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Editor’s Note: The following is a response to the 2024 Dallas Herring Lecture by Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, delivered on Nov. 19, from Dr. Pamela Senegal, president of Piedmont Community College.
Good afternoon. It is a privilege to be here today and offer reflections on Chancellor Lowery-Hart’s insightful lecture about transforming higher education through intentional, courageous, and systemic leadership.
As the president of Piedmont Community College, a rural serving institution north of Durham and on the Virginia line, I deeply appreciate the emphasis on the criticality of loving our students. It is a theme that resonates profoundly with PCC’s mission to transform lives, strengthen community and inspire individuals to excellence.
His lecture brought to mind an oft repeated quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, our 26th president, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
How can we in higher education, faced with increased levels of scrutiny on our efforts, heightened levels of political polarization, statutory constraints on our ability to address matters of diversity and equity head on, convey to every student this ethic of care, so that they will ultimately be able to receive the intended knowledge and skills we have to offer?
The solution seems deceptively simple but is more complex to unloose than a Gordian knot. With deliberate actions as Chancellor Lowrey-Hart reminded us, we can consistently provide the ethic of care every one of our 600,000 plus students that we serve from Manteo to Murphy deserves. It starts with me. It starts with you. It starts with us.
How can we hard wire an ethic of care into our institutions?
With 78 of our 100 counties considered rural according to the NC Rural Center, for many of us, leaning into our rural assets is an important key.
The NC Rural Center defines a rural county as one that has fewer than 250 people per square mile. According to that math, 3.7 million North Carolinians reside in rural communities.
A recent article in Our State magazine summarizes the dilemma of describing what it means to be rural.
“Rural is either pictured as an idyllic, bucolic, and pastoral escape from the harried pace of our modern lives, or it is viewed as a backward, frozen-in-time mindset that needs to be pulled, kicking and screaming, into modernity. Neither narrative is fully accurate, of course, and seldom is it based in any lived experience.”
Here’s what I’ve learned about rural North Carolina’s roots that influence how we show an ethic of care:
- There are pockets of brilliance everywhere. Take care to NOT just measure one type of intelligence, there are actually multiple forms.
- Family connections, and connections to the land are paramount. In our communities, 70 to 90 percent of residents drive out to work every day. But what we need to focus on is that at the end of the workday, they return home! These are people who are making a choice to live in this community.
- People NEVER forget how you made them feel, so get it right the first time. Make sure that you employ secret shoppers to find out what is really going on. We did, and Ms. Edna Brown, Director of Student Development at our Caswell Campus exudes the kind of care we seek to emulate. When the secret shopper met with Ms. Brown, she finally had to break character because for every excuse the shopper gave, Ms. Brown had an answer and would not let the student walk away without registering. We all need more Ms. Browns!
- Resources are limited, so take the time to develop authentic partnerships and connections before they are needed. Our CEAD (Center for Educational and Agricultural Development) project is an example of established partnerships coming together to create something larger than would otherwise be possible.
With that knowledge and the understanding that how we treat one another is an essential part of our foundation, there are a few additional things I’d like to offer on this topic of care.
For us, it comes down to three things: people, practices, and partners.
Value people first
Several years ago, we embarked on a journey that is familiar to many of us – we updated our strategic plan. Was that groaning I heard? Good news is that we have a new resource in Dr. Zachary Barricklow, AVP for Strategic and Rural Innovation, who works directly with colleges on strategic planning and in partnership with the Belk Center.
Commercial over. Back to my story.
As part of that process, we solicited feedback from students, community members, faculty, staff, and board members. Even though COVID interrupted that process, forcing many conversations to move to virtual ones, we ultimately choose to center our work around our student’s equitable access to learning.
As part of the strategic planning process, we also spent a lot of time clarifying our values and defining them to hold ourselves accountable.
When we say we value people, here’s what we mean – we strive to create a caring, inclusive, and safe environment that inspires all people to achieve their goals, express their creativity, share their successes, and encourage others.
We carved out money from our limited resources to create a director of student engagement role that has been a phenomenal student whisperer, sharing insights about additional support students needed. Our very first person in that role was Ms. Tiffany Skouby, a name you may recognize, because she recently left us for greener pastures at the system office to become the state director of student life.
While she was with us, we learned that our traditional food pantry model was not being used, not because there was not a need, but because students did not want to have to repeatedly disclose their level of need before each visit.
They were right.
So we changed.
We transformed the traditional food pantry model where students must sign and provide unnecessary details to one that is now marketed as “Forgot Your Lunch.” Everyone forgets their lunch, right? Now we’re normalizing the right to NOT be hungry. We’re democratizing access to food. We know that hunger is an impediment to learning. We care far too much about all of our students to spend energy worrying that some students who don’t really need the food may take some.
That same ethic of care thinking has helped identify new partners related to the issue of food insecurity. Our college is situated in a food desert, having only one formal grocery store in one of the counties we serve. Our agriculture program, under the leadership of Mr. Lucas Bernard, partners with the Caswell Parrish, and donates the crops grown as part of a program for families in need. Just this past summer, we donated 281 pounds of sweet potatoes to our local food bank.
