News

While students at Waubonsee Community College and elsewhere are busy worrying about fitting in, finding just the right classes or finishing homework on time, there’s another group paying attention to an entirely different set of priorities. For the most part, the work of this group remains invisible to students, but, when done well, it ensures that success at school is all students need to be thinking about.

In recent years, it has been difficult to miss the emphasis placed on the importance of college degree or certificate completion. Many statistics and studies have been quoted outlining the benefits to individual students, society and the economy. It is the benefits to the economy that have garnered the attention of federal and state officials who are exploring new financial incentives and penalties to encourage completion. 

Waubonsee Community College is about to start the fourth year of a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) funded STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) scholarship grant. Disciplines include biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering science, physics, mathematics and the geosciences (earth science, geology, oceanography, astronomy, meteorology and geography). Scholarship recipients are recruited from local high schools and from among current Waubonsee students. New and returning STEM scholars form a learning community nurtured by 12 faculty mentors and counselors. Selection criteria include high grades in STEM courses, high overall grade point average, recommendations from faculty and personal essays. 

Education has embraced the three “Rs” since at least the late 1700s. While Waubonsee Community College remains committed to teaching students to excel in reading, writing and arithmetic (along with other vital academic skills), this year we’re focusing on the three “Cs”: connect, collaborate and cultivate. 

The American anthropologist Ruth Benedict wrote that “we grow in time to trust the future for our answers,” and nowhere is the truth of those words more apparent than in the dynamic field of higher education. As an institution that demands quality, relevancy and value for its students, Waubonsee Community College faces strategically forward, courts innovation, keeps its finger firmly on the pulse of the community, and embraces change. In my 28 years of employment in at least six different roles at Waubonsee, I, too, focused my vision on the future and welcomed the progress that is the lifeblood of the college.

Safety is among the many priorities addressed by Waubonsee Community College. There are some exciting new projects the college is working on to further enhance the health and safety of our students and college community. 

For many teenagers, college after high school is as routine as checking Facebook. This idea of who a college student is and what they experience has become so generalized in our society that, unless you are in the educational environment, your definition of a college student’s life may already be set. For many, that definition is limited to a list of words such as: four years, dorms, bachelor’s degree, parties and so on. The orthodoxy behind these assumptions has even gone as far as labeling college students as being either a “traditional” or a “nontraditional” student. However, for many other students, this perception of the “four-year university” is a distant dream that may be unattainable for a variety of circumstances. I was once one of those students.