The Future of Learning is Already Here: Wildly Accessible Content

I remember the anxiety I felt in 2012 when it seemed every other day for several months I would trip across a story about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how they were going to disrupt and fundamentally change higher education. When some of the most prestigious colleges and universities began offering their curriculum online for free, it was hard to miss the fact that things were changing. Fortunately, the headlines subsided and most higher education professionals took a cleansing breath and rationalized that MOOCs lacked a sustainable financial model and would soon go away — we didn’t have to worry about them. 

However, MOOCs amplified the fundamental structural flaws of modern postsecondary education — rising costs, questionable outcomes, lack of personalization, lack of flexibility, too much variability based on delivery by individual faculty members, and misalignment between programs and employability. Since 2012, MOOCs have indeed persisted to the point that in 2016 the three largest MOOCs in the United States earned a combined $100 million net profit and beat most every college to market with the concept of scaled employer-driven credentials. Check them out and peruse their offerings to see just how accessible and affordable they are, as well as the name brands providing the instruction — Udacity, Coursera, and edX.

Similar to MOOCs, the Khan Academy has infiltrated K-12 systems across the nation and is widely used (albeit discreetly in most cases) in higher education. With several large funders like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy is providing supplemental learning through short, clear, and extremely useful videos on content across a range of disciplines. In 2018, more than 100 million people accessed content on Khan Academy’s website with nearly 5 million paid subscribers.

Another platform influencing modern learning is Google Classroom. In 2012, Google accounted for about 1% of all media devices used in public K-12 classrooms. With the launch of Google Classroom and Chromebooks, their market share grew to 58% by 2016. Colleges today are finding recent high school graduates arrive wondering why they must purchase large expensive textbooks when they’ve been reading short, relevant, easily accessible content online for the past four years in high school.

The explosion of online content and platforms like Khan Academy and Google Chromebooks have spawned the development of Open Educational Resources (OERs). The modern textbook is undergoing a complete transformation and is being replaced by online content — sometimes through OERs and resources like Collective Commons, and other times through licensing other online resources.

With online content so readily accessible and the power of platforms accelerating change, new models of delivery are appearing beyond MOOCs and OERs. For example, Udemy provides curriculum from independent educators offering standard undergraduate curriculum at reasonable prices. Straighterline.com offers the 50 most common undergraduate general education courses for a nominal fee. The curriculum is approved by the American Council of Education and offered through more than 130 college and university partners. In 2017, they enrolled 22,000 new students in addition to the 75,000 already enrolled and had students report successfully transferring their courses to more than 2,000 colleges and universities. While some may question their quality at this point, the arguments remind me of those I heard 25 years ago when the University of Phoenix, Walden, Nova, and others burst on the scene with online programs — and most of us spent the subsequent 10 years playing catch up once their quality improved.

The reality of wildly accessible content and people increasingly comfortable learning in varied ways is now facilitating the largest employers bypassing traditional higher education delivery systems (read colleges and universities) to simply offer their own curriculum to accelerate the development of a qualified workforce. Consider employer-driven content like AT&T and Walmart partnering with Coursera; Salesforce offering free curriculum to train associates across the country to take their product to scale; Google offering their IT Certifications; and the intense demand for computer programmers has prompted the rise of coding boot camps like the Flatiron School that is now approved for federal financial aid, Apple and their Everyone Can Code curriculum and Amazon coding camps.

MVCC is uniquely positioned to address these disruptive innovations because of the work we have done over the last several years. With the creation of a the Code Academy, the incorporation of the Google IT Training Certificate into our non-credit offerings and soon our credit offerings, and our current work in examining and redesigning prior learning assessments, we are ready to do the work necessary to stay relevant while maintaining the highest of academic standards. MVCC is the first community college in the SUNY System to adopt a Board of Trustees Policy on Microcredentials, and it is this kind of forward thinking — and our unique ability to take innovations and make them our own — that will help us thrive in these uncertain times. 

