Tying Our Shoelaces

Budget requests are due this week. When I’m out and about, people ask me, “How’s the state budget picture going to effect MV?” Lately, my response has been pretty consistent, “It all depends!”

In an environment where we serve more students at a disproportionately lower amount per student, the environment brings to mind too many clichés – “do more with less”; tighten your belts a couple more notches; work smarter, not harder; tie your shoelaces a little better!

The last one, about the shoelaces, probably isn’t top of mind for most people, but it is for me. It comes from John Wooden, the legendary UCLA men’s basketball coach whose teams won 88 straight games and 7 consecutive national championships from 1967-1973. When asked about his approach to winning and how he prepared his team for a championship run each year, he responded by describing how he started every season. The first practice of the year was spent making sure each player was an expert at tying his basketball shoes correctly. If their shoes weren’t tied correctly, not only did their chances of tripping on an untied lace increase, but they were certain to get blisters on their feet and subsequently miss out on valuable preseason practice time – making them less efficient preparing for the grind of the year to come.

Although I play a lot of sports, I try to minimize my use of sports metaphors. However, the notion of tying one’s shoelaces to diminish efficiencies seems to have relevance to our budget and the overall operation of the College. The budget constraints we’re currently operating under, and will continue to do so next year, create an environment that calls for a reexamination of all processes, along with the manner in which we work. It’s more than breaking through the increasingly worn excuse, “we can’t do it that way because we’ve always done it this way.” It’s about approaching every part of our operation from a different perspective, asking “how might we do this better?” It requires us to listen more closely to students, the community, and each other. It requires us to be more open to feedback and talk about things in a critical way without being critical. It’s the open dialogue that doesn’t allow people to simply rant about why something doesn’t work, but calls for an expression of opinion, saying, “I disagree, but I have another (not necessarily a better) idea to consider.”

By looking closely at our processes, we need to spend more time collecting and analyzing data to inform our decision-making processes. It makes assessment relevant – we should collect and analyze data because it helps make more informed decisions, not because our accrediting agencies require it. Our culture needs to change from one that says, “in order to do more, we’re going to need more” to one that says, “we can implement that new process or program because we created additional capacity by changing this or eliminating that inefficiency.”

This approach would require everyone to respect the ideas, strengths, and talents of others and work together to develop a culture of continuous assessment and improvement in everything we do. We work at a most amazing place that has the potential to provide our students, and the community it serves, even more than it already does! If we make sure our “shoelaces are tied correctly” we can “minimize the blisters” and find ourselves running faster and farther than any of us could ever imagine.

If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Ballad of the Community College Student

In my twenty years of working in community colleges, I’ve had some pretty profound and memorable experiences that have shaped my commitment to and deep appreciation for the amazing role community colleges play in transforming the individual lives of students. Last week was a particularly powerful week for me – one that provided me with a variety of student interactions that, once again, surfaced the futility found trying to define the “typical community college student” and inspired me to organize the following profiles.

I am the honor student who prefers small classes
So many choices, but I choose to be here
First in my family to attend college
Breaking the inter-generational cycle of poverty

I am the adult student who has no time
My child’s sick
My job is mindless
I have dreams for myself
I have bigger dreams for my children
So I model the way

I am the student with the unseen disability
Putting in extra hours just to get by
Determined to let nothing stop me
I overcome challenges every day
Others will never know

I am the student on the brink
I’ve made choices in my life – more bad than good
The consequences are more than I expected
I hope this will be the time
I make the change I need

I am the average student
Going through the motions – waiting for a spark
I don’t know my strengths so my dreams are small
My potential is beyond
Anything I can imagine

I don’t even know what I don’t know
All I do know is I just need something
I just need a…
strong shoulder, helping hand, warm heart, or caring ear
But most of all,
I just need a chance.

I hope I find it in you.

