|
 |
Shannon surrounded by students (Left to right): RENADA
RUTLEDGE, DEANNA MAZDRA, DR. HENRY SHANNON, LAJUAN WOODS,
JOHNATHAN TRAMBLE. |
COMMUNITY COMMITMENT
|
St. Louis
Community College emerges as national leader with Dr. Henry Shannon
at helm.
By Kevin Kipp
Cotton was king when Henry Shannon lived in the Mississippi delta.
His family moved to St. Louis in 1955. He was eight.
“The precipitating event was the lynching of Emmett Till for allegedly
making a pass at a white lady,” says the chancellor of St. Louis
Community College. “My parents were concerned about my safety being
a black male in the South, and there were more opportunities in
the north—getting a job, getting an education. Cotton didn’t offer
much of an option, so we moved here; I call it ‘Up South,’ because
of the city’s social and political similarities at the time, like
segregation.”
Shannon graduated from an integrated Soldan High School in ’65 and
attended Harris-Stowe State College when it was a single-purpose
“teacher’s college.” He taught for two years at Curtis Elementary
in north St. Louis, earned his master’s degree from Washington University
in 1972 and returned to Harris-Stowe as both professor and administrator
in their counseling programs until 1979.
|
Henry Shannon meets with staff members to discuss
upcoming activities such as the dedication of the
new South County Education and University Center October
3. Seated around the table from left: Tina
Odo, general counsel; Rebecca Garrison, secretary
to the board of trustees; Chancellor Shannon; Yvonne
Helberg, executive assistant to the chancellor; and
Donna Blackmon, administrative secretary, chancellor’s
office. Gregarious and informal, Shannon maintains
an “open door” office, and staff members are adept
at managing issues and traffic flow. |
|
After four years at Saint Louis University, he accepted a post at
St. Louis Community College as dean of student development. Shannon
was home again.
No longer a disenfranchised African-American of the segregated South,
Shannon had internalized the benefits of education, the value of
family and the power of knowledge.
He became president of the Forest Park campus in 1992, and after
a stint as interim chancellor in the late ’90s, he was appointed
chancellor by the St. Louis Community College board in 2000.
He is now the leader of a $130 million a year, three-campus operation
with 3,700 full- and part-time employees and a for-credit student
head count in the neighborhood of 30,000.
“I found that growing up in the inner city, a lot of guys thought
being smart was acting white,” Shannon says. “A lot of African-American
males felt they couldn’t show that they’re men by showing that they’re
scholars.”
Shannon is man enough that he is married to the cheerleader he met
when he played college basketball: Gwendolyn Shannon is a principal
in the Normandy School District and mother of their four children,
22 to 31.
Shannon praises his cousin, Horace Mitchell, now vice chancellor
of business affairs at the University of California Berkeley, for
helping him see the light.
“He was a year-and-a-half older, and we went to the same high school,”
Shannon says. “He always stressed academics. He went through Wash
U. from undergrad to Ph.D. He was a hero in the family and like
a big brother.”
|
The Meramec Campus is home to the Center for Advanced
Imaging—where students learn computer animation, 3-D
modeling, web design and computer-aided publication
and production skills. |
|
Shannon, who in 1982 also earned his Ph.D. at Washington University,
says, “We had a little competition going on, and we served as peers,
pushing each other.”
For his research, Shannon investigated the performance of women
and minorities in mathematics, determining that lower scores “had
to do with them disabling themselves through a lack of confidence.
Attitude is a non-cognitive issue.”
The stakes are real, Shannon says. “If you don’t master math, you
disenfranchise yourself economically.”
Meanwhile, with females now graduating from four-year institutions
at a rate 10 or 11 points higher than males, Shannon grants, “At
the undergraduate level women have passed men. I think it’s because
they stay focussed. Technical and engineering fields are still mostly
men, but overall, women are doing better.
“We need to get men more focussed,” he says, “as well as understanding
that jobs in the 21st century require some post-secondary education.”
And that requirement is a job for St. Louis Community College.
“Study at least two years after high school,” prescribes the doctor.
“Start with us, and then go on for the four-year degree.”
But whatever you do, do more than high school.
