Chair Joseph asks about community college collaboration plan
Chair Joseph asks whether all community colleges will meet to share best practices for study abroad and recruiting underrepresented students. Holland says she supports the idea but notes competitive dynamics and says leadership should come from community colleges with central support.
Thank you, Council Member Brewer.
Is there eventually going to be a plan where all community colleges, just the community colleges, plan to sit together to see how can we exchange ideas, better practices in having a better study abroad and recruiting?
You know, the underrepresented students that we talked about and the ones that normally would not go on that trip?
Is that something that we're thinking about?
I think we should bring everyone to the room and let them explain also the challenges they face in doing that work and see how we can work, all work together to make sure our students are traveling and gaining new experiences.
And all of that.
And we heard leadership skills.
I'm a New York City council member today.
I studied abroad.
I was an educator.
So it paid off.
I think that's an excellent idea.
We have tried versions of that in the past.
I think that the competitive dynamic that Stephen mentioned is it can be a help.
or a hindrance, and we've got to harness that correctly, because as you know, one of our community colleges has been extraordinarily successful in recent years at increasing those numbers.
I think that that almost makes it look like, oh, well, you have this resource, you have a million dollars, of course you're doing well.
That's not necessarily constructive, right?
And I do want for the leadership to come from within the community colleges and simply support it.
So it's going to be tricky to find a way to accomplish this.
I would like to go back and look at, you know, the college that did this.
They were also a leader before they got that money, and they were providing.
Fundraising for scholarships, and they didn't actually provide it as scholarships to individual students.
They simply subsidized the cost of the programs that they were developing in-house, and that made it very sustainable.
So, you know, whether that money is there tomorrow or two years from now really will not be decisive.
They're going to be able to sustain strong programming.
The question is, how can we build that up at other campuses, recognizing that they're standing in a different river.