Continue support for CCE
To Whom It May Concern:
After reading the voluminous report of recommendations made for Guilford College, my concerns are those facing the Center for Continuing Education and those attending.
The report, as I understand it, suggests separating the CCE from traditional education units. Does this not violate one of the core values, “Equality,” of Guilford? There is already a clearly defined separation for traditional and CCE students with the age limitations, but further separation could also border on age discrimination.
With the portion of the report referring to financial support “specifically, much of the state financial support provided to Guilford College due to the expanding CCE student enrollment has been used to support the needs of the traditional student population.”
This indicates to me that the tuition and fees given for the further education of CCE students is being used for traditional students. Therefore, if you separate the two educational units, this would put more of a burden on the traditional students since CCE has been helping to foot the bill for the traditional portion. How would restructuring help this financial situation?
The last portion of the report that I understand completely is the implementation of classes that could be taught with a media format. Offering more classes that involved online participation would help to bring in more CCE students, offering a flexibility of classes that are sometimes difficult to have access to due to work schedules. This would be a viable addition to the current course curriculum at Guilford and would help push it further into the future, as do many online universities currently offer. This would allow Guilford to be very competitive with others offering higher education.
Restructuring means the undoing of all the hard work that the CCE faculty, administrators and staff have put into building and branding this program. I personally came to Guilford because of the generosity shown to me by the college with the classes offered as well as the transferring of credits from other institutions for my degree completion. Because of the current status of the college is one reason why I continue to serve, not only by finishing my commitment to the CCE Student Government Association but with my continuance of being a part of the Friend to Friend mentoring program.
I respectfully request that the reported recommendation for CCE be carefully reconsidered. I pray that my thoughts will be considered as many others that are forthcoming.
Respectfully submitted,
Elizabeth Jean Apple
CCE – SGA Vice President
APSA process: the best of Guilford
Dear Friends,
Although I am now an alumnus, as a recent graduate I still feel especially close to Guilford College and what happens in our community. Still living here in Greensboro, I have many friends on campus and get the opportunity to frequently visit and attend various campus events. One of these was the recent community forum regarding the Administrative and Program Services Assessment report.
From reading this report, (a link for any community member to download the full report can be found in the Sept. 20 Beacon), it is clear that the APSA Committee worked incredibly hard and cares immensely about the future of Guilford College. From the incredible response by students, faculty and staff, who shared intelligent and civil comments at the Sept. 25 forum, it is clear that many folks care immensely about the future of Guilford College. Being there reminded me of a lesson I valued immensely from Guilford: the ability of the community, when it comes together, to handle conflict and controversy transparently and collaboratively (dare I say democratically?).
This image comes in stark relief to the partisan gridlock in the U.S. government right now, which is causing suffering to millions of people. I hope that Guilford College continues to be a model for how to run an institution with strong core values and respond as a community to keep each other accountable to those values, especially during hard times. The energy and passion of the community means that this moment, spurred by the APSA process has the potential to truly be transformative for Guilford as an institution.
The APSA program and subsequent report identified many areas of strengths and weaknesses and contains some good suggestions as well as some potentially misguided ones. I will stay away from specific issues in this letter because I urge anyone with questions about specific sections to contact the people who know them best: the students, staff and faculty involved most closely with each department. I am glad that the APSA committee has responded to community voices by extending the feedback deadline; I hope they will also ask the community to appoint both a CCE and Traditional student representative to serve on the committee in further deliberation.
The civil and deliberative problem-solving process at Guilford gives me hope that we can have the same kind of process in dealing with national issues. This makes me proud of my alma mater. I hope that through this process, and in the future, Guilford continues to draw on its core values and remains an institution that we all can be proud of.
Sincerely,
Tim Leisman
Guilford Alum
Is Guilford College lost?
The draft report of the APSA committee recommends eliminating or seriously cutting back on many of the programs that support Quaker values and principles. The basis for these recommendations is based on data substantially drawn from peer institutions. Following those numbers might have the risk of turning Guilford College into a clone of these so-to-speak peers, many of which do not have a Quaker component.
Is a student’s choice to attend Guilford data driven, or might it be the programs and Quaker values that make the difference in their choice?
How many of the committee members are Quakers? Regardless, their work need not be wasted. Hopefully, Guilford College would benefit by looking at the information they gathered through a different lens.
Maybe the better task is to find the resources to maintain the programs that support Guilford’s Quaker values and purpose rather than balancing the budget through cuts to those programs. I hope that Guilford College will dare to be a leader in Quaker education and not a mere follower of its so-to-speak peers.
