At the All College Days program, I mentioned MCC’s participation in the American Association of Community Colleges Pathways Project and announced that Dr. Melinda Mechur Karp and Dr. Gretchen Schmidt, two nationally recognized higher education leaders, will come to campus this month for a two-day visit. While at MCC, they will meet with our students, faculty, staff and administrators to provide the national context for our structured pathways work (MCC Schools), discuss its strategic importance and its challenges, and answer questions from the College community.
I am pleased to invite you to attend a college-wide forum to meet with Drs. Karp and Schmidt on Thursday, September 22, from 12:30-1:30 pm, in the Warshof Conference Center of the R. Thomas Flynn Campus Center. The format of the forum will be a brief introduction, followed by a panel-style Q&A period with Drs. Karp and Schmidt as experts. We encourage you to submit questions in advance for the panelists to the Assistant to the Vice President Holly Wheeler at <
mailto:hwheeler@monroecc.edu> . I hope you are able to attend this forum.
For your review, below is some background information about our guest presenters:
* Gretchen Schmidt directs the Pathways Project for AACC; prior to this appointment, she served as the director for Jobs for the Future's Postsecondary State Policy team and as educational policy director and vice chancellor for academic and students services for the Virginia Community College System. One of the projects she led as vice chancellor was the system's developmental education redesign.
* Melinda Mechur Karp is assistant director at the Community College Research Center (Columbia University), where she leads several projects related to improving community college student success through effective use of data in planning and advising and through developmental education redesign. She also serves on the selection committee for the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.
I hope you will consider attending this forum on September 22.