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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


Over the summer, each member of the President’s staff will take over this Wednesday Message to share his or her response on change, learning, students, and community colleges.  They will reflect on how swirling changes in higher education impact their work, their office/division, and their focus on student success.  This week’s message comes from Susan Salvador, Vice President, Student Services.

Student learning occurs throughout the entire college.  Although we have all heard this said before, the statement warrants attention:  student learning and personal-social growth is integrated and complex; all aspects of the college experience are impactful on the process.  The mission of the Student Services Division is to support this integrated and complex student learning process.  We work in partnership with others by offering services, programs, and educationally purposeful activities that are focused on helping to build an inclusive, robust, meaningful, supportive, intellectual, and engaging environment for students.

What is important and impactful at MCC is that we recognize that no single arena of experience is solely responsible for assuring completion.  We work in a collaborative culture, building upon each other’s strengths -- working to be an invisible organizational structure to best serve students.  For example, Student Services staff collaboratively led the implementation process for FACE (Financial Aid Course Eligibility) and currently oversee FACE training for faculty and staff, and problem-solving strategies for student issues.  Staff partnered with colleagues to design and implement Express Enrollment Days and Welcome Wednesdays, and we continue to explore new and different ways to enroll and retain our students.

In his article, Change and the Completion Agenda, Terry O’Banion states that community colleges “are now positioned to take on tougher tasks including the continuing transformation of their culture toward a more learning-centered system focused on completion.”  Student Services is committed to working collaboratively to “take on tougher tasks” to assist, where needed, in this transformation.  It is an exciting period of time as we, as O’Banion says, “embrace and engage in the change process.”

I look forward to your thoughts and invite you to share them via
the President's Blog.

Susan M. Salvador
Vice President, Student Services
08/22/2012