“At one time you could work at manufacturing and support a family,”
he says, “but even factory jobs require training now.”
“We have a motto: ‘A practical solution for practically everyone,’”
he says. “You sense a need and you respond—quickly, community-based
and affordable.”
“I love liberal arts,” Shannon continues, “and research institutions
are geared to longer term solutions. But when you need practical
training for the work force, you want something today, not next
year or next decade.”
St. Louis Community College serves 135,000 credit and non-credit
students annually. That includes some double counting, say, of students
enrolled in two different semesters. It also includes workers, say,
from Chrysler or Anheuser-Busch, taking customized training. Still
it’s a very substantial number.
The large number “reflects St. Louis’ wide spread experience with
the community college,” Shannon says.
In addition to three campuses, St. Louis Community College also
offers classes in four centers (extensions, essentially) and at
a total of 50 sites.
College documents state that 61 percent of the student body are
female, 61 percent are white, 61 percent are part time. Sixty-nine
percent are from St. Louis County, 20 percent are from the city,
25 percent are African American. The average age is 27 years old.
Says Shannon, “If you want to see yourself on campus, you can—traditional
students, 18-to-22-year-olds during the day and especially at Meramec;
25-to-35-year-olds at night; people with disabilities, international
students and students over 35.
“Diversity is a natural for us,” he says. “We’re like the United
Nations. Take the Forest Park campus. We have people from 75 countries
speaking 50 languages, with all minorities accounting for 51 percent
of the student population there.”
While some basic coursework is available on all campuses, each one
focuses on particular centers of excellence—which also happen to
be programs that prepare workers for growing industries. Shannon
cites examples, among them:
| • |
The
Meramec campus is home to the Nursing program and the Center
for Advanced Imaging—where students learn computer animation,
3-D modeling, web design and computer-aided publication and
production skills.
|
| • |
At
Forest Park, the focus is on Allied Health (a source inside
the college says some Washington U. medical students take
courses there) and Hospitality & Tourism—lab facilities for
which include a professional kitchen and handsomely appointed
dining room.
|
| • |
At
Florissant Valley, the Engineering & Technology Department
houses the Advanced Manufacturing Center, and the Biology
Department houses the Biotechnology degree program.
|
Jim Miller is
managing director of Wyeth BioPharma, a business unit of the $15
billion-a-year Wyeth, formerly know as American Home Products.
At a facility located near Lambert– St. Louis International Airport,
he says roughly 80 of his present 400 employees are engaged in “manufacturing,
quality control and process development.” He estimates that a dozen
of those are Flo Valley biotech grads who joined the company at
annual salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000.
|
At Florissant Valley, the Biology Department houses
the Biotechnology degree program. |
|
He says the Flo Valley program is the only two-year program he hires
from, in part because they offer the only two-year program in the
region, and more importantly, because of the skill of the grads.
“We look there to get talent now and in the future,” Miller says.
“It’s a hands-on type of program. We need four-year institutions
for researchers, and we hire from the University of Missouri system—all
four campuses—SLU and Wash U. But for technicians and specialists,
the two-year degree is an excellent fit.”
Wyeth BioPharma has helped create the pipeline from which it benefits:
“We have a bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing plant and they have
a bio-pharmaceutical program,” Miller says. “We’ve collaborated
on their curriculum and provided other advice.”
|
At Forest Park, the focus is on Allied Health. |
|
Wyeth is not alone in its support for the institution. Deborah Godwin,
executive director of the St. Louis Community College Foundation,
sees the business community’s appreciation of the school’s mission
of public education on an ongoing basis.
Since its creation five years ago the separately incorporated non-profit
foundation has generated $3.5 million in cash contributions, $500,000
in pledges and an eye-popping $7 million in gifts-in-kind to help
the college.
Not surprisingly, the Advanced Manufac-turing Center has generated
a lot of that interest. Unigraphics made the largest gift: CADCAM
design software, installation and training for 20 stations in the
CADCAM lab, with a fair value of $6.3 million.
“Purchasing the basics of this software for one computer at a private
sector company starts well into six-figures,” Godwin says. “This
is the only Unigraphics CADCAM lab in Missouri at a two-year public
institution; the only four-year institution with a lab is UM-Rolla,
where they have a $22 million software package.”
