At SVC, we are addressing one of the largest challenges facing our nation: how to get more and more Americans to and through college.  Other developed countries are surpassing the USA in the number of college graduates, and the workforce of the future and the stability of our economy require that we find ways to educate the next generation successfully.

Over the past five years, SVC has undertaken a series of innovative approaches designed to foster student success, creating promising practices that can be replicated and scaled at other colleges. These include our Anatomy & Physiology stretch course, our Pipelines into Partnership initiative, our Campus Community Dinner Series, our Roving Professor appointments, our first year project based learning effort which includes a DNA course, our Entrepreneurship program with iPad and Kindle learning, and our Student Philanthropy course.

These programs all evidence our commitment to and investment in student success.

Importantly, our efforts have not gone unnoticed.  We have presented at conferences, given speeches and written articles, sharing our efforts with a growing local, regional and national audience.  We still have work to do and much to learn but we are making meaningful strides.

The U.S. Department of Education learned of our efforts too, and we were the collegiate launch site for President Obama’s 2020 initiative, designed to encourage more college graduates by the year 2020.  Undersecretary Martha Kanter spoke to SVC incoming students in August 2010, and that same year, Secretary Arne Duncan congratulated the SVC community for its commitment to improving higher education.

These activities and this recognition led to a call from Washington this past summer when I was asked to join the US Department of Education. It was, as they say in the trade, an offer I could not refuse.

During my 12-month appointment, I will work with a remarkable and wide-ranging team of educators, government officials and policy makers to develop strategies that will enable more and more Americans to progress to and through college. Access to college, affordability of college, and retention in college are all issues I will be addressing.  These are the very topics that undergird the important work we do at SVC.

While I have many goals as I approach this opportunity in D.C., let me share two of them.  First, I hope to showcase the importance of education as a number one priority for our nation.  We need to dedicate our time, our resources and our talents to thinking innovatively about how to educate the next generation.  It is not too trite to say that our future depends on it, something we have recognized across the SVC campus.

Second, in addition to contributing to the national conversation about education, I fully expect to learn a great deal that I can bring back to campus in 2013.  Through meeting and engaging with other experts in higher education, I can see some of the best practices and research from across the nation and return to SVC with ways we can better serve our current and future students and enhance the educational experiences we provide.

Despite my move, SVC will be with me.  Technically, I am the person heading off to DC.  But, it is really SVC that is heading to Washington.  The vision and approaches engendered, nurtured and growing at SVC are the very reason I was selected to serve, and I look forward to sharing – and will proudly share — our SVC story in the nation’s Capital and to bringing back to SVC the experiences I garner while away.

The College will be in very good hands in my absence, under the leadership of Acting President Jim Beckwith and the Senior Team, all with the support of SVC Board of Trustees.  I have confidence in this Team; because of our work together and our shared vision for SVC, we can continue the College’s ongoing educational efforts without losing a beat.  I know our faculty and staff will continue their remarkable efforts to help our students succeed.  And, I know our students will work to continue their education and their service to the community.  I will be watching with pride.

The dissatisfaction with the word “jolly” has lead a host of folks to create their own expressions that follow the lead-in “’tis the season.”  There’s a new album titled, “’Tis the Season to be Fearless” – (there’s something appealing about that to me as an educator who believes learning requires considerable risk-taking.)

Financial guru Jim Cramer (of CNBC’s Mad Money) explains “’tis the season for retail,” and the just completed Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales are testament to the power of discounted shopping.  There’s the expression “’tis the season for shoplifting,” with identification of the items most shoplifted.

Then, consider other phrases used of late: ‘tis the season to be out of work and ‘tis the season to be frugal and ‘tis the season to catch norovirus.

I get the ironic and clever turns of phrase.  But, perhaps we can find words other than “jolly” to describe the holiday season — imparting a positive feeling without negative connotations.   I might suggest a near perfect substitution from the iconic American author Washington Irving (redacted and edited a bit):  …‘Tis the season to kindle the fire of hospitality … the genial fire of charity in the heart.”

Seems spot on to me.

So, to the entire SVC community, I wish you a safe, healthy and happy holiday season.  ‘Tis the season to ….!

Long story short, we should be encouraging more family dinners.

These research findings reinforce the importance of the Campus Community Dinner Series (CCDS), an initiative started at Southern Vermont College in Spring 2011 that will continue throughout academic year, 2011 – 2012.  CCDS brings local Bennington, VT families with high school aged children to the SVC campus to eat in the campus dining hall with college students who have been trained as dinner conversationalists by the Public Conversations Project. 

Supported by Sodexo, CCDS aims to accomplish several goals including:  (1) encouraging healthier eating; (2) fostering quality conversation over meals for the participating families; (3) providing greater links between the community and the college, including promoting the value of education; and (4) developing skills in the SVC students that will further their academic progress and promote their workplace success.  A quadruple win!

