MSCHE Pillars of Change
MSCHE Pillars of Change
Episode 5 - Dr. Margaret McMenamin, President of Union County College
Since being named president of Union County College in 2010, Dr. Margaret McMenamin has aggressively pursued an agenda centering on improving student success outcomes. During her tenure at Union, the College has more than quintupled its IPEDS graduation rate and been recognized by the Aspen Institute for Community College Excellence and Association of Community College Trustees. MSCHE Commissioner Mr. Michael Collins interviews Dr. McMenamin, a former Commission Chair, on the success found at her community college and the role of higher education in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
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Michael Collins:Welcome to the Pillars of Change podcast presented by the Middle States Commissionon Higher Education. I'm Michael Collins, vice-president at JFF, a national nonprofit organization that works to transform our nation's education and workforce systems to create economic advancement for all. Over the last 16 years, I've led JFF's post-secondary state policy and systems change, work focused on creating the policy conditions for institutional innovation to increase post-secondary completion and successful transitions to work. In the last year, I've been leading an organizational initiative to ensure that JFF strategies are responsive to the unique challenges that black learners and workers face in our post-secondary and workforce systems and in the labor market. I'm also a first year commissioner at middle states Commission for higher education. I'd like to thank you for joining me for the commission's continuing series podcast, focusing on the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education is closely aligned with assuring trust and instilling confidence in higher education. As an institutional accreditor, the Commission prides itself on advocating for honest, self-reflection that results in meaningful change at our institutions, and because the Commission recognizes that it holds an important voice and space within the higher education community, this podcast series spotlights highly effective institutional practices that have made a difference in the lives of our students through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Today, I'd like to welcome Union County College president Dr. Margaret McMenamin. Since being named president in 2010, Dr. McMenamin has aggressively pursued an agenda centering on improving student success outcomes. During her tenure at Union, the college has more than quintupled its IPEDS graduation rate. In 2019, the Aspen Institute for Community College Excellence named Union County College as a top 150 community college in America. In October, 2020, Dr. McMenamin was named the Marie Y. Martin Community College CEO of the Year by the Association of Community College trustees and award given to CEO's who demonstrate a commitment to excellence in advancing the community college movement. Additionally, ACC T bestowed the Charles Kennedy Equity Award to Union County College's board of trustees and governors for their support of the colleges project achievement initiative in which African-American males are given dynamic advising and real world exposure, such as college visits and cultural exploration to inspire these students to achieve. From the start of the program in 2013, the initiative has more than quadrupled the African-American male graduation rate. I want to also add that in 2019, Dr. McMenamin served as the chair of the Middle States Commissionon Higher Education. Welcome to Pillars of Change, Dr. McMenamin, it's wonderful to have you on the series. And I look forward to the insights. You're going to share so many thanks in advance for the conversation.
Margaret McMenamin:Well, you're welcome. And thank you for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here, Michael Collins, and I can't wait to get started.
Michael Collins:Excellent. Well, I'd like to get our conversations started maybe with a little retrospective. Um, so, you know, if we think about, um, kind of between spring and summer, uh, you know, of 2020 DEI has taken on a new level of importance in our country after the racial unrest in the United States and globally after the murder of George Floyd and the massive demonstrations, protesting police brutality against black Americans and condemning systemic racism. I'd be interested in you sharing your sense of the issues of race diversity, equity, and inclusion before spring and summer of 2020 and today.
