Serendipity35

On April 2nd, the news that John Sobecki was leaving the Employme! program was, to me, an incomplete surprise. Offered a full-time position at Centenary College after having taught as an adjunct there for several years, the decision to take a job that was both closer to home and further from the institutionalized frustration of being the new guy running a new program in an environment where tangible results are often trumped by administrative appearance, was a decision I could understand. As gracious in his departure as he was in his tenure as the program manager, John sent me a note that included the following:

"I am grateful all those who joined with me on this journey:my coworkers; friends; and, especially those students
who have changed my life more than they will ever know.

"We sanctify all we are grateful for" - A. DeMello SJ

I commit to continue to be an advocate and to serve on boards and commission in service of those with disabilities..."

Employme! is about at its midway point. The funding grant from the Kessler Foundation, awarded in December 2006, provided financing designed to support the program through Spring 2009. The granted funds were earmarked to subsidize the operating expenses of the program without providing tuition subsidies to the targeted audience, disabled students. Those tuition subsidies were to be provided by the entities --mostly the DVRs-- in the form of training reimbursement stipends to qualified students. The operating model that the program was to follow included the establishment of overlapping 18 week classes of 15 enrolled students that would begin every 10 weeks allowing students to proceed to two of the three available programs tracks in a continuous rotation of entering students, students proceeding to advanced training, and completed students' graduations.

The first class was filled before the starting date of May 7, 2007; the second class was scheduled to begin on July 16th, 2007. Student application for, and enrollment in, the July session dropped precipitously and unexpectedly and exposed a fundamental flaw in the operating model of the program. Without enrolling the required minimum number of students in a class (13 or so students --that number has never been verified by the program's available audit trail), the total tuition revenue would not support the costs of the contract instructors that taught the program.

Some local DVR facilities were reluctant to send disabled students to a program which promised IT training and career counseling support. Some stated that their client-base was ill-suited to the type of training that Employme offered, some were continuously unaware of the program despite repeated personal telephone contacts. Some of the DVRs appeared so understaffed and overworked with their caseload that they had little ability to place their clients anywhere for training.

Through the misfiring business model and the dysfunctional student supply train, the program continued. There were, by the end of July, enough students to begin the second section of the course, by November the third class had begun. John Sobecki had navigated the tangle of the finger-filled grant pie and, through hard work and creative ideas, kept the classes running and the stream of graduates, while not as robust as orginally planned, flowing. In January the third class graduated and the fourth class had begun. From the nearly 90 applications that the program had received, about 60 students had been accepted into the program and over 50 had either graduated or were currently attending.

Sometime in March, the decision was made to push back the starting date of the fifth class from May, 2008 to an, as yet, unannounced date. John Sobecki took a new job shortly after that announcement. New staff wasn't hired to fill the program manager's position. Existing staff was assigned the duties of progam manager. Even in the commonly under worked world of colleges and universities, the merge of that particular full-time position into an existing full-time position will create a challenging, difficult role to perform.

John Sobecki never strayed far from his primary function. Though it was his charge to run the program as sometimes defined by the terms of the grant and sometimes defined by people who never understood the nuance, he never forgot that the students --the disabled, unemployed and undervalued people who needed a little help to improve their daily lives-- were the real people to whom he remained accountable.

At the end of the note he sent me the day he announced his resignation, he added this quote from the the second book of Maccabees, chapter 15:

"I will bring my own work to an end here too. If it is well done and to
the point, that is what I wanted; if it is poorly done and mediocre,
that is the best I could do."

If the best that John could do was to serve his students, he served them very well. No matter how his tenure in this program might be judged by others, his best efforts have set a high standard for the second year of the Employme program.