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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


Yesterday, the Aspen Institute offered up its take on the nation’s top 10 percent community colleges as it kicked off a competition for the inaugural “Community College Excellence” prize. The institute relied on the analysis of data (drawn primarily from IPEDS) to compile the list, which somehow manages to exclude several states completely and which does not include MCC at all. Now, at the risk of seeming “sour grapes-y,” I have to say that as much as I love data (and I LOVE data), when it comes to the work we do, it simply doesn’t tell the whole story. At their very best, community colleges are so much more than the sum of their parts, and while some of the work we do certainly can be quantified, much of what we do cannot for a simple reason: at our very best we’re about the business of changing lives, opening doorways, deepening experiences, and engaging learners. The whole story is often a hard fought, lengthy, and epic one involving if not a cast of thousands at least a cast of dozens. And, unlike a data report, this story is why you work at a community college; it’s the narrative that keeps you going on and coming back for more. So, my question in response to the Aspen Institute list is this: what can’t be captured in the data?

In the past few weeks, I’ve played MCC tour guide for trustees and presidents from other colleges, state and national political leaders, and potential donors. Each of these trips around the world of MCC has left me with another glimpse of the epic journeys that make up the day to day life of our students and our college. In a Nursing classroom, I saw our amazing students “save” our human patient simulator from death by anaphylactic shock -- and then heard that some of these same students were themselves saved by emergency loans to meet child care and transportation needs. I walked in on an English professor teaching Shakespeare in one of our most high tech classrooms -- and heard her credit the room’s engaging 21st Century environment with improving student retention in a class about a 16th Century author. I hung back as two of MCC’s remarkable, confident student leaders beamed while talking with a tour group about their experience at the college, sharing how much they had grown while here. I had a hallway conversation with a PSTF alumnus who thanked me on behalf of the community for all MCC does to provide law enforcement with high quality and consistent training -- and retraining -- and for valuing their work. I listened as another alumnus shared that he would not have found his path to service in public life, a path that has led to the office of lieutenant governor, were it not for MCC and smiled as he recounted, all these years later, life lessons from his time at the college.

Could data capture these stories? Perhaps indirectly. Certainly, when 98 percent of our Nursing students pass their licensure exams, it says something about the quality of our program, but it doesn’t really say what makes our program, faculty, staff, and students so special. When more students are retained in a course, it is impressive, but that observation doesn’t show what they’ve learned, what they’ve struggled with to stay in the course and how their faculty have struggled right alongside them, how they’ve been engaged and moved from passive to active learners, how this one experience might change their futures: their plans, their goals, their lives. The data sits on top of the depth of these stories like the proverbial 10 percent of the iceberg you see that masks the 90 percent you don’t.

As I said, I love (LOVE) data. It helps us measure, benchmark, improve, understand, and account; it lets us stand back, review, and decide.  But, in the day-to-day work we do, it’s the other 90 percent that makes the difference. Thank you for making that difference, for making excellence a daily reality for our community and our students.

What do you see in the other 90 percent?  Share your thoughts on the
blog

Anne M. Kress
President's Office
04/27/2011