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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


This past fall, MCC began a new colloquium series to herald its next 50 years: Essential Discussions. The goal of the ED was to bring to MCC nationally recognized voices on topics critical to our future and mission, allowing the college community and the broader community of our sister colleges and partners to participate in these “essential discussions.”

On March 18, we will host a colloquium on STEM: Preparing Our Nation's Future Innovators. The day speaks specifically to the role that community colleges play in preparing students both for transfer into STEM disciplines and for direct entry into the workforce in STEM-related fields. Recently, report after report has spoken to why community colleges must take an active role in this essential discussion.

We have a pressing need to engage more, and more diverse, US students in these disciplines—for several reasons. The first is the role they play in driving the innovation economy, which has historically been central to the nation’s growth and prosperity and to individual’s own economic prosperity. Recent studies have paid specific attention to the so-called “STEM-premium,” the reduced unemployment and increased earnings found among graduates in these fields. Significantly, the STEM-premium is greatest at the two-year degree level, where STEM grads earn 30% more than those in other fields. (All data from STEM Education: Preparing for the Jobs of the Future, US Congress Joint Economic Committee, April 2012)

Secondly, and equally significant given our student population and access/opportunity mission, too frequently women and minority students do not pursue STEM degrees. In fact, at the very same moment that the percentage of all college degrees awarded to women has edged past those awarded to men, the degrees awarded in STEM fields has fallen (by as much as 10% in some disciplines). Hispanics and African-Americans represent 11% and 14% of the nation’s workforce overall, but only about 6% of the STEM workforce. Given the diversity of the students MCC (and all community colleges) serve, we are the ideal students to turn this trend around and open pathways to STEM for the full diversity of our community.

It’s this very topic that our morning keynote presenter, University of Maryland-Baltimore County President Freeman Hrabowski will address. If you have never heard Dr. Hrabowski (himself a mathematician) speak, you are in for an amazing experience! There’s not an award he hasn’t won, nor a battle he hasn’t waged on behalf of students and higher education. And, I know we’ve lined up the best not just because I know him but because folks have been stopping me for months asking how in the world we landed him!
(For a preview, check out his TEDxAtlantic talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLYMLt4MQ0Y; or watch this "60 Minutes" feature at https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388127n).

Freeman Hrabowski’s remarks are just the beginning of a fantastic day of presentations and discussions from leading national voices, including David Brown from NSF, SUNY RF President (and former NSF Directorate leader) Tim Killeen, Keuka President and computer scientist Jorge Diaz-Herrera, and a panel of local CEOs of STEM-related firms.

I encourage you to attend the whole day or just part, but either way, please learn more and register on the Essential Discussions website: https://www.monroecc.edu/depts/acadserv/colloquia/

Your feedback is welcome. Please post your thoughts to the blog.

    Anne M. Kress
    President's Office
    03/06/2013