March 31, 2017 – LaGuardia Community College

          Today I dragged my wife with me to a college that felt like home.  LaGuardia Community College located in queens is a large urban community college serving well over 50,000 students.  The college is distinctly urban, located in multiple connected high-rise buildings that span a large city block.  From the outside it just looks like many of the other neighborhood industrial buildings, with little signage or directories or stunning classical architecture.  On the inside the walls and floors are well worn.  The life in this place exists in the students who flow in and out of the buildings like air circulating in lungs.  Walking the halls and talking with students, there was a well-loved feeling to this place.  Interior hallways were gallery space for student artwork and encyclopedic posters on the history of higher education.             As a stranger it took a little wandering to find the science labs.  The students all knew where they were going.  And those who were not headed anywhere were very comfortable to park themselves in the hallways where every available open space was furnished with simple chairs or couches.   There was a simple packed cafeteria but this being New York the students were having their nutritional needs meet by multiple street food carts just outside the buildings as well.  Once on the floor housing the science labs, many of which were devoted to research, the décor changed to poster presentations, making it harder to move expediently as I stalled for the reading on a wide variety of topics all authored to students and faculty working at the college. 

            The interior warm welcoming feeling of the college extended to my interactions with faculty.  Within minutes of introducing myself to a member of the faculty I caught in the hallway I was invited into faculty offices and introduced to the entire present faculty.  This is a community college, but it felt more like a university in its professionalism and focus of its faculty.  At LaGuardia faculty carry heavy teaching loads but they are also expected to publish or produce scholarly works.   Being as large as it is LaGuardia has a clear hierarchy to its organizational structure with lots of support roles and clear expectations for its faculty with FT faculty having a say in their teaching schedules, but also having a heavy workload and high expectations of contributions to the academic community. 

            My impressions from the multiple conversations I had today was that at teachers and directors were all happy to be working there and were for lack of a more expressive art, satisfied and glad to be working where they were.  It reminded me of CCSF before the accreditation crisis.  When you meet people who are at peace with their jobs the talk rotates around teaching and comparisons of similarities in academic duties and structures.  It is much easier to establish conversation and camaraderie in this environment and after a brief amount of interaction I would have gladly gone out for a beer with everyone I met today.  They were all active willing contributors to the educational process and exactly the type of people I have been looking to interact with  (Note to self: if I ever decide to do this kind of thing again cut to chase fly, to NYC and invite the natural science Dept. out for a beer).