Opinion

Getting to the top while being true to yourself

When I started thinking about becoming a president, I attended a leadership seminar where the keynote speaker provided words of wisdom and caution for those of us eager to advance into the role. “It is lonely at the top.” At the time, I did not realize the value of this sage advice. But today, now in […]

Viewpoint: Embracing workforce development

We may not agree on much, but everyone agrees on the critical importance of equipping hardworking Americans with the education, technical training, and much-needed skills to succeed in the workplace and help our economy do the same. Don’t believe me? The United States Senate passed a resolution recognizing September as National Workforce Development Month for […]

Reducing the racial divide in Minneapolis

The death of George Floyd made it painfully clear to us all how some law enforcement officers seem all too eager to use force unnecessarily on our neighbors, friends and family members of color. This tragedy shines a spotlight on a mere sliver of the racial disparities that are experienced across our community. Now under […]

Community colleges: Improving lives and your community’s economic vitality

The community’s college. It’s a phrase I think about often and share when I speak to our students and employees as well as in the community. To me, it means improving lives and the economic vitality of our community through education generation after generation and being responsive to current needs and proactive in preparing for […]

Technology must match strategic plan for colleges

To thrive in today’s higher education environment and meet diverse student needs — particularly during the pandemic — community colleges must leverage a technology adoption strategy designed to accommodate varied student populations. This ranges from traditional students attending full time to part-time students balancing work, family and other responsibilities while pursuing a degree (most likely […]

Endorsing OER

Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) faculty have been working with the college’s library to transition course materials from expensive, tightly-licensed, traditional textbooks into open educational resources (OER), which are freely accessible documents and media. The effort at BMCC is the largest and most consistent OER program throughout the City University of New York (CUNY) […]

Opinion: Keeping the trust in PR

I’m not sure about you, but I have received a lot of questions about the practice of public relations lately. Specifically, I have been asked how I would handle having to lie to the media. Of course, I answered quickly and heartily that I would not lie to the media or to the public and I […]

A Success Story: Closing the Skills Gap in America

The 21st-century labor market pivots more quickly than we could have imagined even 25 years ago. Changes in technology create new fields seemingly overnight. As the president of Montgomery College (MC), in Maryland, I have watched these dynamics for five years and have seen our curricula change with astonishing speed. This agility, it turns out, […]

The Keys to Boost Completion

Improving community college completion rates is not just a matter of opening the doors to greater access, though access is fundamentally important. Reaching that goal will also require partnering with our students to help them see what they can achieve if they take advantage of that access. An effective strategy for boosting completion must have […]

Focusing on the Final 10 Percent

This excerpted piece, by Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA — Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, can be accessed in full at Community College Daily, where it originally appeared. As a nation, we are entering the final stretch of the 2020 college completion challenge announced by President Obama in his first joint address to Congress […]