Every two years, the Aspen Institute awards a $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence — what President Barack Obama described as “basically the Oscars for great community colleges.” The 2021 winners were announced earlier this month. And lo and behold, Amarillo College — which I have spotlighted before — was recognized with a runner-up “Rising Star” award. The first-place winner is another Texas institution, in the same city where I was born: San Antonio College (SAC), which serves predominantly part-time, low-income, and Hispanic students. When I read more about why SAC has been so successful, I noticed the same theme that also animates Amarillo College, and that is: Care. Photo by John Trainor CC BY 2.0 Consider “CARE” our most important four-letter word — and inextricable from a relationship-rich culture, which I’ve obsessed about on this blog. Both award-winning colleges “love students to success,” as Amarillo puts it. Care should drive the design of Big Initiatives, as well as our small, individual interactions. No matter our role, we have an opportunity to strengthen our caring culture every day. The Aspen profile of San Antonio College reads: A culture of caring has become a hallmark of excellent community colleges.… Continue Reading Community college excellence comes down to this 4-letter wordRead More
Image from Pixabay Many times during the pandemic, I have felt like an astronaut, flying solo in my home office “spaceship,” connected only through email and Zoom portals. We’ve relied on email to share information long before COVID, but our disrupted year gave me the space to really reflect on the communication that happens in between our Zoom meetings. Frequent, crystal-clear communication helped me relax, especially as life was spinning out of control. I realized sending more effective emails could help alleviate anxiety, for myself and others. When it came to managing the various grant projects orbiting around the college, I started thinking of myself less like an astronaut and more like mission control. The grants office can help launch these ambitious missions, but project directors are the true pilots. We have to constantly communicate in order to succeed. If you are working on a grant-adjacent project — as a project director especially — you really can’t over-communicate with us. In fact, that’s the No. 1 job of a director of any kind: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Radio silence can be scary and lonely. Just think of those tense moments in “Apollo 13” and “The Martian” and “Contact” and “Gravity” and “Interstellar.” (Yes, I watch a lot… Continue Reading 5 email rules I learned as a Zoom astronautRead More
04
May
Graduation is on the horizon, so if you haven’t heard it enough: THANK YOU to all of our faculty and staff and leadership who made this possible, during such a harrowing, historic year. What we do matters, and our community will not forget it. I know we all have moving stories to tell about our journey since last March. I just wish we could gather to share those stories around a giant campfire … with coffee and cookies and stackable lemon lasagna. 🙂 Maybe someday. In the meantime, I offer a few inspiring nuggets, which fill my heart with joy: Acknowledging our grief I tend to reference movie scenes in my daily life, so I very much appreciate Josh Eyler’s explanation of the collective grieving process through the animated film, “Up.” This is an important message, especially as we feel pressure to snap back to “normal,” whatever that means. He talks about how students, faculty and staff will not forget the flexibility over the past year — and what that could mean as we create the future together. Eyler is author of “How Humans Learn” and serves as Director of Faculty Development and Director of the ThinkForward QEP at the… Continue Reading Why this mattersRead More
About Shelley
Shelley Lyons is glad to be back on campus as she is a Virginia Western alum, and has served as the Administrative Officer for Grants Administration at Virginia Western since early 2022. Prior to VWCC, her career focus was within the Human Services and Arts fields. She wrote her first grant in 1996 on a whim and has continued to plan and learn since that time. She most enjoys seeing a well-planned project come to fruition, where funder, project manager and beneficiaries can all feel success and see impact.
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