College-Debate

What validation for community colleges! When my catalog arrived for College of Marin, the cover photo announced a prestigious award for a long-time faculty member. Okay, okay, here’s the first paragraph of the article: “On July 17, 2008, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced the appointment of Kay Ryan as the 16th U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She joins a distinguished roster of poet laureates, including Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, Louise Gluck, and Robert Pinsky among others.”

At first, I thought, “How fabulous it was to have someone in Marin County, CA, named as U.S. Poet Laureate”. But where the community college bit comes in is that she not only teaches at a community college, she also graduated from one! That shocked me a bit: Kay Ryan is not some lofty college professor with a degree from an Ivy-league school, steeped in decades of university glamour. Instead, she teaches at College of Marin, an excellent community college, and she graduated from Antelope Valley on California’s Mojave Desert!

Her poetry is unique, simple, and compelling. One poem read, I searched for another. And another. How could I have attended that college and not come across this woman? Probably because she teaches English to a particular student population. In her words, “As a teacher at a community college for over thirty years, I have taken particular pleasure in working with the kind of students who come to community colleges — people who are hungry for education and are willing to sacrifice to get it. It means something, to see night students arrive in their work uniforms from hospitals, construction sites, restaurants. I admire my students for their courage to start over in life, often having taken some knocks and having had the guts to think how to make things better for themselves and their families by coming back to school.”

Is this a wake-up call to all those who say community colleges are best avoided for those who want to succeed in their careers? That community college students will have to settle for less? The interview with Kay Ryan says otherwise. That got me thinking: Which is the better choice: (a) To do whatever it takes to attend a four-year school (perhaps including a student loan) or (b) To stay close to home and take advantage of an excellent community college and faculty? While circumstances vary from school to school and student to student, this interview is very validating for community colleges, faculties, and students.

I had occasionally felt a little embarrassed because I had received my AA degree before going on to graduate from a California state college. The interview with Kay Ryan points out that I am not alone. Some of the others who have done so and gone on to succeed include: “Tom Hanks, actor; Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Governor; Eileen Collins, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut; George Lucas, film maker; Joyce Luther Kennard, California Supreme Court justice; Jim Sinegal, Costco Wholesale Corporation CEO; Annette Bening, actor…”

The story / interview is short and includes one of Kay Ryan’s poems:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=80608