By Blace Carpenter and Alexa Cheaney
The Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustees and other administrators met with several community leaders to hear what areas the college could improve or change during their community conversation on April 11.
This is the second community conversation GRCC has held this year and President Charles Lepper explained that these meetings will become more routine through the academic years.
“The college used to engage in these conversations (a) couple presidents ago,” Lepper said. “And so when I came here on board, the board and I had a conversation and we decided that it was really important…”
GRCC’s Interim Provost Sheila Jones and Dean of Liberal Arts Jason Vinson led the conversation by asking questions such as, “What is the first thing you think of when you hear Grand Rapids Community College and what impressions do you have of the college?” In which the college was met with a lot of praise.
Leaders from the Urban League of West Michigan, Grand Rapids Public School, Western Governors University, the Renaissance Church of God in Christ and GRCC employees agreed that GRCC is an affordable, smart and rewarding choice when choosing a college.
“We (The Urban League of West Michigan) just met with GRCC a couple of weeks ago. And they embraced us with such enthusiasm, with a vision beyond the reason we had, which was that wonderful conversation for things we want to do. I left highly impressed,” said manager of the Center for Education Innovation and Parent Empowerment at the Urban League of West Michigan Rufus Granderson II. “I don’t think we understood the scope as a community, what we already have…We don’t have to look over the rainbow. We don’t need the pot, we have a pot of gold right here.”
When asked what expectations they have for the college, community leaders such as Chairperson of the GIANT Awards Committee Tempy Mann, representing herself as a member of the community, expressed that while she believes GRCC is a great choice, the college isn’t efficiently marketing itself to the public.
“Our marketing under CC I will say is minimum,” Mann said while explaining that kids are disengaged with the downtown area surrounding campus. “We know about GRCC just because we talk about GRCC. What are the schools doing with GRCC? Are you taking tours of GRCC? …You are giving a great tour to The Urban League but what about the kids? Those young people are the people who are coming down there to be invested in their facility… Giving them a tour of the entire downtown area and saying ‘Look at the vast wealth of experience you could have.’ I don’t think we do that. We take care of the adults, we’re not focusing on those young people.”
In regard to what the college is doing well and what it could improve upon, Grand Rapids Public Schools administrator Rodney Brown echoed Mann, saying that GRCC does an excellent job of what it’s positioned to do but could improve efforts in marketing and inclusivity. He also explained that in his experience with students, he’s seen that those coming from more suburban or rural areas tend to have a greater familiarity with GRCC than those from urban areas.
“We have such a gap with kids in urban schools who are not being coached from early grades to expect to go off to college,” Brown said. “… I would encourage, though, that we look and do better around the culture of our college, the curriculum that we offer so that people can see themselves in the curriculum, and then the career tracking as well.”
Mann highlighted the excellence and absence of retired professor Gertrude Croom and the desire to create a deeper sense of belonging for students of color.
“You have to understand the culture of urban students, Black students, brown students, they want to see themselves down there,” Mann said. “…I knew that Dean Lumpkins was going to take care of my grandson. Gertrude Croom was going to be on top of every Black student that came through that door and make sure that they were doing something right. And they’re gone, and they have not been replaced with another Gertrude Croom or Dean Lumpkins…”
GRCC’s Interim Director of the Woodrick Center of Inclusion and Multicultural Affairs Jamillya Hardley joined the conversation and stated that an area she would like to see improvement on at GRCC is accountability.
“I’ve heard a lot of names be dropped,” Hardley said. “The accountability piece is the folks that aren’t in this room. The folks that aren’t having this conversation, that same level of messaging and the same level of accountability. That same level of excellence for the work that we’re trying to do each and every day…”
Hardley highlighted another area she wanted to bring attention to.
“The other aspect that I really wanted to just touch on is how do we make our students feel?” Hardley asked. “…So if I feel like you don’t trust me or I feel like you can’t talk to me or you’re not going to hear me, I’m not going to go to you…those are things that I constantly hear and think about in the work that I do in the Multicultural Affairs office.”
Hardley explained that she is concerned about how students are being treated on campus after hearing students explain some of their negative experiences on campus. Hardley tries to make an effort to send students to specific people who she is confident will treat them kindly.
GRCC’s administration will continue to meet with community groups within Grand Rapids to hear what areas the college can improve or change. Lepper said he and his team will take the information they gathered from the community conversation and implement the college’s strategic plan.
“Our scribes are summarizing the data for us that we’ve heard, the qualitative data, and we’re starting to pull out some of those themes,” Lepper explained. “…We’re sitting down and saying, ‘Okay, what are the action steps that we need to put into place?’ And so not all of those are going to happen obviously at once and it’s going to take time to do those, but we are waiting to make sure we have a plan for action and just not having a conversation.”
When asked how he thought the discussion went, Lepper believed that it was great to hear the needs of the community.
“I think it was an incredible conversation,” said Lepper. “We have to come into these conversations knowing that we have room to grow and that’s part of the purpose of having this. And so I don’t see this as a criticism of the institution, but I see it as an opportunity for us to do better.”