Margaret McMenamin:Well, I'm a child of the 60s. So I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and it's almost like to quote Yogi Berra, another famous New Jersey and deja vu all over again. Michael, uh, in the 60s and 70s, uh, during the unrest during those times, uh, the, uh, racial reckoning, the women's movement, the sexual revolution, drug revolution, everything that happened back then, I would have bet my life that by 2020, all of those issues would have been resolved. My generation was focused on making the world a better place. We wanted to transform this world. And frankly, I never would have believed that we would have had situations like we have had that have been exposed that have been going on for years, still going on here in our world in 2020 and 2021. Certainly I, uh, as I said, as a child of the 60s, 70s, I want inclusion. I work, I dedicated my life to working at a community college. And when I talk about community colleges, I say the best thing about us is we are inclusive. We're not like those other schools that are exclusive. My sister-in-law bragging about sending my nephew to an exclusive college. Well, we don't brag about exclusivity. We brag about our inclusivity, our welcoming of everyone. And that's how I viewed how higher education would be. And in my fantasy, in my head, how I viewed this world would be that each one of us would be able to become the people we were meant to be in the skin we were born in. And we would be accepted for who we are and judged by who we are. And not by some prior experience somebody had with somebody who looked like me, it didn't happen Michael, it didn't happen. And it got exposed. And I think part of the exposure of the, of the problems in 2020 were fertilized and not cultivated by the hate speech that was born in the middle part of that decade in 2016, around the 2016 election, where it became open game to, to say anything about anybody, criticize anybody. And, uh, and suddenly the hatred, the bigotry, the racism, the homophobia, and all of that ugliness that frankly was there all the time just came to the surface and it's been exposed. So now 40 years after I, 40, 50 years after I thought, wow, we're moving to the new world of, of, of peace and love and acceptance of everyone. 50 years later, the exposure of this level of bigotry and hatred and this much violence has really, I don't think it's ever going to be covered up again. I think now is the time that we, as a nation, we, as a people are going to have to address this issue and it can't be covered up and hidden and, and made to put perfume on it and made it to smell good for another 50 years. We've got to deal with it.
Michael Collins:No, I so appreciate, um, everything you said, you know, I'm, I I'm, I'm not quite a baby boomer. I missed it by a couple of years. And like you I've worked in a higher education, you know, um, most of my life, and I have to say, I share a lot of the reality, um, that I thought we were moving towards, uh, resonates, you know, very, very powerfully, um, with, with what you said. You know, I'm, I'm I, to talk a little bit about higher education, because it plays such an important role in framing the conversation around diversity equity inclusion at the national level. Um, in some ways, because of the discussion often is framed, you know, kind of by the academy research coming out of the academy, and you could argue that higher education helps to set the contours of the conversation, which I think is, you know, an incredibly important role. And I'd be curious about your thoughts about the role that higher education plays in enhancing or altering the conversation around diversity, equity and inclusion.
Margaret McMenamin:Well, we can be a part of the problem, or we can be a part of the solution. Historically, in my opinion, we've been a part of the problem because higher ed has been exclusive. I couldn't go to the colleges I wanted to go to. They only took men. They only accepted men. Now, maybe when you are going to college, they accepted black folks into the colleges you wanted to go. But we know for a large part of our history, even our education system was an obstacle against us. So first we have to eliminate those obstacles. We have to open doors for everyone into higher education. And I believe the pathway there is community colleges. Now I love Cornell and my brother and sister went there. Princeton's right down the road to a great school. My mother went to Barnard. Those, those Ivy League schools are fantastic, but they're not the ones who are going to change the world. The world changing occurs in community colleges because we are democracies' colleges. We are the path to a, middle-class a lifestyle for our students and for their families. We are the key to economic mobility, community colleges. American community colleges are the answer to this. So if we endorse our community colleges, fund our community colleges and those community colleges remain inclusive environments and open doors to the pathway to higher education t higher education can have a stronger role in addressing these DEI issues. These issues of social and racial justice. But I believe it's through education now. I'm not Steve Jobs. I'm not Bill Gates. I had to go to college. If you're Steve Jobs, if you're Bill Gates, don't go to college, make a billion dollars and good for you. But most regular folks like us have to go to college to change the world, to make, to get those opportunities where we can get into leadership positions and have an impact to change the way the world operates to address these issues of social and racial injustice that have persisted year after year. So that's how I see education is the way out of this. Give everybody level the playing field. When I, when I enter the workforce, I want to be, uh, fully qualified, fully educated, and fully prepared to compete with the wealthiest students I compete against with the students who've had the most opportunity. And that's what I see we do in higher ed. We give students that opportunity. They have what's inside of them to move forward, to succeed, to achieve. We can give them the other part of the package. And that is a college degree with all of the education that goes behind it. That's our role.