In this year’s CCDS program, lead by Charlotte Kelton, fifteen SVC students will participate alongside seven local families.  SVC hopes that a version of the program will continue in the summer of 2012 and involve even more families.

This initiative has also started a bigger conversation on the SVC campus about how the SVC dining hall experience can be enhanced to foster student success and the conversation over meals.  On December 5 –6, Professor Janet Flammang, the author of The Taste for Civilization, a leading book on the role of food in developing civic engagement, will be participating in the Campus Community Dinner Series and providing a lecture to the larger SVC community.

Follow the CCDS program on our website and consider the importance of eating together – on and off campus.  The initiative gives new meaning to a hackneyed phrase: Bon Appetit!

Our Mountaineer Scholars — the students in our Pipeline initiative – are off to a wonderful start to the academic year, and we look forward to helping them progress through college and develop into leaders within their workplaces and communities.

For me, while these portraits focused on those who had died, I kept thinking about those who survived – the children, spouses, partners, parents and friends of those killed.  As I noted in the article, I worried about the survivors – the women and children especially.  I worried that whatever money they received to recompense them for their losses – whether from the government, insurance or employers — it would not enough to fill the void death created. 

So, it came as something of a shock when I opened today’s New York Times and saw a host of portraits of those living with loss – the very people I had been concerned about a decade ago.  What these new Portraits of Loss demonstrate, and I read each one of them, was a sense of courage, a willingness to continue life in the face of death.  The survivors had found ways to move forward, while remembering their lost loved ones.  No small feat.

Importantly, courage can be demonstrated in lots of ways, both big and small.  Courage can be saving lives in battle or during a natural disaster.  And, courage can also be demonstrated by simply finding a way to live in the face of overwhelming odds or sadness.

We can learn about courage from the Portraits of Loss, the counterpoint to the now decade old Portraits of Grief about which I had written. Courage is what the survivors demonstrated over the past decade and will no doubt continue to demonstrate as they move forward in the coming decades.   

In so doing, perhaps they will help the rest of us summon courage, as and when we need it.

There is excitement in the air – and the usual mix of trepidation and inquisitiveness.  Understandably, everyone wants the launch of the new academic year to be a success; the quality of the beginning of the year tends to set the tone for the year to come.

Yet, in several positive ways, the academic year 2011 – 2012 is different.  Here’s why:

SVC is welcoming a record number of new students — both first year and transfer students.  We have the largest Nursing I class in the history of the institution, led by a wonderful new head of the nursing program, Dr. Karen Clement-O’Brien.  Our dorms are over-capacity, leading us to get creative in our housing plans for a small number of juniors and seniors.

Our growth has led to several key changes, all designed to create more space, more options and more opportunities for students.  We have created a soon-to-be-opened food court in the lower level of Hunter Hall, offering food choices in the evenings. The library has been renovated to create more congregating and study space for students during the day and evening, including three new study rooms.  A designated room in the dining hall will provide an added place where students can just hang out in the evening.   We have opened new sections of popular courses.

Our ‘little gem of a school’ has reached new heights in popularity. How exciting is that! A wonderful academic year awaits us.

Here is a sampling of the SVC summer happenings this year:

• Professors Scott Stein and Scott O’Callaghan ran two separate certificate classes for employees from Senior Whole Health, based in Massachusetts and with offices in Albany.  Co-teaching this course on conflict resolution in the field of healthcare, these SVC professors led these students in discussions on listening, negotiating and stress management.  Hunter Hall served as “home away from home” for these adult students – for both living and learning.  For many of the attendees, this was a chance to live on a college campus, get to know their counterparts from other offices within the company and garner knowledge that can benefit their day-to-day work. 
  

  summer conference notes

   The large post-it sheets hanging around the conference room off Greenberg Atrium were tangible evidence of remarkable hands-on learning.

• Under the leadership of Director of Counseling Mike Goodwin, we welcomed summer students in our Healthcare Academy program, run in conjunction with Wheelock College, for the second consecutive year. This program, aimed at rising high school juniors and seniors, focuses on healthcare careers and how they play out differently in urban and rural settings. These students split their time between SVC and Wheelock, visiting different healthcare providers in each locale.  Our hope is that some of these students will see themselves as college students at SVC or Wheelock, and participating SVC faculty ensured that these high schoolers had a peek preview of the wonderful educational opportunities that a college provides.
• A group of us spent time with Tom Post, the President of Sodexo, our food service provider.  Tom and his wife Gail enjoyed two delicious Sodexo prepared meals with members of the SVC community, a tour of Bennington with our provost and his wife, a meal at Mount Anthony Country Club and several meals at our home.  We had an opportunity to discuss our Campus Community Dinner Project with him, ably led by Charlotte Kelton.  This program, graciously re-funded by Sodexo, is being expanded for 2011 – 2012; fourteen SVC students will be selected to participate, along with seven local families.  This program encourages “family dinners” and connects SVC students to the local community.   
•  The SVC library in the Mansion has been renovated. While preserving its amazing beauty, the library now has glorious student space for reading and congregating (including three study rooms for group projects). The tutoring center has moved into what was the reserve room and the vast majority of books have been relocated to the former library computer lab. 
  

  transforming the library

  The computers are now being spread throughout the library.  There will be new furniture (arriving between now and the end of September). All in all, this is wonderful space where students can gather, do research and work.  

