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Last week nearly 5,000 graduates, guests, faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, and elected officials gathered on the CCBC Essex campus to celebrate a tradition of 69‑years: the Commencement ceremony. The event, beautifully choreographed and staged, honored a class of 3,148 graduates, with roughly 1,000 of them proudly walking across the stage to receive a diploma in person. This impressive scene always…
Continue readingApril is Community College Month—a fitting moment to celebrate the fact that community colleges are sitting in the sweetest of sweet spots these days! While higher education is navigating a period of significant change, creating a destabilizing environment for four-year colleges and universities, the community colleges, long the sad orphan child from the wrong side of the ivory tower, are…
Continue readingAs we welcome 2026, we leave behind a year of challenge and hopefully move into calmer waters, although “waters” of any sort are still slightly churning at the Department of Education. Reflecting on our woes and triumphs over the past 12 months, I feel more hopeful this year than I did last year at this time. For all of the…
Continue readingAs we make our way through the longest government shutdown we have yet experienced, we in the community college world occupy an unwelcome front row seat as direct witness to the impact on many of our students and employees. Roughly 85 percent of all community college students come from economically challenged areas; thus their lives are often financially challenged. While…
Continue readingMay is both the best of times and the worst of times in the community college world. This lovely spring month ushers in final exam week with its usual rush to grade papers and submit final grades along with some of the best reasons to celebrate any community college professional could hope for. So all that stress translates into a…
Continue readingIn April we celebrated community colleges; in May we celebrate one important segment of our college community, i.e. our Heroes of the Heart: our Nursing faculty and Nursing students. In short, these special people are made up of equal parts compassion, knowledge, discipline and grace. At CCBC, we could not be more proud to join our colleagues across the country…
Continue readingInstitutions across the nation celebrate Women’s History Month by honoring generations of women who refused to accept barriers, led with courage and dedicated their careers to improving their world. And they did all of this while working to inspire and prepare those who would come after. This is a saga that is definitely true for those of us in higher…
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