The future is already here. We must find small spaces to safely prototype and utilize some of these emerging delivery systems to eventually integrate into our regular, core offerings that in five to 10 years will need to dramatically change in ways we’re only now beginning to see.

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Embracing Paradox: the Future of Community Colleges

Thomas Friedman’s latest book, Thank You for Being Late: The Optimist’s Guide to the Age of Acceleration, provides a thorough examination of all the forces driving and truly accelerating change, with an emphasis on the manner by which technology is disrupting every sector of our lives … and likewise, higher education itself is in the early stages of disruption. 

As community colleges, we pride ourselves on thinking about how our communities are changing and thinking about the future of work; however, we talk about the future of work as though it’s a detached, existential concept — someone else’s work and not our own. When we think about the future of work, we must make a special effort to also consider the future of OUR work and how it is fundamentally changing.

The general notion of college as we know it is not going away anytime soon. A smaller percentage of Americans will attend a traditional college setting as they clock in their 45 hours of seat time for each credit hour of sitting— er, I mean learning. We will, however, have fewer colleges, as smaller colleges are unable to weather the storm, and close their doors or merge with others. Most colleges will rather retain many of the familiar elements but will morph into adaptive enterprises with creative networks and unique partnerships to meet future student needs. Students are already learning differently. Many teenagers today are fearless. Why wouldn’t they be when they can search for YouTube videos on how to do, build, create, fix, and learn most anything? As I’ve heard my friend and Amarillo College President Russell Lowery-Hart say, “Let’s face it, things need to evolve — faculty have students fact-checking them on smartphones in real time during class!” Even many returning adults are learning in new ways, as they too can search YouTube videos to learn new things and are often more motivated to access content through podcasts and other means.  

To summarize Peter Smith’s focus in his recent book, Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education, the new reality is that colleges and universities used to be an oasis of knowledge surrounded by a desert only a few could cross. With technology today, the desert has gone green. It’s not that disruption is coming for higher education, it’s already here in the form of wildly accessible content, private companies with transcripting platforms to document all that learning, and accelerating technology that will fundamentally change how people learn.

Although disruption to this point feels more like an uncomfortable itch than a broken limb, many colleges are already in the midst of managing a profound array of unprecedented paradox. With organizational cultures rooted in and shaped by more than 300 years of academic traditions, behaviors, and beliefs, community colleges must find ways to:

• productively honor the past while creating the future;  
• adapt to change by following the principle of preserve the core and stimulate progress that Jim Collins set forth in his book Good to Great;  
• balance access through enrollment (which drives 75 percent of MVCC’s operating budget through tuition and state aid) and student success and graduation (which requires processes that counter access at times); and
• respond to increasingly strained fiscal resources while adapting to change by managing simultaneous personnel layoffs and hiring for new positions in college budgets necessary to keep the institution evolving and vibrant.

And all of these paradoxical elements can be summarized in the new reality for community colleges — the need to do more AND better with less. MVCC is undergoing changes at a rapid pace, and the need for further and more innovative change is only going to accelerate our efforts with Guided Pathways. From new intake systems to redesigning developmental education, MVCC is anticipating the need, and every day is learning to do more and better with less. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, the wave of change is coming, and those colleges that recognize it sooner rather than later (#anticipate) will make it to shore safely. They may have a redesigned or reimagined surfboard or will have manufactured an even more efficient, relevant, and successful mechanism to ride the wave, but they will make it to shore nonetheless. Those colleges that fail to turn into the wave just enough to accelerate out of the tube will be overwhelmed and vanish — it’s just a matter of time.  

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Guided Pathways: Prelude to Disruption

CNN photo

I recently saw a video on Twitter showing a surfer setting the world record for riding the largest wave (82 feet tall) and I retweeted the first thing that came to my mind: "I don't know why, but I can't help but think that this is a metaphor for public higher education leaders in the next 5-10 years...#anticipate."

