by Mara Rose Williams
Kansas City Star/MCT Campus
3 March 2010
Clanking keys break the silence in the winter’s morning darkness.
Mina Akuba, her pregnant belly protruding, pushes open the Fitness Center’s heavy glass doors and flips the light switch — initiating a fresh day at Metropolitan Community College-Penn Valley.
It goes without saying that this day will be unlike those at four-year schools. Often in the shadows of the state universities, the urban, two-year Penn Valley is a creature of a different stripe.
But spend a little time in the halls of a community college and observe the richness of its offerings to those who need them most. See it reach to its community, and it becomes clear how it fills a crucial niche in higher education.
Take the 6:30 a.m. ritual of Akuba, a 25-year-old aerobics instructor. She’s not here for a workout, but to let waiting homeless students come in to use the showers and wash away vestiges of a night spent at a shelter or in a car.
Akuba, like more than half of all U.S. college undergraduates, got her own start at a community college. Now, she works part time at Penn Valley while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
•••
Daybreak is still little more than a hint when, across the brick-paved courtyard inside the Campus Center, Wendy Lockett plops down into a cushy chair pushed against a corner window.
Even as she breaks open the biology text, she in no way fits the mold of the average college student.
She’s 45, first of all. Long ago, she dropped out of high school, spent years abusing drugs and dealing drugs, and then raised five children.
After all that, enrolling last year made her “a little scared.”
It had been 13 years since she got a G.E.D. But she has her own support group — two grown daughters talked into enrolling with her.
The school work is tough, Lockett says, and “sometimes it’s frustrating.”
“But they have all kinds of tutoring for every class in here. They help you. There are so many people to reach out to.”
Most days, Lockett is the first in the college’s lobby, the hub of campus activity from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
“You’ll find me in this same corner every morning,” she says, briefly looking up from her book and lecture notes while she waits for the Atrium Cafe to open.
“We have class at 8, but I like to get here early, get breakfast — a doughnut and coffee,” says Lockett, who is working for certification as a nursing assistant. She said her professor gives pop quizzes and she doesn’t want to miss anything.
She is one of 6,000 served at Penn Valley. Just as at the nation’s 1,176 other community colleges, most of the students are women, more than a third are minorities and more than half attend part time.
Even the more demanding four-year publics have students needing extra help, says Jennifer DeHaemers, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
“But I would say that in general, there is a whole different level of support provided by community colleges.”
•••
During a morning Read Right session in the Success Center, a dozen Penn Valley students in their 20s to 40s struggle with their assignments, reading aloud from childish, big-print picture books.
Millie Edwards waves in visitors as her class reads back two-sentence passages she just recited to them.
For Edwards, this is where the magic happens.
“I could have taught anywhere, but I love the energy and diversity here,” Edwards says. “… Here’s where I can make a difference.”
Community colleges accept those facing all sorts of challenges.
“Many are the students for whom if we were not here, they would not have a chance in life,” says Bernard Franklin, president at Penn Valley. “We say to them, ‘We will do everything we can to remove all barriers to help you graduate.’
“We have always been about work force development, but there is a new level of expectation. The times call for us to be more nimble,” Franklin says.
“We have to meet the demands of people wanting workers to get to work and get to work fast.”
The high school graduate who reads at a third-grade level receives remedial instruction. The woman who dropped out to care for children has access to day care so she can attend classes. The youngster who’s struggling with homesickness gets a bus ticket to visit his folks back home.
•••
Mary Walker recites her paper to a tutor.
She reads it in a whisper.
The 52-year-old mother of two needs advice for her English 102 class.
After listening, her tutor, Maureen Maginn, 49, pronounces: “It’s good.”
There’s a bit of a “but” in her voice. “Is it what your professor asked for?”
Maginn agrees to talk with the professor for Walker. The thought of approaching a college instructor intimidates her.
It is a first meeting for the women. They learn they’re neighbors — walking distance to campus and close to a new community garden. Maginn, a former UMKC professor, recently adopted a baby from China and is learning to parent.
“She can help me write. I can help her parent,” Walker says.
With confidence.
•••
Through a glass wall can be seen the library-quiet computer lab. Tech specialists patrol for students having a problem with a machine.
Books and papers blanket a table where three classmates mull over complex math problems.
Here’s a number with which community colleges must grapple: A 17 percent national enrollment jump over last year. Like Johnson County Community College and others, Penn Valley has its share of the more academically prepared students, such as Akuba, who simply need a cheaper source of college credit hours.
The new pressure on the lower-cost community colleges in recessionary times is simply stacked upon the old challenges faced by an urban community college.
To get through a four-year school’s front gate, a student needs a minimum grade-point average.
Not so at Penn Valley.
The doors at community colleges, funded by state and local taxpayers and tuition dollars, swing open for everyone with a high school diploma or G.E.D. Class rank, national test scores or how long it’s been since high school do not matter.
Penn Valley’s 300 professors — 85 percent of whom have doctorates — aim to answer the national call to steer students toward math, technology and science fields.
“First we have to teach them enough math so they can count back change, in case the computer register goes down,” Franklin says.
Associate degree programs in health care and entry-level nursing, Penn Valley’s specialties, have attracted a good many students, too.
•••
By 9 a.m., classes are in full swing. Ousmane Sy, a 51-year-old refugee from Mauritania, finds a quiet spot with a bench. The father of four not only is a part-time sociology student but also sweeps Penn Valley’s floors.