Godwin adds, “Unigraphics software is used worldwide by major manufacturers
like Boeing and GM, as well as by medium and small companies like
[St. Charles– based] Patriot Machines.”
The center also received $1.1 million in cash and pledges, with
Emerson providing the lead donation of $500,000 and the Boeing-McDonnell
Foundation pledging $300,000.
At the Center for Advanced Imaging, Godwin says Apple Computer “partners
with us for upgrades on an ongoing basis, and City Photo’s Jeff
Edwards is working with us to offer classes to business and industry.”
The Hospitality program benefited from $1.2 million in corporate
support, including a lead contribution from Anheuser-Busch and in-kind
donations of equipment from Schnuck’s and Ford Hotel Supply, and
a demonstration kitchen from Ameren UE.
Support isn’t exclusively about jobs and tech. Godwin reports that
the Gateway Foundation is working with the Visual Arts Department
“to place significant contemporary sculpture on all three campuses,
to get public art out there in an approachable way.”
Shannon says the Foundation played a critical role in the college’s
growth in the last five years. He says the endowment, used primarily
for scholarships to help individuals defray the costs of $64-an-hour
tuition, stands at $1.4 million.
Godwin attributes the Foundation’s success to board members like
Michelle Walter, retired faculty member of St. Louis Community College;
JoAnn Harmon, senior vice president, Emerson; and Jerome Williams,
retired physician from Gateway to Health Williams Clinic—who helped
solicit many large corporate gifts—and especially the chair, Frank
Stokes, a retired senior vice president from Monsanto.
“He has a real expertise in the whole area of life sciences, from
biology to horticulture to bio-pharma manufacturing,” she says.
“He helps us look at our programs and their direction and translate
that to business and industry. He helps them see how their investment
in expanding our programs is in their best interest.
“Having a committed, knowledgeable board that is dedicated to advancing
the mission of the college and public education is key to our future,”
she says.
She also credits Shannon’s support, connection to the community
and “unfailing commitment to the students and the mission.”
“We’re lucky as a community to have him and this institution,” she
says. “Out of 1,300 community colleges, we place in the top 10 on
a wide variety of measures: the number of graduates, responding
to needs in the community and our economic impact.”
Now, you can measure your institution’s economic impact by applying
a multiplier—seven is commonly used—to its $130 million budget.
Or you can estimate that the combined expenditures of your college
and its employees add $120 million to the regional economy. Or you
can estimate that your college adds $1.7 billion to the earnings
of its graduates.
Shannon asks rhetorically, “What is the impact of a person with
an education—working, paying taxes, empowering their kids? Compare
that to the one-time impact of a ballgame. What is the value of
helping a divorced mother of two, who is now a doctor in Kirksville,
instead of on welfare? What is the economic impact of making someone
a responsible citizen, or even a CEO, versus someone on the street
acting crazy?
“We take people where they’re at,” he says. “Sometimes students
can’t afford college or aren’t quite mature enough or aren’t academically
prepared.”
Not only does the college take people where they’re at, its enrichment
programs, like Gear Up and Upward Bound, try to move them forward.
“When I got out of Soldan, I thought about joining the Marines,”
Shannon says. “But at the last minute I decided to go to college.
I had to choose to go to Harris-Stowe. My kids never thought whether
or not to go to college, but where they would go; we want to have
these kids [in the enrichment programs] on campus as soon as we
can, to help them understand what college is about.”
His commitment runs deeper than public education.
“Grandmother said, ‘to whom much is given, much is expected,’” he
explains. “When you’re standing on the shoulders of others who have
gone before you, you owe it to help others who follow you. Dr. King’s
legacy is one of empowering others, of service to others. That’s
how I want to be.”
Take us home, Chancellor: “Education gives me the ability to impact
someone’s life in an important and positive way. How do you measure
that we’re fulfilling God’s plan for us to help and serve others?
Why are we put on this world? I want to feel when I leave this physical
life that I have been able to touch the lives of others in a positive
way and that they’ll do the same.”
Kevin Kipp runs Bubble Communications, a creative services and
community relations firm in St. Charles. |
|
|
|
|
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
|
