April 1, 2017 Guttman Community College

          Today in the middle of a steady heavy rains that lasted for hours I visited another Community College.  Guttmann Community College located in middle of Manhattan right next to the main branch of the NY public library.  This college drew my attention because as a college they have not been around for very long and according to their website, the educational philosophy is solidly based in a pathways model of education.  Guttmann falls under the umbrella of City University of New York so I figured it would be a good comparison school after visiting LaGuardia CC yesterday.             The two colleges had some similarities and differences. Both colleges has security at their entrance points but with so many students at LaGuardia the college still felt like it had open access to the public.  Not so at Guttmann.  At the security desk I was asked about my business, my ID was scanned and I was held there until I could be directed to a information desk on the third floor.  The desk on the third floor was staffed by former student.  Before speaking with me the young woman at the desk asked me to go to a computer log in and make a digital appointment.  It took me a little time to realize the appointment was to come back to the desk and speak with her. (Something about this struck me as a little strange).   The woman I spoke with was very pleasant, and provided me with general information and literature about the college.  Having done this at a few colleges I have learned to escalate the nature of my questions to issues of college organization, governance, and decision-making.  When I have done this it has usually resulted in being referred to somebody else higher up on the organizational chart.  Not so today.  While it was clear the nice woman could not answer my inquires, and she had already explained to me that that an advantage of the college was having all the heads of financial aid, admissions etc. in the building at the same center but nobody was around or available to talk to about the college itself.  I left the desk with the phone number of admissions..

            On my way out of the building I did detour up to the 7th floor to check out the science labs.  Guttmann is new, only offering 5 degrees, none of which are in the sciences so the labs I take it were for general biology classes.  I did notice a few research posters, which led me to assume faculty at Guttmann are expected to conduct research just like LaGuardia.  Sadly I did not find any faculty present.  If I could afford to spend more days in the City I would have liked to return and talk to some faculty about what its like to work at the college.

Guttmann is facing the inverse situation to CCSF.  They started only about 7 years ago with 300 students.  The pathways philosophy was to build programs around their degrees.  If you believe the news reports on their website some of the advantage of this is not having existing courses and faculty when planning their new programs.  All students take the same core courses in the first year and specialty comes in the second year, with lots of onramp programs and support.  But the college must be in expansion mode (unlike the CCSF situation) and how they decide to add courses and what classes they offer would be interesting to know.  Unfortunately I did not successfully find my pathway to having these questions answered…