GRAND RAPIDS, MI - The Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustees is doing a good job focusing on student success and monitoring institutional policies, but still struggles with perceptions that its members are divided and weak on some issues.

The findings are from the board’s most recent self-evaluation, obtained by The Grand Rapids Press/MLive.com through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The college’s seven-member board evaluated itself on seven categories: student success, system finance, future vision, policy role, board and president relationship, board general effectiveness and board education and advocacy.

Bert Bleke

Student success received the highest ranking, with 4.8, while future vision, at 3.4, had the lowest rating on the 1 to 5 point scale. Future vision examines areas such as whether the board has a good grasp on the future needs of the college, according to the evaluation.

“Despite undeniably strong differences on some specific issues, our overwhelmingly unified commitment as a Board to Policy Governance and Student Success has enabled us to do this year’s work effectively,” the evaluation’s conclusion said.

“Additionally, we indeed can be very glad in seeing some important improvement, most notably in the area of Board/President Relations,” the evaluation said.

Related: Read the evaluation

GRCC President Steven Ender declined to discuss the board evaluation.

Bert Bleke, chairperson of the Board of Trustees, said he’s pleased with the progress board members have made in strengthening their relationship with one another.

“I think we’ve made some great advancements in our ability to talk to each other and work with each other, and I think that’s been excellent,” he said.

The division among GRCC’s board has often involved trustees Richard Ryskamp and Richard Stewart.

Ryskamp and Stewart – to the opposition of other members of the board – have pushed administrators to cut funding to Woodrick Diversity Learning Center and Actors’ Theatre, as well as to end the college’s participation in a “green” energy program.

Ryskamp and Stewart have argued Actors’ Theatre and Woodrick Diversity Learning Center staged productions and brought in speakers who were disrespectful to Christians and promoted homosexuality.

Ryskamp said the board’s goal should not be to eliminate disagreement among trustees, but instead to find a healthy way to express it. He said the board has tried to do that.

“Even a group of trustees, who are all of the same ideology, they would still find things to disagree upon,” he said. “Differences of opinion are inevitable. The question is how do you handle those? I think that as a group, we’ve made a lot of progress in learning that.”

Bleke said the purpose of the board’s self-evaluation is to help trustees figure out in what areas improvement is needed. Moving forward, the board will continue to look at ways to improve.

“The college and the community expects us to perform well,” he said. “If it’s not, then that’s kind of a black mark on everybody. We just want to do the best we can for everybody and I think that’s what we’re doing.”

One longtime employee at GRCC wondered if a self-evaluation is enough to truly gauge the board’s effectiveness.

Fred van Hartesveldt, president of the college’s faculty association, said it’s laudable that the board is critiquing its own performance. But having a third party evaluate the board would lead to a more complete picture of the board’s effectiveness.

“It doesn’t surprise me that they have high ratings because they’re evaluating themselves,” he said. “When people evaluate themselves, you kind of expect them to give themselves good grades.”

Bleke said he’s open to the idea of having a third party, but there are no immediate plans to do so.

“Self-observation,” Bleke said, “is the most powerful if you’re serious about it.”

Brian McVicar covers education for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at bmcvicar@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter