Program Outcome: Empower Student Success

The movie images portrayed above represent student struggle to succeed from different times. First, The Breakfast Club, 1985, with Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, and Anthony Michael Hall, contrasts student success struggles from different socio-economic backgrounds, cultures, and academic levels. At first, mutually antagonistic characters ultimately bonded over their mutual enemy, their detention monitor/jailer, Paul Gleason, finding a way to co-exist, collaborate, and become frienemies. Opposite is the iconic movie, To Sir, with love, where an inexperienced new faculty, Sidney Poitier, struggles to connect with students at North Quay Secondary School in London's tough East End after having been turned down for engineering positions throughout England. These images recall many barriers student and faculty alike face during their journey to empower student success.

Empowering student success is about pushing boundaries. Pedagogical boundaries, engagement boundaries, technological boundaries, equity and justice boundaries, and more. I love the statement, "Always be content, but never satisfied" as apropos while attempts to empower student success pushes us toward continuous improvement. McClenney & Arnsparger's (2012) Students speak: Are we listening? Starting right in the community college, is an eye-opening dissertation regarding how far we are from what students need to succeed, how underprepared so many new college students are, and how inadequate much of our teaching and learning methods are for todays students. With college completion rates typically in the teens, so many institutions still advocate rows of butt's in seats, satisfied using the "sage on the stage model" when a more collaborative "guide by the side" is needed. Not to mention, a chasm exists technologically between most faculty and their students; stifling rather than empowering student success.

Empowering student success drives measurably improving persistence, retention, engagement, and completion. Bain's (2004) deep learning changed my understanding of how student learn. Even if we acknowledge students are underprepared for college, lack motivation and face equity and justice isolation issues, it is still incumbent upon us as educators to deliver content making students care on a personal level, engaging them so they ask personally relevant questions; this is where deep learning starts, this is how knowledge is retained and readily applicable for ones entire life. Knowledge must be imprinted and student engagement drives this imprinting. The challenges to this goal are many. Dr. Stewart (2016) made a lasting and indelible impact regarding my understanding of diversity vs. justice and inclusion. Her discourse, entitled, Minding the Gap: The  Distance Between Compositional Diversity and Transformational Change blows out of the water the concept of counting noses to measure progress toward diversity. Dr. Dafina Stewart (2016) candidly states, successful educators must get to know the whole student and enable engagement with and between them at their very core. All students deserve this sense of belonging and empowerment, which has inspired me throughout the DCCL program.

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. ISBN: 0-674-01325-5

Center for Community College Student Engagement. (2013). A matter of degrees: engaging practices, engaging students (High-impact practices for community college student engagement). Austin, TX: The University of Texas at Austin, Community College Leadership Program.

Chickering, A. (2007, January 5). The Seven Vectors: An Overview. Retrieved from http://faculty.winthrop.edu/fullerb/QEP/7%20vectors%20of%20development.pdf

McClenney, K.M. & Arnsparger, A. (2012). Students speak: Are we listening? Starting right in the community college. Austin, TX: Center for Community College Student Engagement.

Stewart, D., (2016). Minding the gap; The distance between compositional diversity and institutional transformation. I Education at Illinois. Accessed from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aZYd3KmrkE