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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 Emeterio Otero, Executive Dean, Damon City Campus.

At our DCC executive leadership team meeting Kate Schiefen, Ann Topping and I reflected on the many good things occurring with the DCC community.  We are reversing the downward trend in student enrollment because we are working together to engage new and currently enrolled students.  We work well together because we are a campus community that believes in itself, and is resilient and passionate about the success of our students.

We also see significant progress occurring with our plans for the new campus. Through the diligent work of the College’s new campus planning team, we see administrative and political indicators that suggest that we will successfully finance the new campus at Kodak towards year’s end. Our confidence in this undertaking is high.

To that end, as a community, we have interesting and challenging work in front of us.  The new campus compels us to team up with other college members to design new learning spaces that are attractive and reflective of a 21st century learning environment.

As we plan for the new campus intriguing questions emerge like, what is a learning space?  How will learning occur in the new campus?  How do we fully utilize the academy’s understanding of learning?  What technology will facilitate learning at the new campus? How do we incorporate the behaviors and tendencies of our student to augment the learning process?  These considerations are the first of many which will be identified through joint planning.

We are in the midst of a historic and exciting time at the College. We have begun to create structures and paths that lead to student attainment and completion. We look forward to adding to that innovation.


What are your thoughts on MCC, the Damon City Campus, and the 21st century learning environment? Share them on the President's Blog.

Emeterio Otero
President's Office
08/15/2012