Through our partnership with NC Campus Engagement, under the leadership of the in dominatable Ms. Leslie Garvin, a grant was provided to us to have an AmeriCorps Vista coordinator of food insecurity to map out community food resources for our students and our community.
The non-profit group Second Harvest Food Bank has partnered with our Caswell campus, under the direction of Mrs. Emily Buchanan and has been able to distribute fresh foods and meat to our community while creating a space for us to encourage participants to consider enrolling at PCC. With fall enrollments higher than they have been in a DECADE at PCC, it is clear that living out our mission, valuing and caring for the people we serve is working.
Equitable, consistent processes
While the people make all the difference, having the right processes in place is the stabilizing force that ensures consistency in this work. Having strong processes in place that are followed consistently, even with turnover, is an area we strive to improve because we know how important it is for student success.
We’ve made a significant effort at cleaning up our policies and procedures working to ensure that they don’t have an unintentional negative impact on underrepresented students. We partnered with the Belk Center to have a policy review of our efforts through an equity lens to help us identify both bright spots and areas for adjustment. We are grateful to the efforts of Dr. Jaeger, Elain Townsend and Ciji Hester for their work.
Bright spots included policies with a commitment to inclusion and sustainable language choices. An example is that our Child Development Center, one of two five star daycare centers in our region, sends home communications in multiple languages, ensuring that parents with limited English proficiency will be included in their child’s development.
Another bright spot included a clear commitment to keeping educational debt to a minimum for students. We’ve ensured access to payment plans, have doubled the number of scholarships available to both curriculum and workforce students and partner with our public schools to increase the number of high school students who complete FAFSA prior to graduation.
We were appreciative of the areas noted for adjustment and have already implemented most of the recommendations. Consistently delivering on processes is our focus this coming year.
The third and final area of note is the important role of partners in this work of care for our students.
Partners in care
The reality is that many of the needs our students have are greater than our limited resources. Particularly in a rural community with limited resources, identifying and connecting with the right partners is absolutely essential.
You’ve already heard about some of our partners, their roles are fully integrated into our efforts. Let me share some different examples that I hope will inspire you to make these connections.
One of the ways we do this is through the Pacer Promise scholarship program, which offers last dollar scholarships for up to two years for both curriculum and workforce programs. Funded by the Poole Family Foundation, they have helped us provide 401 scholarships for students who otherwise may not have been able to attend PCC.
Then there’s the extended hours we’ve been able to offer for our evening and weekend career coaches for the first two years thanks to funding from the Longleaf Commitment grant. We are now able to continue providing these services through enrollment growth dollars. Our career coaches are available during non-traditional hours, including evenings and weekends.
This past spring we have finally secured the last tranche of funding needed from a host of partners for phase one of our Center for Educational and Agricultural Development (CEAD) in Caswell County. Phase one will feature a full-service food hub to be operated by a food distribution partner. This partner will stimulate economic growth by selling crops from our local farmers throughout the region. Additionally, phase one will include incubator farm plots and farm amenities, allowing students to learn modern agricultural best practices with a client on-site. Future phases of the project will add an education building, a community health clinic, an emergency shelter, a welding lab, CDL truck driving infrastructure, and walking trails.
With my board’s support, we made a choice to do what was best for the community FIRST. They have rewarded us with unwavering support for the project and continued to champion this cause despite setbacks experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Caring through people, practices, and partners
When it comes to meeting the needs of our students, all of us must lean into our assets. For those of us in rural communities, that means relying heavily on our people, practices and partners.
But before that happens, we had to first agree that this is in our DNA. I believe it’s in all of our DNA. Then we have to push ourselves to define it and find ways to affirm it in our organizational culture which will carry through to our students.
Think back to your favorite teacher of all time. What was that person’s name? How did that person make you feel? Do you remember how hard you worked to ensure that this person would not be disappointed in your efforts?
For me, that special teacher was my third grade teacher, Mrs. Bond. She was a life-long teacher, who always had her hair perfectly coiffed, nails a shiny lacquer, lipstick applied expertly, smelling faintly of jean-a-tae, and she had the world’s best laugh! When she’d read to us at story time, the voices she used for the characters from the Ramona series had us begging her to keep reading. She was my first teacher in the U.S. public schools after my dad’s Army tour took us to Germany for several years. She knew I was a socially awkward, unique, and smart young girl.
She saw how I struggled to fit in, not having grown up in what was a tight knit community. She quietly gave me additional responsibilities to keep the spark of light in me burning bright. I would have walked on hot coals for this woman, because I was convinced that she cared about me, and the feeling was mutual.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Showing an ethic of caring in all that we do to ensure the success of every student we serve is our mandate. There are over 600,000 students counting on us. I know to the depths of my soul that we are up to the challenge.
I’m honored to get to do this work alongside you each day!