Upon further reflection, I think the metaphor came to mind because higher education is quietly being disrupted. The ripples are small right now, but the tide is definitely going out, and those who fail to see it will be overcome by a tsunami of change in the coming years. Fortunately, MVCC is one of more than 250 of America’s 1,100 community colleges engaged in Guided Pathways reform in some way. MVCC is one of the 13 community colleges in the American Association of Community Colleges Guided Pathways 2.0 cohort and is fortunate to simultaneously participate in the New York State Success Center Guided Pathways cohort funded by Jobs For the Future (JFF). With funding from our Oneida County sponsor, we are able to send teams of faculty and staff to institutes to receive technical assistance and coaching that expose us to national best practices and a framework for fundamentally reimagining the student experience. We are also fortunate to have financial support from our County to be members of the Achieving the Dream (ATD) National Reform Network since 2014. The culture shift that we’ve experienced through this network served as a critical pre-cursor to our Guided Pathways work.

My early experience at the Guided Pathways institutes gave me the impression that this reform was about two things — organizing academic program curricula into clear career pathways for students; and rethinking student onboarding and support systems. Simple and clear, I thought. The deeper our teams got into Guided Pathways, it became abundantly clear that there was more to this reform, and it was anything but simple. To truly apply the Guided Pathways framework and reimagine the student experience, we are in the process of:

1.    Remapping our entire curriculum across all programs.

2.    Rethinking our student onboarding process from admissions to the first day of class.

3.    Overhauling our student advising system to consider more intentional and personalized models at scale.

4.    Frontloading career services to support students in making better choices at the beginning of their academic experience — as a two-year college, our students don’t have time to drift around and “find themselves.”

5.    Transforming our approaches to developmental education by embracing national research and evidence-based practices that have demonstrated more effective models to address student learning needs.

6.    Disaggregating our data to understand the impact of our systems on low-income and minority students to put equity front and center in our collective work.

7.    Infusing data into our regular decision-making processes.

8.    Providing inescapable wrap-around supports to address students’ non-cognitive needs associated with everyday living, like housing and food insecurities, transportation, and other priorities that can compromise student success.

9.    Evaluating all of our technologies that have grown in number and complexity in an effort to leverage everything we have toward increasing student success.

10.  Finding new ways of working together as we do all of this simultaneously, when in the past any one of these efforts alone would have taken two years or more.

Guided Pathways is not a fad or a project, but rather a comprehensive, evidence-based framework that requires a long-term, ongoing institutional commitment that will continue to evolve as we fundamentally re-examine our approaches to student success. As dramatic and disruptive as the pending changes from this work will be, I believe it is only a precursor to even more disruptive changes that lie ahead for postsecondary education — changes that will likely unbundle, accelerate, and once again re-imagine learning and student success at our colleges. Organizational success in the future will require us to challenge our assumptions, question much of what we believe to be true, and accelerate our own learning to embrace changes and models of learning that were impossible to even conceive of let alone consider in the past.

During my time at MVCC, I have seen the College community face various challenges, and in each instance the College has shown a unique ability to synthesize the best of these ideas and national research, and at its own pace, make these ideas our own. We embrace the need for change, and we find a way to make it fit our unique culture. This tempered and considered approach to incorporating best practices has proven to be a hallmark of MVCC’s resilience. We are guided by our values, and we make change our own. 

For my first five years at MVCC, I wrote a blog post most every week during the fall and spring semester. It was a way for me to make sense of the College and the community that were so new to me, as well as share my thoughts on what I was learning. For the past seven years, I have written far fewer blog posts, as we’ve gotten into the thick of a great deal of organizational change — and I rechanneled my writing energies into a book titled Competing on Culture: Driving Change in Community Colleges. I am immensely fortunate to have a supportive and visionary Board of Trustees and amazingly talented staff who provide me with the opportunity and mental bandwidth to deeply consider what’s happening in the world around us and clarify a path forward through some great unknowns. 

I think I have the beginnings of that path and am once again compelled to post weekly. For the next several weeks, I intend to describe how this wave of disruption is coming together, why organizational culture is the way through and out of the wave for community colleges, and how the culture at MVCC provides insight on the building blocks to create a culture of connection and anticipation that I’m betting will see us through to shore, poised to ride even bigger waves in the future.

