News from LaGuardia Community College |
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Friends of LaGuardia will be pleased to know that our Middle States Commission on Higher Education Self-Study Evaluation Visit last week went well. The (virtual) site visit was a major step in the three-year process to renew the college’s accreditation, without which there is no LaGuardia. During the two-day review, a team of evaluators from peer institutions met on Zoom with students, faculty, and staff to confirm the validity of our Self-Study -- the 143-page, 62,255-word institutional self-assessment prepared by dozens of LaGuardia volunteers.
The Middle States evaluators gave us a very positive review. In the words of our Steering Committee Co-Chairs, Dr. Reem Jaafar (Professor of Mathematics) and Dr. Justin Rogers-Cooper (Professor of English), the evaluators, “affirmed our Self-Study findings and affirmed our compliance with all requirements of affiliation…the team noted that our Self-Study reflected a college that was ‘impressive’ and lived a ‘spirit of innovation,’ and complimented a community who were ‘deeply committed to the institution.’” In addition, they noted, “we received the rare distinction of special commendation in six of the seven Middle States standards.” Permit me to add for emphasis that, yes, to earn so many commendations is rare.
To those of you not familiar with college accreditation, these are high marks. Still, the process is not over. We should receive a written evaluation next month and a formal decision by the Commission in June.
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The Spring Semester began on March 5 and for the first time in two years new students attended orientation in person, here on campus. This was a big deal. Our Campus Life Team did a great job welcoming them with banners, balloons, and hullabaloo. For Covid-impacted high school graduates who had endured three semesters of online DOE classes, we tried our best to give them college as they had imagined it. Reports from students and faculty that are back in their classrooms are extremely positive. |
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East Village Gallery Displays LaGuardia Student Photography |
The LaGuardia Student Photography Club recently landed its first-ever exhibition at a Manhattan gallery. Their work, titled “Anything Goes”, was featured on the walls of the EV Gallery in early March and remains showcased on the gallery’s website. It’s a celebration of our students’ passion for photography and how they use it to navigate what’s going on in their lives and communities. Kudos to LaGuardia’s Commercial Photography faculty who guided the students in preparing the exhibit.
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Accounting Alum Secures Walmart Deal |
Waad Rabbani (LaGuardia ’21) was one of the first participants in the 10,000 Small Businesses Fellows internship program that Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David M. Solomon and I launched in October. The Bangladeshi native interned with My Mom Knows Best, a company that makes PPE for children. According to business-owner Josephine Geraci, Waad helped secure a Walmart e-commerce account and created social media content that boosted sales. For his part, Waad thoroughly enjoyed the experience and now wants to become an entrepreneur. Each semester 50 LaGuardia students and alumni are selected for 12-week paid internships at NYC area firms led by graduates of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program that launched here in 2010.
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LaGuardia Launches New Effort to Help Former Students Return to the Classroom |
LaGuardia plans to lure adults who never finished college back to campus by giving them academic credit for skills learned on the job, in the military, or by other means outside the classroom. The mechanism for doing this is a new CUNY policy that governs the awarding of “CPL,” or Credit for Prior Learning. As this recent article in Inside Higher Ed explains (A ‘Smooth Return to College’), we are launching a dedicated Credit for Prior Learning Office -- a first for the college and for CUNY. Bear in mind that, according to the Center for an Urban Future, there are almost 700,000 New Yorkers who started college, earned some credits, but never graduated. Most would benefit professionally and financially by earning a college degree. Many can’t return to the CUNY system because they have an unpaid bill from way back when. (The CUNY bursar’s office has a long memory). A generous grant from the Robin Hood Foundation will underwrite LaGuardia’s CPL initiative; support from the College Foundation will increase access for low-income students, including those that can’t get government financial aid.
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As some of you may have heard, Dr. Paul Arcario, who has served as LaGuardia’s Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs since 2012, will be stepping down at the end of June. The provost is the chief academic officer of a college, and oversees faculty hiring, promotion, support, and development, academic programs and policy, teaching and learning, and much more. We recently launched a search with a 17-member committee chaired by Dr. Arthur Lau, Chair of Education and Language Acquisition. If you know someone who might be interested in serving as LaGuardia’s next provost, please share the job posting. Also, please feel free to refer them to Dr. Shirley Pippins, our search consultant (Shirley.Pippins@academicsearch.org), for more information.
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For Spring 22 we created a new format for Opening Sessions, my beginning-of-the-semester speech, which at some colleges is known as Convocation. Instead of my normal stem-winder, we coerced college administrators to take the stage in talk-show format with guess-who as host. You can meet some of my colleagues, get updates on our fundraising efforts, and hear about new initiatives by checking out the clip here.
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