As September Rolls Around

September means the beginning of a new school year, and since starting this new venture, I have been thinking a lot about my old life as an English Professor in the US community college system. It turns out that the UK does not have a perfect analog for what I used to do (foundation college comes closest), which means nobody really understands what it is I have to offer. The following essay was written by myself for a creative writing course (‘Writing From Life’) at Rutgers University in the summer of 2015 as part of my MA in Liberal Studies degree (which sadly and much to my chagrin remains unfinished). I cannot think of a better way to educate a British audience about my teaching philosophy and experience than to repost this essay. It contains my thoughts about higher education and, I hope, relays my passion for teaching, learning, and student success.

Yes, It Is “Real College”

Higher education gets a bad rap these days, no thanks to state legislatures who keep slashing and cutting budget appropriations and politicians who would have us believe that college is not worth the investment or that education should not be considered a public good.  Among the non-college-educated population, higher education may seem like a waste of time and money, but I would argue that this is far from the case. Much of the perception stems from a misunderstanding about what colleges do. When most people think about higher education, they imagine the large research institutions, like Rutgers or the University of Oklahoma, or the Ivy League schools, like Harvard and Yale. But higher education has another, less well-known, side, and the common experience of most American college students is much closer to this less glamorous reality. While the large research institutions and the Ivy League colleges are doing remarkable things, the education of a large percentage of America’s college students takes place on small campuses throughout the country, and these campuses are typically much smaller, often lacking dormitories or other campus amenities, and often without the large endowments that keep the major universities in business. I teach at a suburban community college.

My Students

My students come from every different background imaginable. Most are from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Many are first-generation college students. Many, although not most, are attending Rose State College on the “Ticket to Rose” program, which pays for their first two years of community college if they meet certain qualifications, live within specific geographic boundaries, and keep their grades up.  Given the demographics of Eastern Oklahoma County, few students come from families who earn too much to qualify for need-based assistance.  

Although we have a few students who come from families where college is the family culture, those students are quite rare. More common is the first-generation college student. These students are the first in their families to attend college, which means they lack the family support structure that provides guidance as they prepare and attend classes. They simply don’t know what to do. These are the students who so commonly fall through the cracks and disappear mid-semester, frequently after their first essays are graded or after spring break. And more often than not, these students never withdraw. They simply stop coming, which means their transcripts are marred with failing grades, affecting their future prospects, particularly if they have received financial aid, which most of them do. These students frequently move from college to college without ever completing a credential. This is one of the biggest challenges facing community colleges today because community college graduation rates are incredibly low: rates in the 10 and 20 percent range are not uncommon. State funding appropriations for community colleges are often based on these numbers, which means we have less money to educate the very students who need education the most.  The students are frequently saddled with debt as they are forced to repay loans, and sometimes even grants, due to non-attendance. 

My students have a few other things in common. They tend to be terrified of writing. As a member of the first-year writing faculty, I see many students who have never written a formal essay, or who have not taken an English class in so many years they don’t remember anything beyond very rudimentary communication. Large numbers of our students require remediation in one or more subject areas, most typically math and English. Community college resources are used to remediate students - to get them ready for college-level work. Many of these students, although certainly not all, have graduated from high school. Many of our high school graduates have been out of formal education for many years, often several decades. 

Community College Faculty

I sometimes wonder how my students imagine me. They undoubtedly believe I make more money than I do. They have all seen movies about college professors who wear tweed jackets and live in nice houses with immense libraries. Oh, I have the books alright. But with an office the size of a large broom closet, they live in boxes that line the walls of my small apartment. And far from being evidence of wealth, the majority of my books are simply evidence of the desperation with which academic publishers court professors looking for textbook adoptions. 

Faculty positions at my community college are typically filled from the ranks of adjunct instructors who, after years of graduate school, with its conference presentations, publications, and teaching assistantships,  are finally confronted with the grim realities of an ailing academe. For every job posting in my area, there are dozens, if not hundreds of applicants. Most of the applicants were classmates in grad school, or colleagues in the adjunct ranks where they served out their terms as “freeway fliers,” crossing their fingers each spring in the hope that at least one of us would retire so they could have at least a chance at the brass ring that is the tenure track.

As often as tenured or tenure-track community college faculty may complain about the challenges inherent in our jobs, and although for me the tenure process was tantamount to serving a five-year sentence in Azkaban Prison and having my soul sucked out daily by the dementors,the adjuncts have it much harder than we do. Many of our adjunct faculty are teaching at multiple schools, unless they are fortunate enough to be married with spouses whose livelihoods are sufficient to keep food on the table. As an adjunct, I taught up to three courses per semester at each of four separate college and university campuses, all for the luxurious salary of $1,800 to $2,100 per course with neither benefits nor job security. 

