Message From the Chancellor
PVCC's Convocation
August 15, 2011

I was pleased to be able to present to the faculty and staff at Paradise Valley Community College (PVCC) at their Fall Convocation on August 15, 2011. It was Learning Week at PVCC. Learning Week is filled with "rich opportunities to learn, to share, and to further build our college community" as noted by President Paul Dale.

The theme for Learning Week was Student Success / Learning: A Completion Agenda for All Learners. Dr. Tom Anderes, President of the Arizona Board of Regents, and I were asked to keynote and specifically address Getting AHEAD or Getting Access to Higher Education And Degrees. Dr. Anderes and I are the co-chairs of the Getting AHEAD Initiative. I know many of you have read about this important State initiative. Learn more about
Getting AHEADIt aims to be a comprehensive and collaborative initiative by Arizona's universities, community colleges, K-12 sector, business community, and legislative and executive branches of government to re-shape Arizona's postsecondary education system and enable more residents to obtain a college degree. The reality is that today's job market requires higher education. In 2008 only 51% of Arizona's high school graduates pursued any form of higher education (placing Arizona 45th among the US states) and only 25% of Arizona adults (age 25+) have a baccalaureate degree or higher. The solution is to improve access for degree completion and student success.

Arizona was fortunate to receive a $1.5 million grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education to support the goals of Getting AHEAD. Please take some time to learn more about this important initiative. It will help Maricopa achieve the completion goal supported by our Governing Board and improve Student Success, the first of the Governing Board's four Outcomes adopted in 2011. Please take a look at the PowerPoint presentation Dr. Anderes and I presented, and the Fact Sheet about Getting AHEAD. I would welcome your comments.

Finally, I was inspired by the words of Mark David Milliron, Deputy Director for Postsecondary Improvement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in an excerpt from his piece titled "The Courage To Learn." I would like to ask you to reflect on these words just as Dr. Dale asked us to reflect on them at the conclusion of the Convocation. Dr. Milliron's message should help us get off to a great start this fall semester. Thank you.

THE COURAGE TO LEARN

. . . Many of you will be the first in your family to set foot on a college campus. At times it can feel as though there is no one who really understands how strange and awkward your first steps feel. You fill out our forms, meet our advisors, take our placement tests, piece together a schedule, step into our classrooms - whether they're online or on campus - and enter a new world. Sometimes it's hard for us to remember how overwhelming our rules and procedures seem to you. And we should remember. What you may not realize is that many of us started our higher education journey at a community college or technical college. We've just been in this world so long we sometimes lose touch with how we felt our first day. . . .

. . . And it all begins with a choice - an incredibly courageous choice. You (the student) choose to try, to walk through the open doors of our college and begin. You make the choice again and again as you take each step along the journey. You choose to stay, to engage, to give it your best. This choice can and will change your life forever. All because you have the courage to learn.

"The Courage to Learn" Scribd.Web.21 July 2011. http://scribd.com/doc/19107098 originally published in the League for Innovation in the Community College, Learning Abstract Volume 7, Number 4, April 2004.