In an election with two open seats, plumber Micah Perkins and Sheryl Siegel, who has been on the Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustees since 2019, are the only two candidates seeking election or re-election. Ahead of the election, The Collegiate talked with both candidates and asked what they would like to achieve as members of the board.
What would you like voters to know about you and why you decided to run?
Perkins: I am a GRCC alum, I graduated with an HVAC degree back in (either 2020 or 2021). As far as my interest in GRCC specifically, I come at it from a few different angles. As a graduate, I care a lot about maintaining the legacy of GRCC as a real gem of an institution in our community. I think it’s one of the best parts of Grand Rapids. On a personal note, my daughter will be going to GRCC starting next year. And I want her education to be the best, obviously. But also with, just frankly, the environment that we’re living in, I’m concerned about campus safety. I want to make sure that that’s a priority for our students to make sure they can learn without worrying about their physical safety… As a plumber, I want to make sure that trades continue to be a priority in GRCC… We just don’t have enough skilled trades people and making sure that GRCC is contributing to that. And then the last part, I have family who work for GRCC. I want to make sure that GRCC is a destination employer for people who want to come work for us. And in an employment-constrained environment, it’s important for us to pay our people the wages they deserve, and the benefits they deserve, and the conditions they deserve to work in should be excellent… I’m excited to learn from the other board members who have served on the board longer than I have, and interested to just see what their perspectives are as we go forward… There’s a lot of disadvantaged people from different communities and cultures who use GRCC as kind of an on-ramp to the American dream… I think it’s really important for us to meet our students where they’re at, meet our potential students where they’re at, and say, hey, maybe you’re not where you need to be now, but we can get you there.
Siegel: I’d like prospective voters to know that the reason I’m running is to highlight character, and it sounds rather high-minded, but attention to character turns a good school into a great one and that was my motto for being president of the board of (Grand Rapids Preparatory school) Wellspring High School. We do education very well, and part of the reason is because faculty cares about each individual student to a higher degree than four-year institutions, and understand that students may have struggled or often struggle academically, but they really attend to the piece of the confidence, competence, strengthening part that we all need on any journey that we start on… I would like more attention paid to students having skills outside when they graduate to make sound decisions about their lives… We have the ability to take a welding class across the street and read Aristotle… It was just so incredibly inspiring to read both literature and philosophy that beckons to the higher self, what we strive for, what we envision, who are our heroes, who shall we surround ourselves with, how do I know what is a good friend?… I was wanting to put things on our documents, on our agenda, that are quotes, that are references to those who came before us who have tremendous wisdom that our students are being shorted just because of time, financial ability, and because we don’t beckon to them the way we could.
What areas of opportunity would you focus on as a board member?
Perkins: I think making GRCC a destination for students starts with making GRCC a destination for our professors, our students, our staff and our administrative personnel. Because that student experience starts with the people who work there. So I think prioritizing our people that work for us is number one for me, I’m a labor guy. I’m all about making conditions better for the workers who work in the spaces that they work in. So that’s just always been a big priority for me. Then following closely on the heels of that making sure that GRCC is as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Finally, the diversity of the education that we provide, not only with the goal of having GRCC be a pass-through to other higher education institutions, but also as a final destination where people can take their skills that they’ve learned at GRCC and turn them into a profitable career.
Siegel: I think the vision of the college has been extraordinary in terms of partnerships, and that brings to mind my mantra, the same thing. When I was running for office…. one of the members of the board asked me, and I’m sure others, ‘I’m in an industry where we hire a lot of your graduates, and most of them are fantastic, but there’s a real weakness on the part of some for getting them to work on time, being reliable, you know, those kinds of soft skills’ and I think that… certainly, that this reflects on faculty because I think our faculty are incredible, but there’s got to be an ethos, college wide visual, and maybe in our documents that we share, and on our website, about those soft skills being critical to success both on the job and in one’s personal life. I would like to see local heroes like Julius Frank, who was integrated, the first neighborhood in Grand Rapids. When I walk into the Student Center, where are the heroes, where’s their biography, where are the people that came before these students that they can emulate or look up to.
How would you work to improve employee retention rates?
Perkins: You’ve got to pay them more. This isn’t a solution that you’re going to come to by giving people a pizza party. If you give people valuable benefits and payment and flexibility … people are going to be willing to maybe be flexible in that. Again, being a labor guy, one of my very favorite things to talk about is bargaining. Like this is a bargain, right? This is compromised from both people. Yes, maybe I’m not going to make as much money working for GRCC as somewhere else, but I have flexibility with child care. I have flexibility with where I’m working, et cetera, et cetera. And we have to be willing to listen to what the workers want and then at least meet them halfway on that. We can’t sit here frustrated and say, well, no one wants to work anymore or people are lazy or all the old tropes that don’t really mean anything. You have to give – people will realize value where it exists.
Siegel:… In terms of retention, the listening sessions that have been set up are to discern for the board, who has to be very tentative in not overstepping their bounds, whether having so many faculty and those in key positions leaving has a singular or multifaceted reason in order to, because our job is to support our one employee, the president. I think the world of the president has been very vocal in board meetings, public board meetings about that, and I think we can best support him when we can hopefully sort out if there’s been a change in the last, I don’t know, five years perhaps, three years, there been a change in the ethos, in the demands on the faculty, on expectations that weren’t well delineated, on the channels of grievances that aren’t satisfactory. There (are) a multitude which one would think there would be, because everyone’s got different personal circumstances, but maybe there’s a key to the kingdom here that the board can sort of sort out and then support the administration and address.
How would you ensure students who are struggling with their mental health receive proper support and resources?
Perkins: I have children that were young teens during COVID, and I was just struck by the ‘effects-of-the-isolation’ kind of fear that was in the air during that time, so I’m very sympathetic to that. I do think GRCC has a fairly robust mental health program in place. I think that the resources that are available to folks are good. I think anytime that you think you’ve solved a problem and are done, you need to reevaluate, go back and take another measurement. I think we can’t rest on our laurels. We can’t just be content with the efforts that we are doing. An ongoing, interactive relationship with our students means that we continue to ask the questions of how are you doing, what’s going on in your brain. Having that ongoing, regular check-in, I think, is an essential part of that process.
Siegel: So thinking differently than most, I’m always in that kind of class (that) guidance, counseling is a wonderful thing if it matches if you have a real bond with a particular person. What we’ve lost, first of all, I think we’ve lost putting mental health into perspective. It used to be that we read and implanted in children and in high school students models of courage who overcame great obstacles, classics of literature with a moral message. I’ve been in K-12 education for many, many years, and the richness of the classics, and that’s why they’re called so, they’re eternal messages. I think we’ve lost the art of being able, we’ve crossed the line, and this is going to be controversial, so be it, between helping students and enabling students in terms of mental health. I’m always telling myself to grow up, and I think that we need a little balance. Because there is strength in the struggle, there is growth in struggle, and whereas I hope the college can provide faculty and guidance counselors that can help students along, they also need a heavy dose of ‘life’s tough.’
