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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


This is the time when critics put together their “best of” lists and when holiday party conversations almost always include a question along the lines of “What was your favorite <fill in the blank> this year?” One book that will likely not appear on any of the lists or quickly come to mind during “best of” discussions with friends is Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Success. Yet, this work by Tom Bailey, Shanna Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins has generated considerable interest and discussion over the fall semester at MCC. With good reason.

As our College moves to scale the Academies Model in Fall 2016 and becomes one of the inaugural AACC Pathways Project colleges, MCC is once again leading innovation in community college programming and student success. The embrace of the guided pathways model—first by our faculty, then by our College—has been all about improving student learning and success. MCC’s Academies Model and the six schools within the framework exemplify the structure that Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins highlight in their study as most impactful for students. 

The authors are researchers at the Community College Research Center (CCRC), which is housed at Columbia University.  Their field research and data on community college students’ educational outcomes and financial challenges led CCRC to recommend that colleges consider providing students with more structured pathways that offer clearer programs of study, embedded supports, and more easily understood connections to transfer or work. Though the work at MCC began well before the book was published, to many at our College, these recommendations from Bailey, Jaggars, and Jenkins sounded a lot like the Academies Model.

So, it is not surprising that Redesigning America’s Community Colleges became an MCC read for 2015-2016. Whether in small study groups of faculty and staff or an online community, many of us have been working our way through the book and sharing our thoughts with our colleagues. As an unexpected benefit, these groups have been organized by time, not position or role, so the discussions have been richer and deeper because of their diversity of experience. We know that nothing ever “goes by the book,” so the opportunity to compare the studies and research from Columbia’s Community College Research Center to our lived reality at MCC has been valuable and important.

If you have not yet been able to get a copy of the book or participate in the discussions, know that it’s not too late to make a resolution for the new year to catch up and join in.  Please contact the Karen McCarthy at <mailto:kmccarthy30@monroecc.edu> or Jon Iuzzini at <mailto:jiuzzini@monroecc.edu>.

If you are reading or have read the book, please share your perspective on the blog.

Anne M. Kress
Office of the President
12/09/2015