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Category Archive: President

• Bringing The Power To Community Colleges

  Posted June 28, 2021 at 8:48 am

  The original column appeared in the Tribune-Democrat, written by Dr. Steve Nunez. Click here to see original sourced column.

  I had lived in either Illinois or Virginia for my entire life before I moved to Pennsylvania in early 2020. While I was very excited about starting my new role at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, I was nervous because I was moving to Pennsylvania alone and leaving behind my entire support system of friends and family.

  I thought when I got here that it was important mentally and emotionally for me to immediately connect with new people, find new mentors, and develop new friendships. I’ve been blessed to connect with so many good people since the move.

  Being a community college president in Pennsylvania is like being a member of a very small social club – there are only 15 of us. But as I have come to know them, I’ve realized that some of the brightest minds in higher education are presidents at our Pennsylvania community colleges.

  We are lucky to have such talented educational leaders in Pennsylvania.

  I have had more than one of them reach out to me during my first 18 months at Penn Highlands. Nick Neupauer was one of the first. President at Butler County Community College (BC3) for 14 years, Dr. Neupauer has provided and continues to provide me with straightforward, commonsense, and smart advice. He and I have chatted several times, and each time I come away feeling better.

  He just has one of those personalities. He’s easy to talk to, open, quick to laugh, and genuinely a nice guy.

  I had a chance to talk with him more in-depth recently, using my superpowers to extract, selfishly, as much knowledge from him as I possibly could, and what impressed me the most was his understanding and devotion to the community college mission of providing affordable, accessible, and quality educational opportunities to the communities we serve.

  He believes, as do I, that education is one of the best ways to change and improve a person’s life, and he fully embraces the community college “open door” concept with a focus to remain affordable to all constituents.

  As we chatted, Nick continuously brought our conversation back to “service” – to his students and communities.

  While being president inhibits him from regular, direct interaction with students, he stated that his focus – every single day – is on students and their successes. He’s particularly focused on providing students with an excellent return on their educational investment and keeping student loan debt low.

  Nick said that if students can graduate from his college with a meaningful credential and little to no debt, they will be set up for professional success. Community colleges can provide that pathway, just as it did for his own two daughters.

  Some predict that, over the next several decades, many higher education institutions will close or merge with other institutions as our population demographics evolve. However, Neupauer believes that community colleges, focused on their mission of providing affordable, accessible, and quality education will become even more important and necessary because of their value and because of their “ROI.”

  Regardless, I certainly feel more confident about the future of community colleges when I speak with education leaders such as Neupauer who care so much about students and the communities we live in.

  Thanks for your mentorship, Nick.

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  Written By Dr. Steve Nunez, College’s Fifth President. This monthly series appears in The Tribune-Democrat, and will allow Dr. Nunez to provide his perspective on the value of education and of a community college. 

  

• The Mother Of All Support Systems

  Posted June 1, 2021 at 8:47 am

  The original column appeared in the Tribune-Democrat , written by Dr. Steve Nunez. Click here to see original sourced column.

  With both commencement ceremonies completed at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College for this year, I cannot help but reflect on the graduating class of 2021.

  The graduates had so many obstacles to overcome, and yet, despite them, graduated anyway. I am proud of their accomplishments, and it was great to get to meet many of them in person.

  During my 25-year career in higher education, I have learned that very few students graduate without the support of some mentor or loved one.

  The transition to and through higher education is a difficult one, and most of us on that journey need a cheerleader to encourage us to persevere during the hardest of times. I was lucky, as I had two parents who encouraged and supported my educational journey – and the journeys of my sister and brother.

  As I mention often, I attended a local community college, where a small teacher-to-student ratio and excellent student support systems allowed me to thrive academically and grow into my own skin. After graduating from the community college, I transferred to Virginia Tech, a university of more than 25,000 students. However, I quickly felt diminished to a student identification number, and in some cases, was relegated to classes with hundreds of other students.

  I received a fabulous education from Virginia Tech, and I have many fond memories there, but I had a very difficult transition from my community college, where I had personalized attention, to this large university, and consequently, I struggled academically my first semester.

  Parenting is a gratifying but difficult job – and is an imperfect science at best. As most parents will attest, raising a family is hard work, which I confirmed when I helped raise two boys of my own. I have enormous respect for what my mother did, seemingly without much complaint, as she worked as a full-time elementary school teacher and helped raise a family. She worked all day, shopped for groceries, cleaned the house, and cooked for her family, and yet, I never felt alone. Somehow mom was always there when I needed her. Sometimes it was as simple as giving me a hug or a peanut butter sandwich. Other times, well, I may have required a literal kick in the pants. But simply being there for me was, and continues to be, enormous.

  So, I was a young man at Virginia Tech, seemingly in over his head, who had lost confidence in his abilities. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted and ready to give up. It was clear to me that I was out of my element, and so, I called my mother to tell her I wasn’t cut out for Virginia Tech, that this wasn’t the place for me, and I was coming home. It was a declaration, not a question.