Michael Collins:Yeah. I think what you said is so powerful about, um, and I love your honesty about the way that higher education sometimes, you know, has perpetuated some of the inequality. And I will say, um, yes, by the time I went to college in the 80s, I was able to go to college, but my parents were denied admission, um, to white institutions. Um, and frankly, um, you know, uh, the institution that they were denied admission to, I won't name it, it's in Texas. Um, and, uh, that institution has since apologized and has made financial aid available, right. But these issues of inclusivity and exclusivity, I think, um, you know, are, are very, they resonate with me and I love how you described what, um, community college can do around inclusivity. So I really see,
Margaret McMenamin:And it's perpetuated though, Michael, it's not just the past, you know, I couldn't get into West Point or Notre Dame or Lehigh or wherever I wanted to go, but it continues to be perpetuated with the stigma of attending a community college. You know, too bad. You had to go to a community college or the, the, uh, employer who doesn't hire the kid who went, who has the community college degree instead of the four-year private degree or something like that. We've got to create better pathways for community college students to transfer seamlessly into those four year colleges. And we've got to get the employers to respect the community college credits and degrees as much as they should, because those are things that perpetuate those obstacles.
Michael Collins:Well, our next question is kinda kind of get into that, um, because, uh, you know, higher education institutions have often have block brought influence beyond the campus, you know, as a bridge to surrounding communities and driving local and regional civic and economic development. So I'm wondering if you could talk to us about the role that the college and college leaders play in diversity and equity inclusion, both on campus, but also in the surrounding communities, including, you know, with employer partners.
Margaret McMenamin:I think the hardest challenge for colleges is appears to be, is diversifying their employees. Historically higher ed employees have been white and generally white males. Okay. White and white males. For instance, I was the first female president of my college hired in 2010. I mean, it seems crazy to me that we never have a woman president before them. Um, but it, it, it, we have to do a better job diversifying our faculty and staff, our students, the people in our community and even our, and it's not just in the under levels in our positions, our students, our employees, and the people in our communities need to see diversity reflected in the leadership of our colleges and universities. They need to see that philosophy of inclusion and diversity and equity reflected in the teaching staff at the college, both in the full-time faculty and in the part-time the adjunct staff at the faculty and in the student development staff, if we have a diverse community and we have a college that doesn't reflect the diversity of that community, it sends a message. It sends a message whether you want it to or not. So the first thing we do is we need to ensure that our colleges and universities are reflective of our community in terms of the diversity of both. And I'm sure they're shaking their heads as they're listening to this podcast. And they're saying, oh, that's easy for you to say, but it's hard to find them. It may be hard and it's a hassle, but we have to do it. And number two, the other part of what we do to answer your question helps with this. We need to get more community students of color across the finish line with college degrees, period. I mean, we're not going to do that first. And then populate our faculty and staff and administrators with more people of color. We've got to do them concurrently. But if we had been doing a better job of helping students of color graduate, historically, we wouldn't have such a hard time finding people of color with college degrees to fill those roles. The challenge is in my humble opinion, and I know this doesn't make me popular, Michael, but I'm not trying to be popular for your podcast. The real challenge, in my opinion is we never really worked hard enough at helping our students, our most compromised students get across the finish line. We have excepted disgraceful, graduation rates and blame the students and said, well, they're doing the best they can, or it's a victory. They pass developmental math, or I know he didn't get his degree, but he can recite the, the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in middle English. Well, I will say to you that none of those things is going to help that person have a better life. None of those things is going to help pull their family out of poverty. None of those things is going to set an example for the people in that street on that community that a college degree matters. We've got to commit to getting more students across the finish line and not just the Ivy league students and the students in the expensive private universities, but we need to do a better job of getting the most compromised students, our community college students across the finish line with a college degree, transferred to legitimate colleges, four year colleges for the bachelor's degree and into great careers that will sustain their families. That's where we have got to do a better job. And then we'll have more leaders of color, more diversity among all leadership groups. But if we just sit around talking about the students can achieve, we'll never increase those graduation rates, then we'll never crack this nut.
