With Chancellor Mark James visiting MCC-Longview Tuesday afternoon, it was a chance for faculty and staff to showcase some of the distinguished honors the campus has collected since his last visit.
But it was also a chance for employees to ask some tough questions of the college CEO regarding changes to A+, a combined graduation ceremony for MCC and the importance of shared governance among faculty, staff and administrative groups.
James took the most heat when asked about plans to combine all off MCC's graduation ceremonies into one ceremony. James said the decision was created out of a meeting he had with students leaders who, he said, had expressed an interest in a single ceremony.
As he shared his reasons for moving forward with a combined ceremony, he also added that many of the logistic and plan details still needed to be ironed out and that he has been consulting student groups, faculty and staff through the process.
During the two-hour question-and-answer meeting, James said there had been some failures to effectively communicate new initiatives and that issue continues to be something he is dedicated to working on with everyone at MCC.
The meeting with MCC district leaders also gave Longview faculty and staff a chance to show off some of the recent accomplishments from campus.
Writing Across the Curriculum coordinator Mary McMullen-Light offered a report on the success of the first national WAC conference held at MCC-Longview this past week. The conference brought several dozen community college representatives to campus to learn about starting their own successful WAC program.
Several students also took the opportunity to talk about how MCC has helped them and even offered suggestions to the chancellor about how to make MCC great for the next generation of students.