If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Toward a More Viable Democracy

My reflective practitioner post prompted a few responses that have added insight and resources toward the importance of liberal arts and general education as well. I’ll try to weave the feedback and resources received into a coherent post. General education is often referred to as “the basics” – reading, writing, and math. With the world changing so dramatically all around, the basics are being recast into critical thinking, communicating, and problem solving (in a more applied use of the original basics). Trends show general education moving in the direction of students learning these skills in the context of interdisciplinary themes like sustainability, citizenship, and entrepreneurship. These ideas are arising in conversations, think tanks, and thought pieces. Unfortunately, they fail to surface much at all in uninformed or narrow-minded policy discussions and isolated campus cultures – and the timing couldn’t be worse.

A talented, well-informed, member of the adjunct faculty at MVCC sent me a wonderful resource on TED – a fantastic resource. It’s a fascinating and enlightening speech (18 minutes long) from the President of Bennington College, Dr. Liz Coleman, sharing the underpinnings of why and how that college reinvented general education. She issues a call to action to change general education in our colleges to help change our country and our world for the better. As she says, “it’s not about good and evil, but finding solutions between competing ideas.” In light of the challenges we face, general education in this country needs to be comprised of mutually dependent circles rather than isolated triangles. It should have a new set of categories:

1. rhetoric - organizing the world of words

2. design - organizing the world of things

3. mediation & improvisation – assuming a special place in the new order

4. quantitative reasoning – managing change through measurement

5. technology - making connections

Dr. Coleman then turns the entire focus of general education toward acting on the critical issues of our day and the success of our collective future. As she closes, “We cannot have a viable democracy made up of zealots, experts, politicians, and spectators." Amen. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/liz_coleman_s_call_to_reinvent_liberal_arts_education.html

The higher education and secondary sectors of our educational system are not very well aligned. We can’t simply continue saying “look how many students aren’t prepared for college.” We need to be part of the solution. The Race to the Top initiative addresses more root cause issues in primary and secondary education than No Child Left Behind did. However, it “races” over too many variables like English as a Second Language and other barriers associated with fair standardized testing practices in our schools. It has also shed a bright light on the performance, or lack thereof, in our school systems. It is too easy and even disingenuous for colleges and universities to simply say, “send us better students.” As the SUNY Chancellor says, “this is our problem too – we train the teachers.” Additionally, most every report or research study that looks at college student learning in the aggregate, particularly in general education areas, demonstrates limited achievement. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much. With the price of college today, we need to be as at least as accountable as our secondary schools.

We need to be part of the solution. We need to embrace those studies that show setting high standards for students and delivering content in engaging and applied ways, along with effective support systems and resources, most often causes students rise to those high standards. Simply “raising the bar” and telling the students to get there without changing our delivery or our support systems does more harm than good. Reconsidering and reinventing “the basics” of general education needs to include a deep curricular connection to our secondary school partners to align curriculum, expectations, and outcomes for increased relevance, learning, and consequence of the student experience.

If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Choice & Student Success

A number of conversations of late have me thinking about the psychology of choice. I don’t know much about what the research says, but I’ve heard others talk about how people can, at times, be overwhelmed with too many choices. For example, I remember being a first-generation college freshman sitting with my advisor at Mott Community College. My initial goal was to make every credit to count toward whatever degree I might someday receive. He said, “take these 31 credits and they’ll transfer to any of these five state universities – they’re all good schools.” I took those classes, transferred all 31 credits to one of those five schools and graduated three years later. With my advisor’s solid advice, I was not only able to make every credit count, I was able to achieve my big goal of graduating with a college degree.

My recent blog posts on performance funding and student success prompted a few comments from people. Increasing student success and completion is a complex endeavor. Efforts are underway to redesign our ED 100 College Success Seminar curriculum that is part of a multi-year effort to bring intentional strategies to enhancing the first-year student experience. While a number of wonderful accomplishments have been achieved, like a new student orientation and the development of DegreeWorks – a new advising tool. However, like so many college freshmen across the country, new students at MVCC face a similar wide array of curriculum choices that I did all those years ago at Mott. Students are asked to choose from a long list of possible courses when the first year of a college curriculum is, arguably, pretty standard across most colleges and universities.

