The Wayne County Community College District in Detroit (WCCCD) will host its inaugural Urban Community College Summit, bringing together a variety of stakeholders to identify strategies to strengthen educational and economic mobility for students attending urban community colleges nationwide.
The Summit is the brainchild of Dr. Curtis L. Ivery, the longtime chancellor at WCCD who has emerged as a national leader on issues relating to student success, particularly involving young men of color.
Ivery said that the Summit – which will encourage dialogue between community college educators, secondary school educators, civic and community organizations and municipal, state, and national agencies – will serve as a call to action to discuss the many problems that beset urban communities.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen worse, and I say that with profound sadness because I would like to think that we’ve made some progress, but I worry about the next generation,” said Ivery, who presides over a community college that has more than 70,000 students enrolled in credit and noncredit classes spread across five campuses. “And I don’t want to be pessimistic, but my goodness, when I see the kinds of social constructs and barriers that we continue to deal with, I can’t be as optimistic as I’d like to be.”
In an interview with Diverse, Ivery said it’s impossible to discuss the challenges that community colleges in urban areas face without addressing poverty and a broken K-12 system.
“When we talk about concentrated poverty relative to education, relative to health care, the lack of daycare for students we serve, we find that people are so uninformed,” said Ivery, who noted that despite steady progress across the years, the Detroit region, and indeed the nation, still have a long way to go to make substantial inroads.
“We are talking about a broken K-12 system for the last, say 20 years,” said Ivery who is the author of numerous books including Don’t Give Up, Don’t Give In: Wisdom and Strength for Young Black Men. “We’re getting those students from K-12, so we’ve had to be very strategic in terms of how to ensure some positive outcomes for that student population.”