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Martin Luther King Jr. — A Dream of Equity & Inclusion

It’s Black History Month in the 50th anniversary year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. I recently had the honor of delivering the keynote address at a memorial luncheon in King’s honor, sponsored by the Mohawk Valley Frontiers Club. Here is an edited version of that address, which revisits some interesting aspects of King’s speech that aren’t always widely known. 

While Dr. King’s life and legacy are filled with many fascinating elements, I have taken a particular interest in his “I Have a Dream” speech. I don’t make passing reference to it; I mean it. In 2013, the 50th anniversary of King’s speech, I downloaded it in its entirety on my iPhone and put it on a playlist of songs I listen to in quiet moments. The more I’ve listened to it, the more I've found his words to be like true lyrics. His cadence creates a beautiful baseline, his inflections and tone hit remarkable notes. His refrains of “100 years later, Now is the Time, We cannot be satisfied, and I have a Dream” create beautiful verses of what feels like a 16-minute masterpiece. I can’t recite the whole speech, but I’ve listened to it so many times over the years that I can essentially “sing along” from start to finish, like I do with most songs I listen to in private.

August 28, 1963, was a sun-filled summer day in Washington, D.C., when an estimated 250,000 individuals gathered for an event that Dr. King said was “to go down in history, as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.” It was officially called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” Of the 250,000 marchers, an estimated 60,000 (nearly 25 percent) were white, which is partly why King said “… many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.” That got some of the loudest applause in the whole speech — there was unity among those at the march.

There were actually 10 speakers that day. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen the hilarious skit on “Key and Peele” about what the man scheduled to speak after Dr. King might have said. Can you imagine if someone had to follow Dr. King? What do you say? It’s a great skit. Fortunately, no one had to bear that burden; Dr. King was indeed the final speaker that day.

To me, the most fascinating anecdote about King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is that the “I have a dream” part was improvised. I heard about this on National Public Radio several years ago and found an interview with Clarence Jones on the website of the British newspaper, The Guardian. Jones was a speech writer for Dr. King and would often write the initial draft of his speeches, as he did for the speech that day in 1963.

The night before the march, Dr. King finished the outline at about midnight and then edited the draft in longhand. One of the aides who visited King’s suite that night saw words crossed out three or four times. He said it looked as though King were writing poetry. King went to sleep at about 4 a.m., giving the text to his aides to print and distribute. The “I have a dream” section was not in it. 

Jones recalls that King was winding up what would have been a well-received, but by his standards, fairly unremarkable oration. As King was telling people to go back to their homes in the South, singer Mahalia Jackson, who performed earlier in the program, shouted: “Tell ’em about the dream, Martin.” She had seen him deliver the dream refrain in Detroit two months earlier and was moved by it.

King continued, “Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.” Jackson shouted again: “Tell ’em about the dream!”

King continued, “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends.” Then he grabbed the podium and set his prepared text to his left. Jones said he turned to the person standing next to him and said: “These people don't know it, but they’re about to go to church.”

The most famous part of the speech almost never happened. And in later years, as Dr. King moved to focusing on opposing the Vietnam War and took up issues like poverty, he became more controversial. From 1965 until his death, the “I Have a Dream” speech was hardly mentioned. It was only upon his death that the speech was resurrected and memorialized as the inspirational beacon it is today.

I personally think that in the same way religious texts are used as guidance for individual behavior, Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech serves as guidance for societal behavior in this complex democratic nation called the United States of America. Just saying those words United States of America while gathering regular news stories these days can give a person pause. How united are we when it feels that we as a nation are as divided as we’ve been since Dr. King’s death?

How is it that hate has become so prevalent? How is it that misunderstanding has become so common? The internet has amplified our individual apathy to sift through the massive array of information and sort fact from fiction. Instead, we often go to our safe spaces and find information that affirms our own thinking because it’s easy, and we have other stuff to tend to in our busy lives. This allows half-truths to gain traction and fuel misunderstanding and hate. 