Michael Collins:You know, you, um, you have, um, set a great example, uh, for, uh, for us around completion. You've had great success with African-American male, uh, population, um, that higher education frankly, has struggled to serve. And I'd love for you to talk to us about, you know, what have been your greatest opportunities and challenges, you know, in your efforts to serve, um, kind of that student population and other student populations, um, that have been underrepresented.
Margaret McMenamin:The greatest challenge is people... I'm going to blame us. The greatest challenge is that we higher ed people in higher ed higher education, are doing the same thing over and over again, and thinking it's going to work this time. Or if we did, if we did one level of developmental ed and that still didn't increase the graduation rates, maybe what they need is two levels of developmental ed and that'll really work. And then what we did was two levels didn't work. We did three and I will confess we had more than three levels here when I got here. So I'm not, I don't even want to tell you how many levels we had, but we don't want to change. When I say we that's the Royal we, we in higher ed, we liked what we do the way we do it. We don't want to change. And when somebody comes in, a leader comes in and says, it's not working. We must radically change this. They are then unceremoniously led out the door and somebody else will come in. Who does it more the way we always did it. And that we're more comfortable doing. And then we, we, we accept that and we blame the students and or we blame the K to 12 people, or we blame their parents or we blame society. And we say, this is what poverty does. We blame the Republicans let's blame them. Okay. Let's blame. Let's blame, whoever it is that isn't us, it's their fault. It's not what we're doing. But my contention is we have the power to make a difference to radically change the outcomes in higher education. But it's hard work and people will be upset about it when you do it because you're changing the way we've always done. So that's the problem. We're unwilling to change in higher ed. You want me to blame the kids? Oh, they don't study enough to not committed. You know, millennials, how, when a bunch of... I'm not going to do that, I'm not blaming the students. I'll quote and I'll give him the credit retired president of Valencia College in Florida, Sandy Shugart teach the students you have not the ones you wish you had. I'm tired of hearing people talk about the good old days with the students. There were no good old days. These are the students. These are the good old days. They are too, by the way, Michael, these are the good old days. Someday we'll realize that, but we've got to stop blaming the students. These are the students we have. You want to have a bunch of geniuses with straight A's in 1600 on their college boards go work at Princeton. Don't work here. That's not our student body. Our student body needs more help and, and we have to be willing to do it. And if we go in, which is what we do in high read the Royal we, oh, they're adults now sink or swim. You've got to do it. I'm not going to hold his hand. All of those things, all of that is deadly to first-generation college students, to poor students, to students who don't have a lot of confidence to students who don't know the system, that's deadly to them and they do drown and we watch them drown. And then we blame them for drowning, even though we've never taught them how to swim.
Michael Collins:Yeah. It's such a difficult, um, it's such a difficult picture and what, the way you paint it. And it's, it's so tragic because if you think about kind of our investments in, you know, whether or not you think Pell is great enough, but like, you know, these, these young people, you know, kind of taking their, taking their Pell, going to college, trying to get that credential that could have, you know, kind of lifelong earnings implications and us not being able to serve them just it's overwhelming. Right. But the, the failure. And so the opportunity is just huge to be able to serve these students. And you've done it so well, particularly with, you know, a population again that I think has struggled African-American males. And so really congratulations on that great work. I'm wondering if you think that we have a moment in time to kind of disrupt, um, some of the things that weren't working. I mean, I'm just random.
