versus other recommendations made by the Task Force.
• While Clinic fees will remain a significant source of revenue, successful fundraising for new, additional resources will give Clinic Directors greater flexibility to set program size, fee structures and manage capstone budgets. 

Going Forward

The draft recommendations in the Second Interim Report were an opportunity to collect feedback and learn how the community envisions moving forward. The revisions and simplifications to the recommendations to be shared in the Task Force’s Final Report aim to address community feedback, identify the highest impact opportunities, and identify some of the resources needed to bring these recommendations to fruition. 

• Consistent with Harvey Mudd College’s shared governance structures, any of these final recommendations will still need to be advanced, refined and adopted by the respective owners of the program within the HMC community following the Task Force’s conclusion. 
• While there will be some recommendations which can have progress in the near term, building new structures and generating new resources will take time. The implementation timeline must also honor the respective processes of the entity with ownership of each aspect of college governance. This is a nontrivial amount of work, thought, and effort, and we thank the HMC community for considering it.