Over the past twenty years, higher education curriculum has expanded to accommodate the information explosion. As more research is conducted and information shared via the Internet and other means, specialized courses have been developed with increasing frequency. Commonly justified as “elective” credits, these boutique courses have satisfied the academic interests of many undergraduate faculty and staff, but have added unnecessary complexity to an already convoluted student transfer mobility process. This came to light recently when I was speaking with a couple of Presidents who mentioned the following article in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104554.html). Although the author certainly writes from a somewhat unique perspective, the article posits that higher education has become so segmented that even today’s Rhodes Scholars graduate with such specialized knowledge and limited world views, that they are unable to entertain many of the major questions facing the world today. 

We need reflective practitioners with a strong liberal arts background. However, one way to increase student success is to get each degree-seeking student off to a clear, productive start through a more narrow set of choices to begin pursuit of a college degree. With the ever-growing difficulty some students face when pursuing a degree, and the escalating price of a college education the collective tolerance for wasted credits that don’t apply to a degree is diminishing with each passing semester. It’s not so much that we should make the choices for first-year degree-seeking students, but narrowing those choices early in their studies will provide them with the focus and foundation to more likely achieve the larger goal of graduating. If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

The Reflective Practitioner

Every once in a while, years ago, I would get together with a faculty member who taught philosophy at the community college where I worked. I loved to ask him questions and hear him reflect on his dissertation, a recent publication, or a discussion he had recently facilitated in a philosophy class. At times we would explore different sides of the argument about the value of a liberal arts education and its place in the community college – particularly one with a number of career programs. One sunny spring day at a sidewalk café, I thought I’d crafted a position that (for the sake of argument and to expand my thinking from his greatly anticipated response) ruled out the need for general education when tuition-paying students deserved to have a degree that simply led to a job or a career. Without missing a beat, the Professor quickly deconstructed my statements and responded, “it’s fine to have that welder graduate from our college and be the very best welder he or she can be – I want that student in my philosophy class so they understand not just what they’re welding, but why they’re welding. I’m in the business of creating the reflective practitioner.”

That notion, of a reflective practitioner, has stayed with me. Offering a comprehensive array of both liberal arts and technical career programs is one of the many things I cherish about Mohawk Valley Community College. Most technical colleges are so narrowly focused that students lose the context of their craft and lack a deeper understanding of their field. A number of community colleges have jettisoned technical degree programs because of the expense and, as a result, have quietly become nothing more than a junior college by default – offering low-cost transfer programs. MVCC, on the other hand, has a wide-range of transfer programs that provide low-cost/high-value options for the first two-years of college, as well as technical programs in nearly every career cluster.

I am so proud of MVCC’s commitment to the range of programs we have; our unique Diversity and Global View graduation requirement; and the introduction of learning communities and interdisciplinary work of late. Our world is rapidly increasing in complexity, so the importance of, and appreciation for, our comprehensive mission and ability to integrate learning experiences for students has never been greater. These things help create a clear path for us to focus our curriculum, further define the environment for student success, and graduate those reflective practitioners who will lead this community, state, and country through the uncertain future that lies ahead.

If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Performance Funding - it's time.

Last week I attended Chancellor Dr. Nancy Zimpher’s State of the University address. http://www.suny.edu/chancellor/speeches_presentations/SOU2011.cfm. I applaud her effort to create what will hopefully become an annual tradition. It was great to be part of the event. A brass quintet from SUNY Potsdam played as we entered the dimly lit auditorium of the Egg in Albany. During her address, the Chancellor highlighted several accomplishments that occurred throughout the past year across the 64 SUNY campuses. She reviewed the University’s Strategic Plan – branded the Power of SUNY - and amplified the potential for this Plan to leverage a range of SUNY assets to help drive the economic redevelopment of the Empire State.

Dr. Zimpher also referenced the extremely volatile economic and political environment in the state – within which we all must navigate. Governor Cuomo’s inaugural address showed hopeful signs of repositioning SUNY for significant service. However, the financial challenges the Governor needs to address are likely so large that resources will continue to erode for yet another year while the fundamental structural changes to the state budget are finally implemented. The Chancellor made clear a number of priorities including student mobility – which has made groundbreaking progress in the past year – as well as student access and completion, with a special reference to the importance of online learning. She also referenced the possibility of shared services throughout the SUNY system as a means of creating efficiencies and economies of scale. Although it’s hard to say what types of services could be shared, the idea is a good one and will need everyone’s creativity and effort.

