New Cabins at Camp Cherokee

Earlier this year, the College partnered with the YMCA to help build and outfit three new cabins at Camp Cherokee in Kings Mountain State Park. Our Building and Construction Trades students and faculty built two sleeper cabins and wired them with electricity. In addition, they helped build a cabin that is ADA compliant and installed it with plumbing and electricity. Jason Ghent, BCT faculty member, spent a great deal of time at Camp Cherokee with the students and personally installed controllers for on-demand water heat. The hands-on experience for our students was invaluable.

A ribbon cutting event for the new cabins was held at the end of July where the College was presented with a plaque for our dedication and service to the project. I especially want to thank Jason Ghent, Richard Butler, Ed Moore, and the BCT students for all their hard work.

(left to right: Jason Ghent, Greg Rutherford, Richard Butler)

Take A Deep Breath

Tomorrow begins a historic fall semester at York Technical College. Our enrollment is tracking 20% ahead of last year, which was 8% above the previous year, which was 12% above the previous year . . . wow! Who knows how it will end up, since we have a twelve-week session and an eight-week session left to go. People are looking for answers and they’re looking to us.

Student services personnel have already seen most of this increased number. Obviously we don’t have more personnel than we did last year, so there is an increased demand for “person time.” The folks we are seeing are from all walks of life. Some are more accustomed to navigating a college than others, but few are fully prepared to approach us in the best possible condition. And while there is capacity for vast hope for improved lives, there are also infinite opportunities for confusion.

For those who’ve been here awhile, this may be hard to believe, but potential students are nervous even if they don't show it. Many are a bundle of nerves. Perhaps they are out of work or afraid they soon will be. Perhaps they are feeling threatened by bankruptcy, foreclosure, or by being dependent on someone else at a very stressful time. Then again, maybe they act like they don’t have a care in the world but we know they should.

I walked outside my office last evening and there was a man looking confused. He asked where the “XYZ” (fictitious and unoriginal name) class was. He said he was told that it was in the “next building down.” I asked him if the person he spoke with gave him a room number. He was holding a number of papers and anxiously going through them looking for clues. I asked to see them and he handed them to me. There was lots of information, along with a list of about 20 colleges (one was YTC with the main number and fax), and a matrix containing dates and times.

I finally walked him to the front drive and asked which building he went in; he said it was “C.” I confirmed that he walked in the entrance we were facing and up some steps and spoke with someone at a desk. He said “yes,” so I took out my mobile and called Continuing Education. I did not reach anyone, so I asked him to follow me and we walked down to CE.

I asked the ladies at the front desk in CE if they recognized the gentleman with me. They did not and he then let me know these were not the same people who had helped him. I then realized he did not go to “C” building that evening but had been here at some time in the past. I asked for the room number for his class and was told A252. I walked the gentleman back up to A252 to find it dark and realized the class did not start until 6:00 p.m. and it was now 5:35 p.m. I told him it appeared he was early and would have to wait a little while. He said he came early to register, and when I told him I did not realize he was not registered, he said he had mentioned it to me earlier. Now he had to go back to “C” building, pay and then come back to “A.” He seemed to be okay with that and we parted ways.

Why am I making you suffer through yet another of my home movies? Because I want you to know that I only get a glimpse of how tough it can be for you and for them and I empathize. I felt frustrated that he wasn’t more precise; that he had not called ahead and thought through the process; that he just showed up and expected it to all come clear, somehow. I also felt frustrated that we could not design this sort of confusion out of our system. I was frustrated by my own assumptions in how I perceived the situation. Then I realized that although we must try to continuously improve our processes, “WE ARE THE FAIL-SAFE.” You see, this gentleman could have nailed all this down before he got here, but he simply did not have a framework for managing it. He did not think like me. And he probably does things on a regular basis that I do not have a framework for either.

So I took a deep breath and kept marching.

Quality Enhancement Plan

As most of you know, as part of our college accreditation, we developed a Critical Thinking initiative to meet the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) requirements. Information about the QEP can be viewed at www.yorktech.com/qep. This is an effort to help support the maturation of students and to remind ourselves of the value in thinking critically. At the same time, the critical thinking initiative is not intended to create additional barriers for students to reach their goals. We must demonstrate high expectations but equally important we must demonstrate high support in order to give our students the tools to succeed. In spring semester, colleagues worked to develop a number of pilot critical thinking rubrics and activities. Full implementation for the QEP will begin this fall. A summary of the implementation plan outlines the critical thinking activity options, methods for reporting, and fall QEP Implementation workshops. We will report our progress to SACS in 2011 as part of our accreditation interim report. Thank you for helping improve critical thinking and for fulfilling our accreditation requirements.