College Update

From: Sanford Shugart
To: All Faculty and Staff
Date: 11/11/04
Subject: College Update 

On Monday, I spent time with Governor Bush and several other college presidents discussing hurricane relief for the colleges, future funding issues, and related matters. It was a satisfying meeting, as he remains one of our most ardent supporters in Tallahassee. Following the meeting, one of his security staff, you know - dark suit, sun glasses, big muscles, wire in the ear - dropped back to share that he was a community college graduate and to thank us for what we do. In the moments we had together, he shared that he was from the wrong neighborhood, went to the wrong high school, had the wrong attitude, and got all the wrong academic results. When he finally squeaked into a university, he lasted only a semester. A year later, he began again at a community college and discovered he had the ability to learn anything we had to teach because of the supportive environment, small classes, caring faculty and, most of all, our belief in him. As he rushed to catch up to the Governor departing the meeting he thanked us again.

The Governors remarks at the conference in our private meeting were encouraging, but it was this young mans comments that filled my thoughts as I drove back from the meeting in Tampa.

What he had to say confirmed the central ideas that have animated our work at Valencia the past several years:
-Anyone can learn under the right conditions
-High expectations and engagement leads to high achievement
-Even for students with serious deficits, we can close the gap if our efforts are focused, evidence-based, and help students to start right
-Factors that have traditionally been associated with differences in learning, such as a students ethnicity, neighborhood, economic status, language group, etc. can be overcome - all students have the ability to learn at a high level if we can partner effectively with them as learners.

This encouragement is timely. Valencia has been offered a wonderful opportunity to extend our best work, to close the gap in achievement and demonstrate that all students can succeed in college under the right conditions. We have been invited by the Lumina Foundation to prepare a major grant request ($1.6 million spread over four years) along with more than twenty other leading community colleges under a project called Achieving the Dream. The goals of the project align perfectly with our own goals (Start Right, Learning by Design, Learning First) and call us to move a few of the most promising improvements in our work from projects to college wide implementation. (Remember our discussion at Convocation about scaling solutions to the institution to improve learning for all students?)

We are just beginning the work to design the grant proposal and project. The application is due in the spring. True to the collaborative spirit of the college, hundreds of you will be invited to the design process. This will include several smaller design teams for particular initiatives and at least one of the Big Meetings we have used in the past to accelerate our work and gain the insight of faculty and staff all over the college.

This work isnt about the money in the grant, though it is nice to have some extra resources. This is about extending our best ongoing work to improve the conditions of learning, especially at the front door, for all of our students. I invite you into this new phase of our work. Watch for specific announcements from others in the very near future that will tell you how you might join the work.

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