Perhaps the most daring part of the address came when the Chancellor proposed developing a performance-based funding model where a portion of campus funding would be determined by a set of measures that allow for comparisons between colleges. While the proposal wouldn’t start until 2012, and seems to only be directed at four-year SUNY schools at this point, I’m very supportive of such a move. As a taxpayer I say, “finally, performance-based funding!” As an educator, I say, “we will rise to the challenge and such an incentive can only make us better!” I had the opportunity to participate in such a shift in funding 15 years ago in Colorado – performance funding is nothing new, but something higher education still hasn’t gotten quite right. The fact that the Chancellor is putting this forth resonates what is often said with regard to performance funding, "better that we propose it and define it than hiding our heads in the sand, leaving it to others to define for us, and hoping everything will be okay."

Like criteria for institutional accreditation and assessment requirements, performance funding amplifies what we should be doing anyway – defining success; measuring performance; and linking it to resources. As a publicly funded institution, we should not leave performance to chance and simply ask people to “trust us.” We say that fundamental changes are needed to change this country, state, and region in most every way. Too often, when we hear a new idea like performance funding, it’s easy to dismiss it out-of-hand rather than giving it a chance and changing our way of thinking and changing our reality for the better.

If you have any questions on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

A Community of Learners

What a joy it was to join everyone at the January Institute last week. The opening plenary session with Joye Hardiman and Greg Hinckley was inspiring. Focused on the latest research and practice in learning communities, we experienced two incredible teachers (she from Evergreen State and he from Seattle Central Community College) talking about incredible teaching in an energetic and engaging manner.

The Learning Community is an instructional strategy that has been around for more than thirty years and has recently emerged as an active academic initiative at MVCC that I'd like to see made into a priority. Research has demonstrated increased student learning and success rates among students who participate in Learning Communities compared to those who do not. Perhaps the biggest take away from their presentation, for me, was that the Learning Community (LC) definition has evolved from “model-based” to “assignment-based."

When I worked with Learning Communities in Denver and Omaha, there were eight different models emphasized nationally. The definition has evolved, with research over the years, to emphasize the conditions necessary for deep learning to occur through the power of community. As our speakers said, “at the heart of all learning communities is an intentionally designed integrated assignment.” The other interesting shift that’s occurred is that LCs have moved from being primarily identified by faculty interest (e.g. two faculty get together and identify some curriculum they have in common, etc.) to include curricular trouble spots (e.g. students struggling with the developmental math, etc.) – powerful stuff.

The change in conditions necessary for deep learning is powerful information as well. By this point in the presentation, my mind was racing and I couldn’t write fast enough to capture the multiple applications flooding my head (Ah, the joy of learning)! As I wrote, I thought about how these conditions not only apply to the student experience, but also to our work with each other, as members of the MVCC family. Read these four primary conditions with that in mind – applying to students and applying to the entirety of MVCC.
• Active, collaborative strategies – people working together rather than working in isolation.
• Fluid teacher-student roles – everyone learning from each other.
• Integrated services and programs – everyone working in the same direction, toward the same goals; with the other vs. against.
• High expectations and high levels of encouragement and support – that’s what makes community colleges special! We should not be that school where it is said, "Look to your left and right. One or two of you will certainly fail." If anyone at MVCC is thinking or, worse, is practicing that "philosophy", they have it wrong. Adapting the Learning Community approach to our work, MVCC should say, "Look to your left and your right…we’re all in this together and it's our commitment to you that everyone will get all the support we can muster to give each of you every opportunity to succeed!"