Margaret McMenamin:Absolutely. Absolutely. Now is the time. This is it. You know, I mean, everybody's saying it for the last 18 months. I know you're tired of hearing it, but I'll say it never waste a good crisis. You know, never waste a good crisis. This is a tremendous opportunity for us to make radical changes in higher ed. Now we're making them, I, you see them across everybody, you know, let's go remote. We wouldn't go remote. You think we're going remote for the students. Let me tell you, I think we're making those radical changes because certain people would rather stay home. And I'm not going to say who those certain people are. But I think everybody on this podcast knows who I'm talking about. They want to stay home in their pajamas and their slippers, and they think that's a radical change. Well, remote live is a radical change in higher ed. It's one of the changes that will survive this pandemic, but we should be making other radical changes in higher ed that could dramatically improve our student success outcomes. But it's hard. It's hard to make these changes by Glenn. Yes, you've referenced our changes. We rose our black male graduation rate rose from 5% at one point. And right now it's a 28 and change. Now that is something people said was impossible. I wouldn't believe it. If I didn't see the numbers, I've had it verified four times and it's been over a four years, it's gone up. It's real, but those were hard changes to make hard things, to create hard, um, uh, accomplishments. But they came as a result of making big changes to the way we interact with our students. We didn't just hand them their Pell money and say, we'll check out in three years. See if you graduate, we called them back. We said, Michael, where are you? We miss you, Michael, you could cure cancer. Michael, come to class, Michael joined this club, Michael do this. And eventually it caught on it resonated. It worked, but that was not doing the same old stuff that you do in colleges and student development that is having a deliberate plan to help more of these compromised students get across the finish line and it worked, it worked dramatically.
Michael Collins:That's great. It's a great example for it's a great example and a great template for, um, for what's possible. I love those numbers that you posted and it's so important for that population and for the community. And I think it's such an important message for right now. I want to stick on this issue of kind of the moment. And I'm just, you know, I worry a lot about this moment being performative. And I'm just wondering if lessons learned, you know, through 2020 and 2021, we've gone through so much the pandemic and Black lives matter. You know, you referenced the elections. I'm just wondering, like in this greater moment of awareness of racial bias in our systems, you know, how do we, um, what do we need to do to sustain kind of, um, kind of the changes that are happening in this moment and institutions, um, so that this isn't like a performative moment that kind of goes away.
Margaret McMenamin:Well, we have a great opportunity and this is one of the questions we're wrestling with in every venue right now. How do you sustain this now? We're, we're, we're aware we know, or we've fixed this, or, or, or how do we stop us from sliding backwards? And this is a, it's an ongoing challenge for us. Uh, I believe certainly shining the light on the issues and continuing to shine. The light on the issues will help. We added, uh, we have institutional priorities at Union. Our priorities are, have been historically enrollment, student success and innovation. Well, we added DEI and social justice to that. So how we keep the conversation going on my campuses, every meeting we talk about those four priorities that's to keep us focused on all of those priorities. So we talk about it. What are we doing? How are we doing it? What's going on? Do we have any, uh, any issues have surfaced any we're going through a, uh, policy review to identify any, because we want to be good. We want to be the best institution we can be for all of our community. So I, I'm not an expert at implicit bias and things like that and systemic racism. So we're actually, I'm having a group go through policies to say, is there something in here that I don't see, or that maybe somebody like me wouldn't notice, but it is an instance of, of, of a problem or something that could facilitate or lead to something. I think we have to keep it on the front burner. We have to keep talking about it. I had faith in our generation. I now lecture our students at every commencement exercise that I say, and it's everyone. I do the same one almost every time. I say my generation failed. We thought we were going to solve these problems for you and hand to you on a silver platter, a world of people who loved and respected one another and, and treated each other with dignity. I said, we have failed. We haven't done that, but we need you to do it. Now. I have a lot of faith in this generation. I'm not one of the critics. I'm not one of those people going around saying these damn millennials or these Gen Zers are terrible. I believe in them. I believe they are going to help to prevent this from falling under the, going back onto the rug and resurfacing 50 years from now. They're a different group of kids. There's more there appears to be in my view is I see 10,000 students every day, they appear to be much less focused on race and gender and sexual orientation and more focused on what are you into I'm into this and common interests that have nothing to do with the things that mattered to our parents. So I'm hopeful that this generation will help, but what I'm doing at my role, 1., Graduating more future