While the tenure process at community college ensures a greater level of job security, it presents its own difficulties for instructors academics who fall outside the accepted behavioral and ideological norms. Since our college is focused on teaching and remediation, our faculty are required to teach at least five courses per semester (fifteen credit hours) and many teach as many as twenty-one credit hours in a semester. This is in addition to service hours that may include serving on campus committees or as advisors to student organizations. At most community colleges, at least in my discipline, research is not emphasized, so the tenure process is based entirely on the annual evaluations by both students and faculty peers. What this boils down to is a popularity contest in which being liked by students (to earn good evaluation scores) and respected by peers, who may be driven by ego and tribalism. So while tenure is not difficult to earn at my college - a simple majority decision based on a yes/no vote of the already-tenured faculty in my own academic division, the process to get there is fraught with personality conflict and the ever-present temptation of grade inflation to earn high marks from students. For what it is worth, the tenure minefield at community college differs from that of elite universities only in the specific requirements (such as research or grantmaking) and in intensity. A very good friend was going through the tenure process at Oxford University at the same time I was at Rose State College, and his stories were surprisingly similar to mine, particularly in terms of tribalism and ego. Same game, different league.

Phi Theta Kappa

It would be a mistake to assume all community college students are on the low end of the academic spectrum. About ten percent of our students achieve at least a 3.5 cumulative GPA and are invited to Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society, and roughly ten percent of those students accept the invitation. This one percent of community college students are doing remarkable things in this country. It has been my privilege for the past five years to be a faculty advisor for the Alpha Eta Alpha chapter of this incredible organization, and I have recently been tapped to be the Associate Regional Coordinator for the Oklahoma/Arkansas Region. While the majority of community college students are slogging along in the middle, these fine students are making a difference on their campuses, in their communities, and in the world. 

Phi Theta Kappa, the largest international honor society in the world, offers opportunities to community college students to engage in real scholarship and service learning at a level not usually seen in two-year colleges. Phi Theta Kappa programming focuses on four hallmarks: Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Fellowship. Chapters are required to submit two major projects each year: the College Project and the Honors in Action project. Each project is planned and implemented by the students under the supervision of an advisor, written up, and submitted online to be entered into a competition for the Most Outstanding Chapter, awarded at the NerdNation International Convention each spring. 

By engaging in the research, service, and leadership development required for a successful Honors in Action project, students engage in academically rigorous programming that has been compared to a master’s thesis. For many community college students, this level of scholarship will be new to them, and stories abound of students whose lives have been changed by successfully completing, as part of a team, one of these projects. Chapter officers and members must work as a team to complete the project since they are in charge of choosing a topic, planning and conducting scholarly research, discovering a need within their communities that they can meet, and developing and implementing a service learning project to meet an identified need. Remember, these students often come from underprivileged backgrounds and typically have not done any type of advanced scholarly research before, much less implemented a project of this scale. Phi Theta Kappa puts a large emphasis on leadership development versus leadership roles, and students must figure out what they don’t know how to do, seek out help to learn how to do it, and then bring that information back to their chapters in order to implement their projects. 

My time advising my college’s Phi Theta Kappa chapter has been the most rewarding aspect of an already rewarding job. I have taken students on their first plane ride, their first train ride, and their first hot air balloon ride. I have taken students out of their home state for the first time in their lives. Yes, there have been challenging travel moments, like the time I lost a student at the airport because she did not realize her bags were checked through to San Jose and left the secure area of DFW - during a 20-minute layover. (We all made the connection somehow, but my heart stopped beating for a few minutes!) But the challenges have been nothing compared to the joys I have had seeing students set their goals high and then work hard to reach those goals. 

Conclusion

Someone once asked me what I hoped to achieve in my career. I answered that I hoped that one day somebody would see me as an instrument of change, as the person who made them realize they could achieve much more than they ever dreamed.  My career is neither glamorous nor particularly cerebral, and I do not work in an ivory tower. But my job is meaningful in ways that really matter to many very real people. Community colleges serve a wide range of needs within their communities.  As open-enrollment institutions, they also serve a wide range of students with different needs and differing levels of prior achievement. As a faculty member of a community college, I have the privilege of assisting the most needy students in the Academy, but I also have the responsibility of working with some of the best and brightest students in the country. As an institution, my college has a mission to provide educational services to all members of our immediate community and beyond. We serve students seeking an Associate's Degree to transfer on to the four-year senior college, and we serve students seeking certificates and other credentials to progress on their career paths. In today’s economy, community colleges serve an essential role in the Academy, and although my career has presented many challenges, some of which seemed insurmountable - tenure! - I am a proud community college professor who, at the end of the day, knows that whatever else she does, she has the capacity to change lives through her work.