Even the LC's five secondary conditions can help us carry out our mission better:
• Intentional strategies – assignments are coordinated in an intentional manner. I don’t know if our speakers said it or I heard something that sparked it, but I wrote down the phrase, “a framework for brainwork” – I like that.
• Naming – understanding how and why things are named, and the notion that knowledge is not neutral.
• Accountability – contracts and covenants created to clarify expectations among/between parties (students & faculty; students & students; students & staff; faculty & staff; faculty & faculty; staff & staff, etc.).
• Testimonies – appreciative inquiry used to emphasize the power of autobiographical sketch and reflection on “lessons learned and wisdom earned” from the peaks and valleys of life.
• Reframing – the importance of process and learning to interact with and expand knowledge.
• Creating and sharing – channeling our collective creativity to solve problems, rather than maintaining a status quo (it works in the classroom and committees alike!)

Learning in Community creates a collective energy and understanding that surpasses individual growth. Imagine these basic principles expanding to improve student learning while, at the same time, improving our organizational ability to meet our mission of "promoting student success and community involvement through a commitment to excellence and a spirit of service" – the power of learning together as the magnetic core that binds us.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this post, please contact me at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Progress by the Years

I started my career in institutional research trying to turn raw data into useful information to inform thinking and decision making. Whenever I come across interesting ways of displaying data - in ways that make you say "wow" - I can't resist the opportunity to share. The notion of progress and innovation increasing life expectancy and personal income around the world comes with optimism and renewed energy that the New Year brings. The following link was shared with me from a previous post with an interesting animation. It's titled 200 years, 200 countries, in four minutes. It's a professor who animates his data to show the change in life expectancy and personal income around the world over the past two centuries. If you have 4 minutes, take a look - once again the power of technology to help us understand our world a little more than we did yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo.

If you have any comments on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

New Year's Resolutions

Having worked at and studied community colleges for two decades, I am often intrigued by the relevance of personal health as a metaphor for organizational health. Like human beings, organizations are living, ever-changing, complex systems. Metaphors abound about the “health of organizations"; about "organizational wellness” as a framework - taken right off bookstore self-help and dietary shelves; and about organizations as “lean” or “lethargic” when describing the operations or sense people have about them. Community colleges, like all complex organizations, are comprised of individuals whose collective efforts combine to make a unified whole, in order to make a difference.

This time of year many of us think about the Holiday Season and the fast-approaching new year - often accompanied with New Year resolutions. If I were to make a list of New Year resolutions for MVCC, it would reflect a number of elements gleaned from many recent conversations I’ve had with faculty and staff around both campuses!

For example:

- We resolve to be a more kind organization. With an estimated fall unduplicated headcount of more than 7,200 individual students, students and families come to us with more needs than ever – needs more complex and sensitive than those we've experienced in the past. Each of us needs to be more kind and helpful - being more intentional with every interaction with each student and with each other. The Rev. Jesse Jackson captured this notion when he said, “Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.”

- We resolve to be a more respectful organization. It would seem being respectful is simple. For whatever reasons, however, rudeness and disrespect are on the rise all around us and people are more sensitive than ever. Employers often tell me that “the ability to relate to others in a respectful manner” is a top concern. We should be no different. In fact, modeling respect is as important for us as it is for our students. Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson once declared, “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me…All I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

- We resolve to work more on trusting and earning trust. Research increasingly shows the importance of positive, productive relationships to achieving happy, healthy, and long lives. The same likely holds true for achieving the long, happy, and healthy life of an organization. At the core of any relationship is trust. Our community trusts us. Our students' families trust us. It’s critically important for us to trust our partners and, as well, to trust each other. The importance of trust is highlighted in a quote attributed to Frank Cane, “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.”

- We resolve to be a more accountable organization. The ongoing and increasing efforts of leadership organizations within the Institution, like the Cabinet, College Senate, Bargaining Units, Strategic Planning Council, Institutional Effectiveness Committee, and a host of other college councils and committees are helping MVCC become more accountable, both collectively and individually. Achieving accountability is not easy and maintaining it requires constant attention. “Walking the talk” as they say; being responsible for our actions and not passing blame are the key elements. The work of holding ourselves and each other accountable is difficult. In the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencione writes, “Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful. Others because they get defensive. Others because they are intimidating….accountability is hard, even with your own kids.” But the work of building an accountable organization in the new year will make us better. When we've achieved full accountability we will, individually and collectively, be able to serve the students who choose to enroll here, their families, regional business owners and companies, and our entire community by providing the best access to excellence....and that opportunity will have immeasurable benefits.

