Winners of 2010 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award
Colleges Recognized for Service to Students, Service to Communities, and Service Through Innovation
Three community colleges have been named as the winners of the 2010 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award, which honors the important roles community colleges play in addressing educational, social, and economic needs and opportunities. The winners of the award program, which is administered by Jobs for the Future and sponsored by MetLife Foundation, will each receive a $50,000 grant.
The winning colleges are:
• Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, for Service to Students. The college has demonstrated a sustained commitment and clear strategies to help larger numbers of students succeed through its Opening Doors to Excellence initiative. This campuswide program intervenes with students on academic or progress probation and helps them keep on track toward a degree.
• Clover Park Technical College in Lakewood, Washington, for Service to Communities. The college is successfully addressing demographic and economic change in its community through its Brownfields to Green initiative. The program combines environmental mitigation with opportunities for older adults and veterans to retrain for future employment.
• Lewis and Clark Community College in Godfrey, Illinois, for Service Through Innovation. The lack of health care for rural communities inspired Lewis and Clark to develop the Nurse Managed Care program. This initiative includes mobile care units to reach the underserved and incorporates training for future nurses.
“These three colleges are exceptional examples of what community colleges do well,” said Dennis White, president and CEO of MetLife Foundation. “All community colleges can recognize something of themselves in these winners and gain new perspectives from their examples.”
“Innovations on community college campuses are instrumental in retraining and reenergizing the U.S. workforce,” said Marlene Seltzer, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future. “These three MetLife Foundation awardees are sterling examples of creative solutions that specifically address the challenges in their own communities and expand opportunities for the students and workers of the future.”
In 2010, the MetLife Foundation Award for Community College Excellence recognizes strong examples of institutional accomplishment, sustained commitments, and success but also celebrates examples of bold, inspiring ideas, creative-thinking, and innovation that changing times and future success demand. The three award winners represent different roles and facets of how community colleges lead and serve. They offer strong examples of institutional success and best practices in service to students, to communities, and through innovation that are worthy to be shared and emulated.
In recognizing service through innovation for the first time, the award honors in a tangible way the promise and power of ideas, new thinking, alternative approaches, and strategic change to address a specific, distinctive local need, challenge, or opportunity. Community colleges are themselves an American innovation, and they remain by both strategy and necessity leading innovators.
In 2009, a study by the League for Innovation, with support from MetLife Foundation, identified traits of successful innovation in community colleges and the effects of award recognition on programs, individuals, and institutions. The Nature of Innovation in the Community College project adds new insights into why, how, and with what result colleges innovate successfully and lessons they can share. The study included categorization of award-winning innovations in terms of content and substance; a survey of 400 identified award recipients; exploration of and identification of characteristics of a college culture of innovation; and interviews with selected award recipients.
In many respects, “innovation” is contextual. Programs, processes, services, plans, and partnerships can be innovative in different ways for different institutions and communities at different times. Synonyms may include new, different, fresh, novel, creative, out-of-the-box, break-the-mold, groundbreaking, pioneering, adaptive. To avoid prescription or limitation, the award program defines “innovation” in broad terms as a new approach, a new way of both thinking and doing, with emphasis on the implementation, the action. Each college competing for an award defined innovation in its own terms; explained how the specific program, initiative, or action is innovative; described what local challenge need or opportunity it addresses; and offered evidence of its impact or promise, and of its significance for other institutions.
Winners of the 2010 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award were selected after a careful review process involving a National Advisory Review Panel of experts and Jobs for the Future staff. Two hundred fifteen applications were received, and then narrowed down in stages to nine finalists for site visits. Based on this rigorous process, the three award winners were selected.
Six other community colleges were named as finalists, and will each receive a $20,000 grant from MetLife Foundation. The finalists in each of the three award categories were: (For Service to Students) Florence-Darlington Technical College, Florence South Carolina; Queensborough Community College, New York, New York; (For Service to Community) Forsyth Technical Community College, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; North Iowa Area Community College, Mason City, Iowa; (For Service Through Innovation) Erie Community College, Buffalo, New York; Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, Virginia.
For fuller descriptions of the award winners and finalists, download a copy of the award brochure.
