Good morning, Colleagues. This is DeRionne and I'm greeting you from the Central
Services Building. We have reached the middle of the semester. Can you believe
it? I can't! I can't believe how quickly the semester is going and last Monday we
had our official visit–first time–from our middle states chair Dr. Margaret
McMenamin who was passionate about the successes of colleges in our region. She
toured all three of our campuses, met with dozens of people at the college, and
gave us some very constructive feedback on our draft self-study.
I truly appreciate everyone who met with her, including students, faculty, and staff.
Everyone represented the best of Montgomery College. Now we still have a
lot of work to do around telling our story more thoroughly but I have no
doubt that we would do that with the same energy and expertise and pride that
we brought to the first draft of the self-study. The Middle States evaluation
is a process and the college is exactly where we're supposed to be. The chair's
feedback is helping us to ask some targeted questions about our goals but
more specifically about outcomes. This is a valuable exercise for our long-range
planning as we approach our next strategic plan, so I'm grateful for their
attention and their support in this process.
Now, our Board of Trustees also had a busy week. Not only did they meet with the
Middle States chair, they held the October board meeting on
the very same day. The meeting touched on academic planning the annual security
report and the FY 19 capital budget as you may have already heard we're moving
forward the current plan for the math and science building of the Takoma Park
Silver Spring campus, replacing science South and Falcon Hall. The college met
with the education committee of the County Council last week and the
committee praised our community engagement efforts. They acknowledged the
urgency of modern classrooms and labs for this campus and as a result the
facilities team will now move forward to hire an architect to begin the design
process. We will continue to communicate with the community to respond to their
concerns but we're also looking forward to working with them to shape the
project during the design charrette. Now, if you missed this story, I participated in
a panel at Georgetown University on DACA and the DREAMers last week.
Four local college presidents talked about why the DREAMers are so important
to our individual campuses and how we can best support them in the wake of the
DACA rescission. We also collaborated on an opt-ed calling on Congress to take action to protect these
students I hope our voices are heard in the heel. Another voice I want you to
hear from today is a student from the Montgomery College Achieving the Promise
Academy because I talk so often about this program and it has been so
instrumental to the organization and has so many new elements, I wanted to ask one
of our students how it is helping to shape him. Luis, how have you benefited
from the Achieving the Promise Academy. Hello, Doctor, thank you for having me.
First of all, I'd like to say that achieving the Promise Academy has helped
me in three major ways. Number one being a steady improvement of my GPA, thanks
to the counselor I was given and she's amazing she helps me from class
questions I don't understand in class to choosing a class. I also had they have
also helped me in formulating a path for my goals and aspirations which I want to
do in life. Which is very difficult to do come returning back to school for me and
third being they have helped me achieve my goal of coming back to school they
have helped me pull while life's pulling me away they kept me pulling me back and
I'm on steady path to graduating. Would it be fair to say your coach is in your
corner? Oh, yeah. They're there every time every day any time of day I need them.
That, my friends, is the best reason why we do this work and I am so delighted
and I want to thank Luis for telling a little bit of his story.
Montgomery College will continue to do this work. This work of meeting students
where they are, investing resources to help all students be successful. Not only
because it's our mission, because it's the right thing to do and it's about our
social justice imperative as an organization. I'll share with you that
I'm delighted to have been able to provide this update with you. I look
forward to seeing you next time and, most of all, take care of yourself and others
Be well.