Charles Cameron
Facilities Department, retired
Group letter regarding APSA
Dear Guilford College community members,
We are a group of students that has come together to follow up on the APSA proposal and analyze what this means for our community and the future of our school. We are writing to all of you as a step towards unifying the campus and the different communities that make this school such an academically and educationally challenging, diverse environment. We believe that it is only through solidarity as individuals and as a whole that we can continue to sustain and be stewards of this institution. As students we want to express our gratitude for the dedication and commitment that you all bring to Guilford College. It is because of your effort that Guilford can remain a sustainable and dynamic institution. We also want to acknowledge that there is a lot of work to be done, which is why we are expressing the need for continued collaborative efforts as we move forward. APSA has provided a catalyst for a conversation that is long overdue. How can we as students support faculty, staff and administration as they support us? How can we progress as a cohesive body accountable to each other and ourselves for the continued prosperity of our school? These are the questions that we keep in mind, and hope you do too, as we continue to try to understand the implications of this proposal.
As you may know, the deadline for submitting feedback has been extended until Wednesday, Oct. 23. This provides our community with more time to educate ourselves and others about the proposal, as well as engage in creative and constructive conversations concerning Guilford’s identity and its surrounding culture.
We should recognize this moment in our College’s history to come together in these sorts of conversations and begin to fundamentally change our culture of communication through a critical lens. This needs to start now in relation to APSA but reach beyond the proposal and move past the hypothetical and into tangible action.
On this last note we would like to emphasize that this letter is taking a step out of the formal, and into a more organic way of expressing our concerns. At the forum it was mentioned that we must cut the drama, but in no way are we intending to make this into a performance. On the contrary we are holding our genuine emotions and compassions up to the light of transparency and truth seeking. As students we want to be able to understand this process, we want to be able to participate on these discussions and not have the legitimacy of our emotions compromised.
We are a group of students that have united across educational, social, departmental and generational lines around a shared concern for the well-being of our school. It is true that we are not coming to you with any immediate ideas or proposals at this time but rather we are asking for everyone’s active involvement in fostering a culture of inclusivity on all possible levels of decision-making. It is imperative to take this out of the hypothetical and begin to create concrete intentional spaces in which free and safe communication can happen on a community-wide level.
Once again we would like to thank all of you for your time and diligence, we are looking forward to continuing conversations about the future of Guilford.
Alex Barbour
Kiernan Colby
Ben Evans
John Madden
Noah McDonald
Danial Gallant-Reader
Ines Sanchez De Losada &
Chloe Wiener
Current Traditional Guilford Students
Just keep the family together
Guilford College’s mission statement defines its institutional goal as “to provide a transformative, practical and excellent liberal arts education for every student.” This has absolutely been my experience thus far. I joined the Guilford College family in the fall of 2012 as a CCE student. As a Peace and Conflict Studies major, most of my classes are offered during the day where traditional, Early College and CCE students share not only space, but thoughts and ideas — enriching us all.
Beginning on page 33 of the Administrative and Program Services Assessment draft, the committee writes that there are significant differences between the traditional and CCE student population. In some ways, this is a true assessment — outside of the classroom. However, in the classroom there are not a whole lot of differences between the two groups, except most of the traditional students can study way later than I can! The conversations in the classroom are deeply enriched because of the differing viewpoints — and in the classroom we are all equally curious and excited to be a part of “the excellent liberal arts education” being offered to us by Guilford College.
As a Principled Problem Solving Scholar, I see the benefit of evaluating all of the different programs and asking faculty and students alike to help in the process of figuring out what’s working and what’s not. This is problem solving at its best. However, I think splitting up the Guilford family would do more harm than good.
I urge the committee to rethink its proposal of restructuring the CCE program by splitting Guilford College in two. Personally, I have learned so much, and my education has been enriched because I am sharing classes with the traditional students. I am quite certain there is a better solution that would both meet the financial needs of the institution while allowing the current structure to stay intact. Guilford College would be remiss if they were to split the college into two separate institutions, depriving both students and faculty of an enriched, diverse learning environment.
Diversity is one of Guilford’s core values, and it has made Guilford the beacon of educational institutions not only in the South but across the United States. Like the real world, Guilford reflects diversity, but goes a step further by embracing it and understanding there is much to be learned from differing points of view. The diversity of Guilford is a significant factor to the success of both the traditional and the CCE student programs.
Again, I urge the committee to rethink its proposal of restructuring the CCE program by splitting Guilford into two distinct parts. It would not only be detrimental to both programs, but would also be a disservice to every single student attending Guilford College. I have grown to love my Guilford family, and it breaks my heart to think that the committee is even considering splitting it up for business — in turn, destroying the school I have grown to love. The diversity and excellence of every single student’s liberal arts education is at stake!
Gia Henry
CCE Student
