ANNOUNCING MY CANDIDACY FOR THE MPC BOARD

By Jan Knippers Black

A bit about me and my goals

Born to a judge and legislator, I absorbed early on a commitment to political participation, public service, and social responsibility. I believe that service on the MPC Board would offer me an effective means of fulfilling those commitments. I'm running because I think I can bring to the board a perspective and a wealth of experience of a kind that has been missing.

I'm running because I believe in public education, as a social good and a human right that should be available and affordable to all from the cradle to the grave. I'm running also because I believe in community-building. I teach it and I practice it, and I believe that MPC can be a magnetic center, a source of creative energy for the Peninsula and the Central Coast. But to play that role effectively, the MPC campus must itself constitute a tightly-knit community.

For more than thirty years, I have been a career professional in higher education, engaged in some combination of teaching, curriculum-building, research, writing, editing, research supervision and research team management. I believe that my experience as an active public citizen and as a university professor has sensitized me to many of the issues and needs that must now be addressed by the MPC Board. The greatest challenges, as I see them, are as follows:

1. Reliable and Adequate Funding

MPC will not be able to maintain, never mind enhance, its offerings and its multifaceted utility to the Peninsula and Central Coast community in the absence of reliable and adequate funding. The last couple of decades have seen serious erosion around the world in the resources available to, and the authority assumed by, the public sector. The damaging effects of this erosion have been felt most immediately in the service sector, including the provision of public education at all levels. Moreover, the impact of this global trend has been exacerbated in California by the recent energy crisis. MPC is now among several schools in the area to face the pain of retrenchment and reassessment of capabilities.

It was noted recently on the PBS program "Now," with Bill Moyers, that some 30,000 aspirant students had been turned away within the last year from the UC and CSU systems. Such retrenchment in the four-year institutions, coinciding with high levels of unemployment, can only generate new pressures on community colleges, even as those colleges take a disproportionate hit from budget cuts in higher education. Under these circumstances, we must give serious attention to the challenge that such retrenchment poses, both in terms of fairness to immediate stakeholders and of the ongoing commitment to educational excellence for a constituency that demands no less.

However, we must also seek every means of maintaining or expanding the financial support available. We must maximize our bond funding potential; but as such funding is generally limited to physical plant, we must also find reliable means of underwriting the operating budget, especially as it impacts the classroom. The MPC Foundation has been a great asset in fund-raising, and we trust that it will continue to be. In addition to endowment, we might also seek means of public and private sector partnering to meet specific needs and means to improve marketing of programs that might become self-supporting. Meanwhile, we must be on guard against white elephants and matching grants that would skew institutional priorities.

Even so, I do not believe that the state can afford to abandon or seriously shortchange the only system that promises a chance to all young people and a new chance to those of any age who need it. Nor do I accept the idea that our funding shortfall derives from a shortage of funds. I believe it derives from a misallocation of funds. And I would invest my experience in advocacy and my statewide contacts in an effort to revise state budget priorities.

2. Reaching in, to consolidate campus community

I've been in higher education most of my life; I've seen all too much of shrinking pies--resource entrenchment--and I know that the kind of organizational culture that is needed in the best of times is needed all the more in the worst of times: one that is built on participation and transparency, or openness; one in which communication is bottom-up as well as top-down; one that generates solidarity rather than distrust and division; one that allows the professional expertise of faculty and staff to be tapped for problem-solving; and one that maintains ultimate focus on the needs and interests of students.

There have been serious efforts on the part of faculty, staff, and administration at MPC to enhance communication and to strengthen community, as expressed particularly in the concept of shared government. But of late the product of shared government, particularly with respect to planning and follow-through, has not lived up to expectations, and it is clear that the process needs to be reexamined.

3. Reaching out, to respond to the larger community

Any reallocation of resources or reconsideration of college programs should bear in mind not only the foreseeable educational demands but also the values of this unique community. That means social inclusiveness + not merely tolerance of diversity but the celebration of it. Such inclusiveness and cultural sensitivity should be evident in programs as well as in staffing and student recruitment. Inclusiveness should apply also to generations, ensuring ongoing support for MPC's very popular programs appealing to the interests and expanding the options of the very young and the very senior.

Response to and reflection of community values should mean celebration also of the ecotopia that is ours to protect. With renovation and new construction in the works, MPC might be a pacesetter in green architecture. Community values and community needs most certainly include economic fairness, not only to faculty and staff, but to students and would-be +students. Fairness should mean strong support for those who require subsidy and for the "Dream" legislation that would allow children of the undocumented to be mainstreamed through education. With respect to projects contracted out, fairness should mean livable wages and, where possible, use of local firms.

A community college can and should serve many purposes, but it dare not lose sight of its primary purpose, that of delivering quality education and training. MPC has established a very solid reputation for its programs in basic skills, in technical and occupational training for a fickle job market, in rigorous preparation for transfer to four-year university programs and in the nurturing of extraordinary talent in the arts. All of this requires a steady focus on student and classroom needs, including particularly the need for diligence in hiring and retaining the most capable teachers. Offerings and options for MPC students have been and might be further expanded through collaboration with other institutions of higher learning in the neighborhood.

I hope and believe that my experience in higher education will make me an effective community-builder on campus and that my experience in politics, social activism, and community service will help me to be an effective advocate for the institution in the larger community. I would appreciate very much your vote and your support.