We don’t mention enough that hate is learned. How do we know this? Because the typical 6-year-old does not naturally hate. Six-year-olds ask “Why?” — they seek to understand the world around them. The answers they are given slowly layer one on top of another … answer after question, question after answer, and with each answer comes an emerging worldview that forms the child, molds the adolescent, shapes the teenager, and creates the adult, which aligns their individual and, in turn, societal behavior to Dr. King’s dream … or not. 

As adults, we find it easy to joke about how as teenagers we think we have all the answers, but that implies we somehow get back to asking questions and learning as adults. The most important part of this is that as adults, we need to rekindle that childhood curiosity of asking why: Why are certain things the way they are? Why do others think the way they do? Why do we, as individuals, think the way we do? Where is the common ground? 

How can we find the middle way to collaborate and find solutions to problems big and small? That is how we understand each other and move forward together.

I believe curiosity comes from education, and that education is a fundamental principle to democracy fueled by an educated citizenry. I was inspired a few short years ago when President Obama and others were begging the question if the time was right to expand our baseline of a free, compulsory education from a high school diploma to a two-year associate degree. He noted how the farmers of the 1890s thought it was crazy to require children to attend school until they were 18 — with the advent of free secondary education, the miracles of the 20th century, sometimes called the American century, were made possible. As technology and society change, where will America’s place in the world be in the 21st century?

A recent study surveyed parents of high school students. They were asked to rank the importance of a college education relative to the benefits that so many of us academics see in education. Research shows that college graduates live longer, are healthier, are more likely to vote and be engaged in their communities, experience greater levels of overall happiness and well-being, have more stable home lives and families, and numerous other benefits. All of those things paled in comparison to the reason these parents wanted their children to go to college, which was to get a good job. This parallels results of the Gallup World Survey, which included 250,000 respondents in more than 100 countries. What was the most important thing people wanted in life? A good-paying job — no matter the country. More and more in today’s modern world, a good-paying job comes with some level of college education. The reality for the foreseeable future is that college has increasingly become a precondition for upward mobility.

As we contemplate that inherent linkage between education beyond high school and securing a good-paying job, we should consider that the national poverty rate has not moved since 1965. The percentage of Americans living in poverty in 1965 was roughly 15 percent. It may vary a percent one way or the other periodically, but the poverty rate remains, to this day, roughly 15 percent of all Americans. 

This stubborn percentage seems inextricably wrapped around the axle of our society. It is tangled in the fabric of our federal and state laws and policies. It is knotted in the strands of our educational system and tightened by the wrenches in our legal system — a system that, according to the Center for American Progress, increased incarceration rates 700 percent between 1970 and 2005, and, without fundamental change, will incarcerate one in three black men at some point in their lifetime.

When we remember Dr. King, it’s important to remember that he believed in the power of education. He believed in education as the primary tool to empower individuals and communities to untangle the complex, inhibiting reality of situational and generational poverty in this country. Additional education also empowers individuals to think critically, solicit opinions and ideas from others to challenge their own way of thinking, to find common ground and solve problems together. And yet surprisingly, the conversation about a college education in this country today is questioning its very value, and policies in several states are moving education from a public right to a private good — available only to the few who can afford it.

In the context of today, it would be easy to feel that we seem more pointed away from than toward Dr. King’s dream. And although he often said in later years that his dream had become a nightmare, Dr. King himself never gave up on that dream. On Christmas Eve 1967, at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he told his congregation:

"I am personally the victim of deferred dreams … but in spite of that, I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream."

May those words inspire us in the same way that Dr. King’s Mountaintop speech in Memphis did the night before he was assassinated. You may recall that he took us on a mystical journey through time to tell God that given the chance, he would rather live in his time than any other time in the history of the world. There in Memphis in April of 1968, he said, “now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only-when-it-is-dark-enough … can you see the stars.”

