The President of the college, David Potash, presented the State of the College Address on Oct. 16 to discuss the budget and future changes the school will be experiencing. There were eight main topics; safety, academic support, budget, student experience, students, IT support, and C2C.
The academic section is what took up a majority of the meeting. Potash spoke about how the search for the new Dean of Instruction is still underway, and congratulated the people who have stepped up to the task. The new Honors College that Susan Colon has formed, he is “so excited about this”. The classes that will be considered Honors College will be English 101, Political Science 204, and Introduction to Film 104. There will be a faculty workshop on the Honors Program on Oct. 29th, in room S243 at 1 p.m..
Potash briefly discussed the medical classes and programs being moved to the Malcolm X campus. He started to explain that he can’t change the College to Career programs, but said, “I look for lemonade when given lemons. I look for opportunities.” Potash didn’t elaborate.
Next, security in regard to the ID checking that took place on Oct. 8. Potash said that it did not come from administration and one person took it upon themselves to instill the ID checkpoints. Potash then added that there are no future changes in progress or any need to push to add turnstiles, metal detectors to the campus, or change security.
As for the budget, Potash said that he has unvarnished guesses for the future, if he could paint a picture, he would have a person stand on the horizon with a storm on one side and a small portion of the sky has sunlight, with his finger in the air, trying to figure out which way the wind blows. The presentation slide stated, “8 percent reduction in benefits, while salaries increased by 0.2%, a 9% reduction in travel, and finally a 1% increase in other expenses.” There was not anything else on the topic.
The student experience is mainly about the math and english co rec and launch classes. The presentation slide gave some numbers, “ARC (Regular and ESL): 39 sections, 633 students. Co-Curricular Math: 13 sections (Math 118,125,140), 250 students. Launch (only Language Arts this Fall): 4 full time sections, 2 part time sections, 96 full time students, 42 part time students”. The ARC and Co-Curricular classes deal with the combination of foundational classes mixed with college level classes and mandatory meetings.
The STAR Scholarship was discussed next, in Fall 2015, 321 STAR Scholarship students enrolled in Wright. Potash then showed two brief clips of two separate students, praising their teachers (Adrian Guiu and Claire Boeck) and explaining why they are the greatest teachers to them. The STAR Scholarship is a scholarship that started with the City Colleges of Chicago Fall 2105. Students who are eligible for this scholarship must have graduated from CPS in Spring 2015, with a 3.0 GPA who can test into ‘completion-ready’ in math and English. This scholarship covers the whole cost of associate’s degree at City Colleges of Chicago along with books.
There is a new IT development underway and Jeff Janulis is working with Aqip. The math emporium is now opened and open for students to enjoy. Potash made a joke about being kind to your friends who have AQIP work to do, which made some members of the audience laugh. AQIP stands for Academic Quality Improvement Program and is an “intensive process of analysis and improvement of all things at Wright College”. There wasn’t much else mentioned on AQIP but according to the ccc.edu website, “ This process is part of the college’s obligation to the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), the organization that oversees the federally-mandated reaccreditation for the college. AQIP involves nine categories, five criteria, three annual action projects, and ten qualities related to assessment and evaluation for continuous improvement.”
Next topic was the Equity and Diversity initiatives. There is a picture in the presentation that says, “Diversity does not equal Equity. Equality does not equal Equity.” Wright is once again a part of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). There was some unpaid dues prior therefor Wright was not a part of the HACU.
Campus improvements were discussed in the presentation. There is the new testing center, room L127, equipped with desks, computers, dividers and cameras. There are now ‘smart classrooms’ with replacing projectors and adding smart boards.