“I leave here at 2:30 every day,” he says in a thick French colonial accent. His second job is as a city parking attendant. “When I’m not in class, I’m working. I’m setting an example for my kids.”
•••
Tucked away in the basement of the Science Building, preschoolers pour their own milk, pass the carrots and chat, switching midsentence between English and Spanish.
Most of the children belong to students and faculty upstairs. The state-of-the-art child care center run by the Guadalupe Center serves as classroom both for the toddlers and for those studying child development.
Sarah Kline, 25, works at the bilingual preschool and after-school program in the Francis Institute.
Usually, the youth development major is in charge of the older children in the Plaza De Niños after-school program. But this day she’s substituting and getting “awesome” hands-on training in her study area.
Area residents enroll their children, too. “It’s a way into the Latino community for us,” says Jerry Kitz, institute director.
Mothers come to campus to drop off their children and “get the courage to go up and enroll,” says Alexis Delaney, preschool director. “Being located on campus has increased the enrollment of our parents in college.”
•••
In the cafeteria on the Campus Center’s lower level, sandwiches and fries are inhaled before afternoon classes start.
Over there, Gerald Palmer, a campus counselor and lay minister, is blasting a message about HIV education. He paces with his microphone in front of a video screen where HIV-positive people talk about prevention.
Coffee comes with the message. A bowl of snacks in colorful packages sits near the drink dispenser. Oh, wait — those are condoms.
Help is around every corner on the Penn Valley campus, from on-site day care to fliers promoting English lessons stuck on hallway walls in every building.
•••
About 1 p.m., Deanna Drapeau, 21, walks with slow, careful steps across the campus center to the Humanities Building’s elevator. She meets her mentor, Kate Duffy, a learning specialist who works part time with Penn Valley’s ABLE program for students with neurological disorders, autism or brain injuries.
Drapeau’s long bangs drape across the scar stretching from her neck up across her cheek. When her face and skull were smashed by a hit-and-run driver two years ago, the former Raytown high schooler lost sight in her right eye. It was a struggle to walk and talk again after nearly a month in a coma.
She got her G.E.D. after the accident — which she says saved her life. Before it happened, she was cutting a lot of high school classes and flunking, she says. “I was like a little delinquent, going down the wrong path ….
“I call the accident my little blessing.”
Now she’s shooting for her associate degree in physical therapy. Her damaged brain won’t let her follow the lecture and take notes at the same time, but through ABLE, she’s paired with teachers or students who take notes for her in class.
She gets extra time to complete tests and assignments. At home, college-provided computer software reads chapters aloud as she follows in her textbook. Weekly meetings with Duffy help her think through assignments and find ways to manage rigorous college courses.
“I’m not sure I could do this without ABLE,” Drapeau says. “It is like my equalizer.”
•••
The halls clear by 3 p.m., but students still congregate around the Atrium Cafe. The library and computer labs fill with those researching and studying.
Franklin leaves a meeting and heads for his fifth-floor office.
“The kids call me ‘The Suit,’ ” Franklin says. “It’s their way of saying, ‘We are looking up to you.’ ”
He engages students in the halls, the elevators, the parking lots. It’s important to hear how they feel about the school.
“The brightest students tell me they choose to come here for the diversity.” They often help struggling classmates keep up, Franklin says.
Others help in other ways, such as small-dollar donations that Franklin puts in a kitty to help buy books for poor students.
As the daylight slips away, fresh faces flow into the Campus Center — the faces of those who have just left their workplaces for evening classes.
Some grab a soft drink or coffee and then head for their lectures.
But Penn Valley reaches beyond its five-building campus at Southwest Trafficway and 31st Street.
•••
By 5:30 p.m., a few miles away in a Don Bosco Center at Fifth and Campbell streets, about 150 immigrants and refugees fill classrooms on three floors and sit quietly, waiting for their Penn Valley instructors who teach English there day and night until 9 p.m.
Some students have never been to school before. Others have been coming to Don Bosco English classes for years, whole families — children, parents, grandparents.
Some may go on to take college-level courses. Others will take their new language skills and go right to work, says David Holsclaw, director of English as a second language.
“We have had a big impact on Kansas City,” he says. “In May or June, we will celebrate having had 50,000 students.”
Amado Navarro, a 68-year-old Mexican-American, spoke no English when he started classes about two decades ago. The English he learned helped land a job painting cars in body shops. But he quit school to work and raise four sons.
This fall he re-enrolled in the adult English language classes.
“It is my personal goal to be fluent in English,” Navarro says. “Education, I think, is the best way to freedom.”
•••
Another day is ending, another day that makes it clear why the word “community” is such a huge part of the term “community college.”
It’s been a good one for Penn Valley’s basketball team. The Scouts gave Brown Mackie College an 88-79 beat-down. By 9:30 p.m., the bleachers are empty.
Evening classes end 15 minutes later. Campus public safety officers watch the last students and professors file through the Campus Center’s front doors.
Head coach Marcus Harvey walks quietly from the Physical Education Building to his car.
Behind him, at precisely 29 seconds past 10, campus buildings lock simultaneously. Inside, Officers John Keil and Keith Greene flip off light switches, surrendering the Penn Valley campus to the embrace of winter darkness.
Tomorrow is another day.
March 3, 2010
Campus