For many of us, in different ways, we could likely say the same thing. The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. But I hope you agree with Dr. King that somehow, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

So let us live in our time today. Let us join together in hope. Let us work together with vitality to stay the course and fight for the inches while we hold true to the vision of the miles we must gain to move those stubbornly unjust numbers of poverty, incarceration, and educational attainment. May we find courage and resilience in knowing that it lies within us, in that unvarnished 6-year-old self we each carry within us, that which can animate and bring to life the dream of social and economic justice, equity and inclusion — and through our individual and collective actions each and every day we can honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his memory.

Please send comments and questions to presblog@mvcc.edu. 

Why Workplace? Why Now?

Why Workplace? 

Workplace by Facebook has the potential to transform communications at MVCC. With 70 percent of adults older than 25 using Facebook, it presents a familiar tool to dramatically change the way we communicate internally. Workplace can help evolve our organizational culture in meaningful ways to maintain and ensure continuity and input among staff and faculty. Everyone has critical insights, and this is a platform to scale and accelerate opportunities to engage with peers and provide key feedback.

One of the most powerful features of Workplace is its search feature that makes it easy for users to find files, old messages, and much more. Being able to talk to each other is one thing, but being able to go back in time and find content is critical. Workplace will provide lasting benefits for us by becoming an ever-growing knowledge base.

One of our core values is “Model the way.” Looking at innovative, collaboration platforms like Workplace helps us create an interesting and creative culture in the organization. Some might feel that embracing a leading-edge platform is a bit of a risk, but I believe it is an approach that is likely to be rewarding. 

There are three significant ways in which I believe Workplace can transform the way we communicate.

More efficient meetings: You’ll notice that many of the initial “groups” that have been created are committees and councils related to governance. Meetings can become more efficient if group members use Workplace to have conversations between meetings and share status reports and perspectives. As a result, the actual face-to-face meetings can be spent on important dialogue and debate versus the typical agenda comprised of mostly status updates and review, which leaves few moments for substantive conversation.

Increase awareness and sharing of ideas: Groups and individual posts can be used to share ideas and observations that stretch the thinking of others. The more we create affinity groups, post announcements, share articles, links, and other resources, the more we can connect ideas and find creative solutions. We can crowdsource our biggest challenges by engaging everyone in the solutions. As multiple authors like Steven Johnson write, great ideas come from a series of creative collisions, and the more organizations can find ways to create space for those collisions to occur more naturally and frequently, the more innovative the place will become.

Strengthen social connections: In this fast-paced society, slowing down enough to connect can be a challenge. Workplace provides an easily accessible platform for people to connect at work. Rather than leaving it up to chance or busy schedules to connect us in the hallways, colleagues also can connect on shared interests via Workplace. As individuals can join affinity groups with social interests via Facebook, they can do the same with Workplace. For example, if one person creates an open group titled “Adirondack Outdoors,” anyone who likes hiking or skiing could easily connect with co-workers who have similar interests — co-workers they might not have a chance to meet otherwise. Similarly, someone could create a closed group only open to a more defined group of co-workers to open lines of ongoing communications on shared topics of interest.

Why Now?

Our community faces a number of significant challenges, and MVCC is at the heart of offering solutions, so we need to be at our very best as an educational and community resource for the region. Society is changing quickly and in significant ways, and education is transforming even faster, with open educational resources, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence advancing exponentially. For MVCC to remain relevant and competitive, we need to continue finding creative solutions and, with limited resources, continue making the most of our efforts. An ever-changing and more complex future requires us to collaborate in new ways that can only occur by embracing the fact that information is power and connection is current to light the way. Workplace by Facebook is the energy grid by which we can accelerate our work together.

We’ve had more than 300 faculty and staff join Workplace in the first week alone. My expectations are that this will be an organic effort that evolves at the pace at which people are comfortable using it.  I imagine there will be some “voyeurs” initially waiting to see who posts what, but I anticipate that the more people post and use the platform to try new ways of sharing ideas and information, the more we’ll all reap the benefits I’ve described in this post.

Let’s get started. 

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.

