Liz's Testimony

“The lack of a clearly defined and standardized caseload cap forced us as Coordinators into determinations of who was and wasn't deserving of weekly support and compelled us to dole out our support unequally. We were stressed and rushed, which scholars picked up on and which affected our ability to truly be a support for scholars. By having a caseload cap, PC's could have supported every single scholar more effectively -- thus more effectively carrying out the very mission of OMD.”

Liz Jones, Former Program Coordinator and Career Advancement Coordinator

In my experience at OMD, high and unclearly defined caseload numbers made it impossible for PC's to effectively carry out OMD's mission of supporting community college students academically, professionally, financially, and personally. Every year, we saw that caseload maximums would change and shift arbitrarily. Sometimes there were maximums of 60-65, sometimes it would drift as high as 70. PC's never knew what to expect, and had to live with the worry that they would be assigned a large number of scholars that they could not adequately serve within the hours of a workweek.

OMD did several things to justify the lack of caseload cap:

First, OMD planned for some of the scholars in every caseload to drop out of the program. Their strategy was literally predicated on the first part of the year being mathematically impossible for PC's to support all of their scholars, in order to maximize the number of scholars in the later parts of the year. Perhaps OMD would have seen higher scholar retention if they ensured that every single scholar in the program was able to get full PC support right from the beginning.

Secondly, high caseloads forced us to categorize students into High Touch and Low tough. LT scholars were those who had "lower barriers" and were maintaining baseline academic achievement. We PC's were expected to meet with HT scholars every week, whereas sometimes LT scholars would get a meeting every 2 weeks, sometimes every 3 weeks or 1 month -- these guidelines shifted arbitrarily as well. Without this HT/LT designation, it would have been mathematically impossible for PC's to support such high numbers of scholars. OMD gave larger caseloads to PC's who had a higher percentage of scholars who were deemed LT.

In my experience, the HT/LT model ran against OMD's mission to fully support low-income community college students. I worked with many LT scholars who had higher grades but who were just as much in need of support, if not more in need -- support that we PC's were not mathematically able to provide. I saw many LT scholars struggling with mental health issues, unhealthy expectations of themselves, burnout, dangerous habits to fuel their high grades, challenges around documentation status, family trauma, sexual assault, and even the arduous process figuring out their career/next steps after CCC. I did them a disservice by spending so little time with them.

OMD's solution was that if any LT scholar dropped in performance or had a major life crisis happen, they could then be switched to HT -- however, this would throw off the calculations of the PC's time and mean that meeting with all scholars was no longer mathematically possible. Also, this was an extremely reactive and ineffective way of fulfilling OMD's mission of providing support to scholars. If a LT scholar had a major crisis in November, they may have only met me once or twice before then -- why would they then turn to me for support? Also, could more regular support of that scholar have perhaps helped them avoid getting to that low point in the first place? It was wrong that certain scholars were classified as being less worthy of weekly PC support, since by virtue of being low-income community college students, all OMD scholars already had barriers to graduation. Yet this was the strategy that allowed OMD to increase caseload sizes even more.

When "split" caseloads across campuses were factored in, like myself at HWC and WWC, and later spending time at Aon as well, logistics became even more complicated. I was fortunate to have a smaller-than-typical-at-OMD caseload when I worked as a PC at these 2 campuses, due to the campuses not having embedded programming at the time. Even with my "small" caseload, if a scholar at one campus cancelled, I had fewer days they could reschedule to because I was not at that campus every day, plus I might not be able to fill the extra time with a scholar from the other campus -- making a future day overbooked. With a typical-at-the-time caseload size, these careful scheduling calculations would have been frankly impossible. Without a cap, I also had no guarantee that my caseload would remain manageable -- I had to live with the stress of knowing it could increase next year and wondering how I would make that happen when I was already struggling. Also, I felt extremely uncomfortable and guilty being on a team with many PC's who had much higher caseloads than me. It created unhealthy team dynamics.

The lack of a clearly defined and standardized caseload cap forced us as PC's into determinations of who was and wasn't deserving of weekly support and compelled us to dole out our support unequally. We were stressed and rushed, which scholars picked up on and which affected our ability to truly be a support for scholars. By having a caseload cap, PC's could have supported every single scholar more effectively -- thus more effectively carrying out the very mission of OMD. We also could have had more time to think creatively about other supports we could offer our scholars, including study sessions, events, community-building, and opportunities for enrichment. I did almost none of these kinds of events because it was seen as PC's going "above and beyond" -- with caseload caps, it could have been be made into an expectation, amplifying OMD's presence on campus, the 360 support we were able to offer, and thus the effectiveness of our mission. PC's could also have had more time for professional development, and could have avoided doing so much work outside the hours of the workweek -- both factors that could have increased our extremely low PC retention rate at the time, and thus saved costs for OMD. A caseload cap would have made a better OMD for everyone.

Please consider signing our petition to support UWOMD's campaign for a fair contract and caseload: bit.ly/UWOMDcaseloadcap