- We resolve to be a more patient organization. As I’ve often said about life at MVCC, things move too fast for some, too slow for others. Exercising patience leads to understanding and an appreciation for the "why." Not that it’s okay to explain everything away or disregard the importance of accountability but often, when impatience is foremost in an organization, focus is lost, words are said, and things are done that might be regretted. It's all about courtesy and perspective. With regard to this notion, author Bill McGlashen is quoted as saying, “Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in one ahead.”

The collective resolve to be more kind, respectful, trusting, accountable, and patient comes from many at MVCC who are embracing a simple, understated action plan for a better MVCC. My thanks to all who have offered their thoughts and energies along these lines, as my intent here was to capture their ideas in the form of a New Year’s resolution. As Oprah Winfrey said, “Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.”  If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

More than a Ribbon Cutting

When we first moved to the Valley, I was continually amazed at the unexpected places MV Alumni turned up. I am no longer as surprised when someone tells me they “got their start” or “their restart” at MVCC. A couple weeks ago, in this blog, I described the good fortune of having many homegrown businesses in the Mohawk Valley, with a number being led by MVCC grads. Most of my experience for that post came from visiting many local businesses recently, to better understand their needs.

Another way I've gained exposure to “the amazing Mohawk Valley” is by attending community events, like a ribbon cutting this past week at the Air Force Research Lab in Rome. I responded to the invitation because the Lab is both a great community asset and a great partner with our engineering programs. Truth be told, I was also very curious about a ribbon cutting for a computer. The AFRL unveiled its newest supercomputer, the Condor.

In this case, a healthy dose of curiosity was a very good thing because we learned an awful lot in a relatively short period of time. The program flyer included phrases like “computing power of supercomputers is measured in FLOPS or floating point operations per second…a typical household laptop can achieve 10 billion FLOPS,” and the Condor will “…achieve 500 trillion FLOPS…equivalent to 50,000 laptops.” Whoa! Digesting that kind of information, I could only look forward to the rest of the presentation. They went on to describe the acceleration of information processing and supercomputer development over the recent past. We learned that supercomputers are closer than ever to being able to process information at speeds equal to the human brain. According to the Lab, we'll likely surpass that mark in the next few years. My head was spinning.

The more specifics they provided, the more interested I became. The Department of Defense was looking for a cost effective way to power and run a supercomputer for critical information processing of detailed imagery for the Air Force and other state-of-the-art research. In response, AFRL engineers connected and optimized 1,716 Sony Playstation III (PS3) game consoles (no kidding) and 168 General Processing Units – all off-the-shelf products. With the ability to put these processors in “sleep mode," the Condor produces an energy savings multiplier of 15 from comparable supercomputers. All that computing power, with far less use of electrical power to drive it is truly an amazing work of human ingenuity – produced right here in Oneida County.

During the ceremony recognizing folks who played an important part in conceiving and creating the Condor, several individuals stopped to say, “I’m one of yours.” I stayed long after the program finished to talk with a half dozen engineers and technicians who, upon completing their studies at MVCC, earned their B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Each one is now working in a degree relevant field at the Air Force Research Lab. Each spoke of the rigor, quality, and pride of their MVCC experience. Each noted the incredibly supportive learning environment they experienced at MV.

Some of the most important, cutting edge work in the world of supercomputing is being done just down the road...and all of it by highly trained and incredibly skilled professionals, many of whom got their start at MVCC. Driving back to the office, I marveled at what I had just experienced...and, from a slightly different perspective, that much of it didn’t surprise me at all. The work many of our colleagues did years ago played a significant role in the astounding demonstration of high technology I witnessed at the Rome Research Site last week. This technology will inevitably benefit millions of people around the globe - in so many unknown ways it’s hard to comprehend.

Like the work done with our alumni at AFRL, the work we do with students today, tomorrow, and next week will reap unknown accomplishments in the future. Every MVCC faculty and staff member should be proud because of the work we do to help every student who chooses to study here. Because of that work, the promise of the community college comes alive in the most fascinating ways every day. If you have any thoughts on this post, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.