leaders of color 2. Putting more leaders of color in, uh, people of color in leadership positions so that our leadership team is reflective of our community. And I'll tell you, the last thing we're doing to try to sustain this is my chief academic officer is working with our faculty in criminal justice to convene some meetings with local law enforcement, about our criminal justice curriculum. The majority of our local law enforcement are educated at Union County College. You could get a ticket here. It's probably from one of my graduates. We believe that if we can have impact on that criminal justice curriculum, that that could influence policing in the future. I mean, I'm talking about directly to George Floyd. I want it to influence policing. I, I mean, we have some great police officers and law enforcement agencies here in Union County. And I have some great on my staff here, retired law enforcement officers of all races, you know, everything, and we want to make things better. So right now I hear word Michael, that there's a lower fewer, many fewer people going to the police academy and things like that. And as you know, everybody's having trouble getting good employees, getting employees at all. Right now there's an opportunity if we get more good people into the police academy. Now in 10 years, 20 years, they're going to be the chiefs and the captains and the lieutenants who are going to have a greater influence on the workings in those law enforcement agencies, people entering the college now as academic specialists or advisors are going to be the next deans and academic officers in the future. So the diversity of the hires we make today and the preparation and the philosophy of those people is going to have the greatest impact as we move forward. So as I hire people today, I'm thinking about when I'm in a nursing home around that cruise around the world, you know, in my wheelchair, these are the people who are going to be sustaining what we're trying to put in place now. And that includes all of those DEI initiatives. So it can't just be, I'm hiring people. Now we think student success is important. I have to also hire people right now who understand the importance of that inclusivity piece. I want us to be that Oasis. It doesn't matter who you are, what color you are, what of the 73 genders you are or whatever it is. We want you here at Union County College, and you will have a place to go here. If I can hire more people who's who believe in that Oasis philosophy, then I can have an impact for generations to come. At least here,
Michael Collins:I can tell you as, as a person of color and as somebody who's raising a, uh, you know, a 10-year-old old son, you know, the, the world that you describe, you know, kind of brings my blood pressure down a little bit. I love it like a world of inclusivity, where we are kind of educating the next generation to accommodate kind of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are engaging our law enforcement and you're, I love that. You're thinking through those second, third and fourth order effects, you know, kind of today building for that, that future that we want. And I love that, um, you know, that, that you are painting that picture because it's possible. And, and you know, and I, and I want a world that can accommodate my, my son, you know, uh, I love that, um, that, that you are on the case. It's wonderful. Wonderful to hear. I've got two more questions for you. I know you're busy, but we want to, um, uh, uh, make the most of our time. I'm curious, you do a lot of thinking about kind of diversity, equity and inclusion, but I'm wondering, um, you know, what is the most urgent issue, um, that higher education leaders need to address, um, to dramatically advance diversity, equity and inclusion that you think needs more attention? So there's a lot of things right now, but what needs more attention?
Margaret McMenamin:Okay. Well, I, since you gave me these questions ahead of time, I asked somebody smarter than me about this as a, what do you think it is? And they immediately shouted it out. It's about equity. It's about figuring out what does that mean? What does it mean? So if we have, I'll say 98% of the people want to do a good job. They do. They're decent people. They're not jerks. They don't want to hurt anybody. Forget about the 2% who are bad. People put them over there. So I want to do right. I want to be equitable. I want equity, but what does that mean in the classroom? What does that mean in terms of pedagogy equity? What does that mean? Um, in terms of advising or extra extracurricular activity, what, how does it ma that manifested in every area? Um, what does it mean in the classroom? Are we really in Oasis? Does that mean how, how will that be? How will we know that we did it? We just did a survey on race and gender and union, and we think we're doing a good job. We think we're pretty welcoming place, but the real question is how do you measure? How do we know if we're there? How do we know? And that's where, you know, is it, you just have the right percentage of people in jobs, then you're doing a good job. Is it, is it when students fill out a survey and say, they felt welcomed? There it's a good job. I don't, I would, we want to do a good job. We won the award from the Association for Community College Trustees. And we, we deserved it because of our outcomes. But in terms of the rest of this, how are we measuring it? I like pick things I can measure, because I don't want to BS people. I don't want to say, yeah, yeah. We're all into DEI and it all to be a bunch of baloney, but what does it, what does it mean and how is it manifested and what does it look like for that instructor in that classroom?