Two Dimensions of Our Core Values

I love MVCC’s Core Values. They represent the essence of who we are and who we strive to be through four actionable phrases that seemingly have countless layers and dimensions worthy of reflection and exploration. While on a recent morning run, I came upon the significance of how important it is to think about our Core Values guiding our behavior not only with our students, but also with each other. 

Why I Run

MVCC President Randall VanWagoner running in the 2015 Ted Moore Run/Walk.

Why I Run

I’ve always considered myself an athlete, but I never ran without a ball.

I played a wide variety of sports growing up, but when I went to my one and only day of middle school track practice, I stopped after the first half mile and left to wait for my mom to pick me up. I didn't see the fun in running. Without some kind of ball, I didn't have a “why” to run, so I didn’t.

My running world changed in 2007 when my family and I relocated to the Mohawk Valley. I was encouraged to run in MVCC’s annual Ted Moore Memorial 5K Run/Walk, so I asked my oldest daughter, who was still in elementary school at the time, to run with me. We survived it, and better yet, we had a fun time running together. As we learned about the Boilermaker Road Race, our entire family began running in the 5K each year for that event. We all enjoyed running down Court Street to the finish line with the crowds cheering along both sides of the street. It was like getting the full Boilermaker experience, but only running one-third the distance.

In 2010, Steve Zogby gave me the encouragement to run the Boilermaker 15K. He said, “C’mon, you should do it! All you have to do is make sure you can run six miles and the crowd will carry you the rest of the way.” I since have said those very words to multiple people, trying to pay it forward because I’m so glad I took Steve’s advice. I ran the 15K that year, and thought I had checked it off my bucket list. I kept running the Ted Moore and Boilermaker 5K races with my family each year, thinking that was enough for me.

But over time my “why” became abundantly clear.

We have a Wellness Council at Mohawk Valley Community College, and I attended a workshop on well-being that covered research by the Gallup organization. I made a commitment to improve my physical well-being and set a goal of running the Boilermaker 15K again in 2016. As springtime came, I found myself enjoying the reflective time to run and quiet my mind. I became more centered and focused at work and more present in my interactions with others. I also became more aware of my diet and began eating a little better, which led to lowering my weight, which led to feeling better each day.

My “why” I run became to feel better and be better.

I ran the Ted Moore 5K last spring at my best time ever. We had more than 200 people participate, and had our largest fundraising effort ever for the Ted Moore Memorial Scholarship. It was a great day for the MVCC community. Late last summer, my oldest daughter and I ran in the Crim Festival of Races 10-mile race in Flint, Mich., where I grew up. We were part of a Boilermaker Road Race group that traveled there in a show of solidarity with the City of Flint and its water crisis. The only two road races that sent people were the Boilermaker and the Boston Marathon — a pretty powerful statement.

My “why” I run gained a couple more points: to support great causes and to connect to the best of being human.

I started running every time I traveled somewhere new. I mapped out routes through parts of cities I might not otherwise see. I ran my first-ever Race to the Canal 5K along the Erie Canal.

My “why” I run now includes to see interesting sights and places.

On Boilermaker Sunday 2016, my family and I once again worked our morning routine like clockwork with all the friends, rides, pick-ups, drop-offs, and meet-ups. My wife and youngest daughter ran the 5K, as ever, and our oldest daughter and her friend ran the 15K, as did I. The local adage is true — if we could bottle the sense of community pride that’s evident on Boilermaker Sunday, the other 364 days around here would be incredible. Running down Culver Avenue, the Memorial Parkway, Champlin Avenue, and Whitesboro Street with so many friendly faces is uplifting. The views from Valley View are phenomenal and the feeling of running down a crowded Court Street through the finish line is exhilarating.

My “why” I run now is attached to something bigger than myself. It’s about being part of this community and touching a unique collective experience that can’t be replicated.

I would love to go back and tell my seventh-grade self “why” people should run. I’m forever grateful to this community for helping me discover my own “why”. This year, as the Ted Moore Run/Walk celebrates its 20th anniversary and the Boilermaker celebrates its 40th, I hope even more people discover their “why” and turn out in record numbers.

If you have any questions or comments, you can contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.