  I sometimes wonder if my mother even remembers this phone call. But I do, and it was short and to the point – paraphrasing, she replied to my declaration, “You aren’t giving up. You aren’t coming home. Figure it out.”

  We then went on to discuss some strategies to help me move forward and be successful. My mother gave me some “tough love” that day and it was exactly what I needed. The easy thing to do was to quit – the more difficult path was to figure it out.

  Even today, I consider my mom a great friend and confidant, and I recognize that she will always love and care for me as much today as a 50-year-old adult as her awkward 5-year-old son. But one of my mom’s greatest gifts was to raise us, her children, with the confidence to go pursue our dreams and conquer the world.

  Congratulations to all the local graduates!

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  Written By Dr. Steve Nunez, College’s Fifth President. This monthly series appears in The Tribune-Democrat, and will allow Dr. Nunez to provide his perspective on the value of education and of a community college. 

  

• Gender Inequity In Higher Education: Not What You Think

  Posted April 30, 2021 at 3:00 pm

  The original column appeared in the Tribune-Democrat , written by Dr. Steve Nunez. Click here to see original sourced column.

  When you think of post-secondary outcomes and potential gender inequities, what is your first thought?

  You may think that at best, men and women are enrolling and graduating from community colleges equally. At worst, men are dominating the higher education landscape and females are lagging behind.

  Traditionally, during the past century and longer, men have been the dominant force in higher education enrollment which has led to men having higher-paying and more-prestigious jobs (creating gender pay inequities) – and dare I say more power, politically and in business.

  Something interesting happened at community colleges in the late 1970s. Enrollment, proportionally, of women, began to climb while enrollment for men began to dissipate. In 1975, males made up 55% of the community college enrollment. But by 1980, male enrollment had slid by 10%.

  Today, men make up only 43% of the enrollment at community colleges.

  But even more astounding than the recent enrollment declines of men was the dramatic shift in educational outcomes.

  One might expect that the number of degrees earned each year would be directly proportional to the percentage of enrollees as it was in 1980 where men made up 45% of the enrollment and earned 46% of the degrees. However, in 2020 men made up 43% of the enrollment but only earned 39% of the degrees.

  There is a perceptible gap in achievement between the genders that is strongly slanted toward women.

  I hate to bore you with a bunch of statistics, but the take-home message is this – men have become less interested in enrolling into an institution of higher education, and if they do enroll, are graduating at lower rates.

  The male-female post-secondary attainment gap is real and has been for decades.

  My own doctoral dissertation confirmed this enrollment and attainment gap at Sauk Valley Community College (SVCC). On average at SVCC, males enrolled in significantly fewer numbers (males were only about 40% of the student population), were less prepared for college-level work (as determined by ACT/SAT scores and high school grade point averages), dropped out of college more often than females, and thus graduated less frequently.

  This is a trend seen throughout the country at nearly every community college. Need proof? Go to just about any educational award ceremony and you’ll see that women are dominating the “competition.”

  At one time, the Illinois Community College Board made all community colleges complete an annual survey of attainment of at-risk and underrepresented groups. The survey hadn’t changed in decades – the same questions and population classes were represented year after year.

  Annually, when completing the survey, I laughed when I read that women were still being considered an at-risk or underrepresented group. Maybe in the early 1970s – but certainly not now, as women are killing it. Males are the underrepresented group and have been at community colleges for decades.

  So what?

  It is estimated that nearly 70% of near future jobs will require some post-secondary education. And yet I’m hearing from our business and industry friends that they cannot find qualified applicants.

  How frustrating is it that we have hundreds of good, high-paying jobs right here in central-western Pennsylvania and we cannot fill them with qualified technicians and a highly educated workforce?

  While this post-secondary enrollment and attainment gap is not as apparent at many four-year universities, community colleges enroll 5.5 million students annually. This disparity in attainment will have lasting effects for decades to come.

  Ultimately, convincing more men to aspire to enroll and graduate from a post-secondary institution, such as a community college, is a must if we want to drive economic prosperity.

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  Written By Dr. Steve Nunez, College’s Fifth President. This monthly series appears in The Tribune-Democrat, and will allow Dr. Nunez to provide his perspective on the value of education and of a community college. 

  

• To Attend Or Not To Attend, That Is The Question

  Posted March 29, 2021 at 9:44 am

  The original column appeared in the Tribune-Democrat , written by Dr. Steve Nunez. Click here to see original sourced column.

  “If you look back to the moment right before Yvonne was admitted to the University of Texas [with the goal of earning a bachelor’s degree], you can see the paths diverging in front of her. One would have led her to a community college in San Antonio and the other to graduate school at Harvard.”

  That quote was nearly the last sentence to an otherwise fabulous episode of the podcast “The Campus Tour Has Been Canceled – This American Life.”

  This podcast was originally a radio series on National Public Radio and is now easily found on your favorite podcast app.