The summer is chock full of activity at SVC  — and wonderful lush green mountains, glorious flowers, fresh produce, warm (sometime hot) days and balmy nights. Howsoever lovely the summer and busy the days, we are eager to welcome our student-athletes back to campus the week of August 17, our new students (first years and transfers) on August 26 and our returning students on August 29 – with the first full day of classes on August 30.  This campus is not the same without our students!

As is often the case, unfortunately, rhetoric and hyperbole tend to crowd out the facts.  The piece in this week’s New York Times Sunday Review section captioned “Even for Cashiers, College Pays Off” by David Leonhardt, (June 26, 2011) provides much needed data (the commentary was inspired by this new study out of Georgetown University, on “The Undereducated American”) and compellingly explains why college matters for many of America’s youth.

On the dollar front, the student and family debt burden (thoughtfully incurred) is assuaged by the demonstrable improvement in earnings that college graduates obtain when compared to their high school educated counterparts, even in jobs that do not mandate a bachelor’s degree.  Stated in conventional business terms, the ROI on a college degree is high –- higher than for stocks and real estate, both of which have no shortage of investors despite recent appreciable market downturns.

In addition to making the case purely based on quantifiable dollar gains, Leonhardt recognizes the non-monetary but hugely important and oft-overlooked gains of higher education: a healthier, happier, more egalitarian citizenry with important skills like perseverance and discipline.  In short, our nation needs an educated populous for democracy to flourish.

At the end of the day, we keep asking whether, as a value proposition, higher education is worth the candle.  In my view, the answer can be stated quite simply.  While colleges and universities are far from perfect, those who graduate with a four-year degree from these institutions do better for themselves, their families, and our local and national communities than those who do not.

It is time to spend our time on how to improve that value proposition rather than asking whether a four-year degree even has value. Tempus fugit.

Let me explain.

Over the mantle in my office hangs a work by Israeli artist Yaacov Agam. When viewed from the left side, one sees brightly colored geometric shapes.  When viewed from the right side,  one sees interlinked black and white boxes, nary a color.  But, when the artwork is viewed head-on, one sees multiple shapes and multiple colors all intertwined, with so much activity that one is constantly challenged to find patterns and organizing themes.

Agam Art Left View

Agam Art Right View

This head-on view is what I think of as education’s gift – enhancing the way students of all ages experience our world.  Education is the result of our collective effort to enable students to see things from multiple perspectives and to reflect on and resolve the complexities of our world with greater insight together with respect and appreciation for the views of others. 

Agam Art Head-on View

Elizabeth Barkley, in her very recent book titled Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty, suggests (adopting the framework of W.G. Perry) that what I have described is our moving our college students “beyond dualistic thinking” so they come to realize that “truth is contextual and relative” although not all answers are “equally good.”

Today’s college students, many of whom have been in large high school classes where teachers are guided by demands that they teach to the test, struggle in college when confronted with tasks for which there is no easy answer and where they are called upon to do more than regurgitate facts.  They question why some professors don’t just “dish out” the answers.

The answer to their question and the answer to why higher education matters is eloquently demonstrated through the art hanging in my office, and I regularly remind students to come in and see the Agam when they are confused or are wondering why, exactly, they should pursue a college degree.

Yet another example of the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.

President Gross with Honorary Degree Recipients Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa and Marcus Samuelsson

I was struck at SVC’s 84th Commencement by the poignancy of the remarks of both of our Honorary Degree Recipients, award-winning neurosurgeon Dr. Alfredo Quinones Hinojosa of Johns Hopkins and Top Master Chef Marcus Samuelsson.  Both speakers credited their families who inspired their journeys.  Marcus Samuelsson spoke of the influence of his Swedish grandmother’s cooking, and Alfredo Quinones Hinojosa quoted his Mexican grandfather, Juan Quinones, whose words about navigating adversity have stayed with him. 

The speakers shared other key messages. Here are some from Marcus Samuelsson: “Be grateful;”  “Be passionate; keep asking questions;”  and  “Through food, you can learn so much about peoples’ lives.”

Here are a few from Dr. Q: “Find the steel in your soul;”  “When the days are dark, ….let the stars  guide you at night;” and  “There is no substitute for hard work.”

It’s not uncommon for commencement speakers to be trite, but neither speaker at SVC’s 84th Commencement was.   Their wisdom, their zest for living and their commitment to giving back shone through (as did the sun).  I hope their messages stay with our graduates as they move into the next phase of their lives.