Michael Collins:Yeah. I love your answer, right? Because it's concrete and it's maesurable and it has implications for what I asked earlier about like, how do you sustain these things, right. So measuring kind of impact, but you also talked about kind of some of the policy audits you're doing, right. And so like policy change and being able to measure like, actually I think does contribute to, um, us sustaining kind of these efforts past kind of this, this moment of reckoning, if you will. So I love that. I have one final question and I, I can tell a Dr. McMenamin, this is personal work for you. It's personal, it's professional, but it's also personal. But so I want to end with this, um, this question, you know, in what ways do you hope your institution's efforts on diversity, equity, inclusion? You know, how do you hope it will impact your current and future students?
Margaret McMenamin:I know I'm, I'm corny twin sisters. She calls me captain cornball. Okay. But I believe in the totality of the talent of the human beings, everybody on earth. And I just think we should be including everybody because there's a lot of talent. And I just hope one day, one of our community college graduates, and I was hoping it would be a Union County College graduate will go out there and do something unbelievably extraordinary so that it will provide a direct, more direct ties to people who understand that poor kid coming into that poor community, who looks very different from you and your family is going to save your child's life when they find the cure for that form of childhood leukemia. So, so stop excluding people who look different from you stop that. I was a physical therapy major at Temple University, and this part of my education there, I had to do human dissection in my junior year at Temple, in the med school. And I came from a big family, but we were very modest. I'd never seen her naked body before and there, they all were about 80 naked bodies on the slabs. But Michael. It was the first time I'd ever seen a naked body like that inside my own, but remarkable thing, Michael, once we cut their skin off, they all look the same. There was not one difference. It was for the men were different from the women in the obvious ways when we took their skin off. But remarkably the black people were identical to the white people. When you took their skin off, you couldn't tell them apart. So, I mean, I just, I just would love to, you know, uh, to see this world where we would stop judging people by how they look. I would, I would, I mean, I get it. I have to wear high heels and a suit and fix my hair and all of those things. And I know you have to look reasonably presentables, but judging people by their skin color or their ethnicity or their body size or their gender and all of that. I just think it's, it's a bad thing to do. And, and, uh, just in terms of, you know, the race issue, I know that, I mean, I live in a community that is very diverse, but I know we have our racists here in my community and I'm just praying for the day that my kids saved the life. My diverse students save the lives of the bigots in my community. That's what I want, I want. And I want to change them. I want to change them with goodness, as opposed to beating them over the head with a, with a protest on, I want to help enlighten these folks so that they can understand that once we cut the skin off, we're all the same, you know, how's that, is that too preachy?
Michael Collins:Uh, no, not at all. Thank you so much for this conversation and really for your leadership, Dr. McMenamin, um, you know, congratulations on the wonderful success that you've had at the college, and particularly when your success graduating African male learners. I think it's just incredible. It's a great example of the possibilities. Um, and I think that, you know, this is, um, the conversation that all of higher education needs to hear. I want to thank you so much for your insights that you shared with the listeners here on the Pillars of Change podcast series, but also just personally, thank you. I, I, um, found energy and, um, in, in our conversation and, um, you painted a world that I believe in, I want to believe in, in sometimes, you know, as a black man in this country, when you see kind of what's going on in some of the debates going on, you just scratch your head going, like, you know, can this be happening in my lifetime? And, uh, you gave us a vision of seeing past that. And we are, um, at the same, like, uh, you know, and, and not to be kind of designing our, our world around, you know, heritable traits that we had nothing to do with, right. So I really just appreciate so much, um, our conversation. So I want to also thank our listeners for joining us. And, um, if, if you want the Commissionto highlight the efforts of your institution in a future podcast, then please visit M S C H E.org/Pillars of Change to submit your suggestion. And on behalf of the Middle States Commissionon on Higher Education and our guest, the fabulous Dr. Margaret McMenamin, uh, on Michael Collins saying, thank you for joining Pillars of Change.
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