Sunday, March 14, 2010

March 14, 2010
by Sandy Shugart

The title of this goal – “Learning Assured” – generated deep and challenging discussions at every stage of collaboration in shaping the strategic learning plan. No one can guarantee that every student will learn. That kind of assurance is beyond our control, even as a learning college. But the discussions led us to keep the language of assurance both as an aspirational goal and to describe a kind of mindfulness about our results. This mindfulness has already proven to be essential to the significant progress the college has made in fostering steadily improving student learning results for the past decade. Make no mistake, these improving results are both real and important. The college achieves graduation rates that are nearly three times as high as our peer institutions. Student persistence rates from term to term and year to year have risen by some twenty percentage points above our results in the mid-nineteen nineties and most of our peers’ current results. Rates of success in gateway courses have improved and gaps in achievement among various student groups have been narrowed, though this work poses ongoing challenges. These are the ways we represent results formally, and they are remarkable enough. But even more remarkable are the thousands of individual student stories they represent – thousands more succeeding, their lives and perhaps their families transformed by the power of an opportunity made real in performance.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

by Sandy Shugart
October 2009

Deepening Our Commitment To Access

What has made Valencia a “better place to start” for more than forty years? There are many ways to answer this question, but as we have discussed this with hundreds of faculty, staff, and students over the past two years of planning, four cornerstones have emerged: access, excellence in teaching and learning, amazing colleagues in collaboration, and powerful partnerships. These will continue to serve as cornerstones of our shared work, but we have discovered that each will require renewal, a fresh commitment to stretch ourselves and our vision to serve students in the coming several years.

In this and three essays to follow, I will explore the substance of our 2008-13 strategic plan by revisiting each of these four cornerstones and relating them to the directions emerging from our strategic planning. You will find the documents relating to the college’s strategic plan on the web at http://valenciacc/strategicplan. The full plan can be found at http://valenciacc.edu/strategicplan/documents/StratPlanBOOKMARKED_000.pdf

Monday, October 19, 2009

One of my favorite people in the world, Mary Collier, also happens to be an unseen hero to countless students who have benefited from her leadership and contributions to the Valencia Foundation. Funding she helped to establish enables Valencia graduates go on to UCF, UF, USF, FSU and many more institutions nationwide.

In 1982 Mary Collier was named Valencia’s first Distinguished Graduate. A non-traditional student, she went back to college after raising her children. Today, she and her family are among the staunchest supporters of the college and largest donors to our foundation.

A foundation board member for more than 20 years, she has served two terms as its president. Mary’s story continues to inspire those who may at first be tentative at the prospect of going back to school. She truly lives by her belief: “Anything you can imagine…you can do.” Much of what Valencia is able to imagine and do is beause of people like Mary Collier.

– Sandy Shugart

Monday, October 19, 2009

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ovLnHbFnz8

Some Valencia heroes are just quietly doing their jobs, making a difference in students’ lives. Others are making their mark on our planet, or at least our little corner of the planet. By his own initiative, Jerry Cochran started Valencia’s recycling programs on all our campuses. That’s how the world gets changed: One person at a time doing the very best he or she can.

– Sandy Shugart

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

by Sandy Shugart September 22, 2009 We’re off to one of the most interesting semesters in recent memory. Thanks to many…

Sunday, August 30, 2009

2009 Academic Assembly Speech

Thursday, August 6, 2009

There are times I need to pinch myself
to prove this isn’t just a dream,
this work that reaches right down
through the rich loam of rhythm and harmony
to the roots of joy and shakes
the whole tree of my existence
with laughter and apprehension that
no matter how hard we play
this can’t last.
And, of course, there are times when it
feels like going through the motions.
Not that we’re phoning it in, but
there just isn’t anything happening.
The notes are all there in the
correct combination’s, the right order,
but there’s no connection, no groove,
no conversation, no jazz…
But if I keep playing, keep trusting,
the hollow performance eventually serves
only to intensify the real music,
when it happens. And it will happen
When the planets align, or the gods condescend,
Or the fundamental particles resonate with
The wave of the co-creation
Which is to say
it feels, I feel so incredibly
lucky to be here in the endlessly unfolding work;
So lucky not to be going
through the motions of all the other
jobs and careers and options
to which I might have been resigned;
So lucky to be here with you
who also know the rush when it
all comes together;
So lucky to have learned, the more I practice,
The luckier I get.

© Sanford C. Shugart

Thursday, August 6, 2009

It wasn’t a work I had chosen, but
I was young and the job came to hand
like each new, rasp-edged brick
and I was taken with the
challenge of the craft.
Head-down to lay to a line
straight and square, feeling the
grain of baked earth and
handling the sanded mud with
quick, smart flicks and jabs,
a precision boxer working a square ring,
mastering tools and letting them
master me: hammer, level and trowel.
Focusing, focusing until every
cell is in the rhythm, speed,
economy of motion, each brick
leading to the next, no hesitation,
no space between the notes and
all notes the same,
brick to brick, course on course,
year stacked on
year until I take on the very
texture of brick, the grit of mortar
rigid joints and flat face of the wall
no view but the brick,
no plan but the brick,
no dream but the brick

and then

the walls, at last,
connect and there is
nothing to do but to set the
iron bars in the
tiny, high window
and wait for
the end.

© February 2003, Sanford C. Shugart

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

by Sandy Shugart June 16, 2009 This morning, the Board of Trustees approved an operating budget for the college for the…

Friday, April 24, 2009

by Sandy Shugart April 24, 2009 Most of you have heard or read about the reaction of the state university presidents …