  The gist of this particular episode was about how the infamous SAT and ACT tests, often used as an academic metric for college admissions, were imprecise tools that favored the affluent. The reasons for this are a little complicated and outside the scope of this article, but the unintentional outcome has been that those colleges and universities that have relied heavily on the “unbiased” SAT or ACT scores often admitted more white students and fewer students of color than if they had just used students’ high school grade point averages alone.

  Don’t get me started – this was one of my topics in my dissertation and I could write forever about it here (or you could just read my dissertation and be only the fifth person to ever reach that milestone).

  We all carry inherent biases – it is the nature of the human existence. Many of those biases, often unintentionally, come out in productions of the entertainment industry and the media. For example, how often are “Southerners” presented as uneducated, backward rednecks or hillbillies in movies or TV shows?

  Growing up in Southwest Virginia, one of the first things folks notice about me is my accent – which, I believe, is confounding to many when I’m introduced as the President of Pennsylvania Highlands Community College.

  A similar stigma exists for community colleges. Community colleges are third-rate, some say. They are only for those that can’t hack a “real” university or college.

  And while the cost of getting an education at a community college is substantially lower than most other higher education options – that cost difference is indicative of poor quality, not value.

  More than once I’ve heard community members say something like, “Not everyone needs a post-secondary education – that’s why we have the community college.”

  In many cases, these “types” of comments are not meant with malice and in some cases are even well-intentioned – heck, some of those comments have been made by my good friends who work outside the higher education business. But ultimately, comments like those are – well, ignorant.

  Which brings me back to the quote at the top of this article.

  I find these kinds of blanket quotes about community colleges to be infuriating and uninformed. The author of that episode was describing the intensive support that the University of Texas provides students who need additional academic help and attention.

  He showered the University of Texas with praise for its seemingly unique way of supporting students who might not otherwise make it at the University of Texas.

  And all I could think about, while I listened, is this is exactly what community colleges have been doing for decades. Community colleges are unique because we have an open door concept – we welcome students with varying levels of academic preparedness, meet them where they are at, remediate their skills if necessary, and help them attain their academic goals which may be to simply enter the workforce as quickly as possible or to transfer to a university to attain a bachelor’s degree.

  Ultimately, going to a university or to a community college is not an “either-or” situation, and it’s not fair to insinuate that a student who goes straight to a university will be more successful than a student who goes to a community college. Believe it or not, some community college students matriculate to Harvard and many, including myself, end up in graduate school, too.

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  Written By Dr. Steve Nunez, College’s Fifth President. This monthly series appears in The Tribune-Democrat, and will allow Dr. Nunez to provide his perspective on the value of education and of a community college. 

  

• The American Way

  Posted November 2, 2020 at 9:29 am

  The original column appeared in the Tribune-Democrat , written by Dr. Steve Nunez. Click here to see original sourced column. 

  Last weekend, while I was visiting my mother in beautiful southwest Virginia, she showed me a newspaper clipping of my very first newspaper editorial. At the time, I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech, and my editorial was written as a rebuttal to an author who I considered to be close-minded and bigoted. My mother beamed with pride even though that letter was published more than 30 years ago. However, I was a little embarrassed by the brashness of that young fellow with little life experience but seemingly all the answers.

  On my drive back to Pennsylvania, I found myself thinking about that letter and this upcoming election – which seems to be even more divisive and combative than normal.

  I’m not a poet, nor a philosopher, but I’ve read enough and lived enough to know that our country has had turbulent moments. Examples include, just in the past 100 years or so, the Spanish flu of 1918, World War II, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is estimated that the Spanish flu may have killed more than 600,000 Americans. Armies and air forces of the allied nations, including members of the U.S. armed forces, overcame the aggression of the German and Japanese empires in the 1940s. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s improved but did not solve racial tensions and inequities in our country. And, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 made us feel truly vulnerable for the first time since the threat of nuclear catastrophe during the Cold War.

  What traits of our people bound us together to see the country through the worst of times? We, as Americans, are optimistic almost to a fault. We are creative and inventive. We have the courage to do what is right, fair, and equitable. And we can do the hard work to meet any challenge.

  However, the wisdom of that former 22-year-old graduate student at Virginia Tech still echoes in my mind; we must also avoid the trap of bigotry and close-mindedness.

  To me, that is a crucial trait that has made America “America” – our ability to listen and respect the viewpoints of others – to not judge the motives and patriotism of those that see the world differently.

  Neither Republicans nor Democrats (nor any other political party) have a monopoly on patriotism, and while we may disagree on many issues, ultimately, we are all Americans.

  Please, do your patriotic duty and vote for the candidates of your choice on Tuesday or before. And then afterward, remember that we are all Americans who love our country – the “United” States of America.

  See you at Penn Highlands.

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  Written By Dr. Steve Nunez, College’s Fifth President. This monthly series appears in The Tribune-Democrat, and will allow Dr. Nunez to provide his perspective on the value of education and of a community college.