Education Is Forever: Lifelong Learning and Workforce Development Programs Rewrite the Book on Opportunity

Episode Transcript

Vincent Boudreau00:14

Welcome to From City to the World. I'm your host, Vince Boudreau, the President of The City College of New York. City College is a living mosaic of discovery and expression, where science and engineering meet the humanities and the arts. Where education, social sciences, architecture, and medicine all converge to help us imagine what's next. In each episode, we shine a light and we peer into these vibrant areas of research and connectivity.

Through conversations with students, faculty, and staff who are reshaping their fields and with community partners who carry this work beyond our campus, we explore how ideas born here at City College ripple out across the neighborhood, our nation, and into the world. Together, we will be exploring ways to tackle urgent challenges such as climate change, public health, social justice, economic opportunities, and how, through collective action with local and global partners, we can turn our ideas into real solution.

This is From City to the World, where knowledge meets purpose, where research meets upward mobility, and the impact of our work reaches far beyond the City College walls.

There is a saying from Albert Einstein that says, "Wisdom is not a product of schooling, but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." And as October comes to a close, we're taking a moment to acknowledge that this month is recognized as lifelong learning in the United States. Lifelong Learning Month, where institutions and organizations across the United States celebrate and encourage continuous education beyond the formal and traditional ways of schooling.

Specifically, this recognition was established to promote the idea that lifelong learning is a process that can happen at any age through various activities like additional training, mentoring, reading, and pursuing new skills for personal or professional growth. It's a month where we talk to and foster continuous growth for individuals, families, and their communities.

At CCNY, we're proud to promote and inspire lifelong learning through various programs and collaborations with community partners. And one avenue that directly talks to lifelong learning is our Quest Lifelong Learning Program. I say it's our Quest Lifelong Learning Program, but Quest has a longer history that we'll be talking about today. So let me tell you a little bit about Quest. It's a community of retired and semi-retired intellectually curious people from all walks of life who are eager to learn in a relaxed, supportive environment. It was established in 1995 by a group of retirees who were able to secure daytime use of the facilities of our Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education. And if you don't know where this is, this is down all the way on 25 Broadway, across from the bull.

And when they secured that space in CWE, they were able to initiate a platform for lifelong learning, exchanging ideas, and developing new interests.

Today, Quest has about 270 active members who lead classes, self-administer more than 35 peer talk courses each semester, and actively participate in committee and social activities. And I should say, we think of Quest as an integral part of City College, but we really formalized the integration of Quest as a part of City College just a few years ago.

To give us more insight into the program and the importance of lifelong learning, I'd like to welcome my first guest, Donna Ramer, who is the President of Quest Lifelong Learning. And so let me tell you just a little bit about Donna.

She is an award-winning public relations professional with expertise in strategic planning, crisis management, internal and external communications, and training across all industry sectors, most notably with nonprofit organizations, healthcare, and consumer product sectors. She's now retired and is the President of Quest Lifelong Learning. As I mentioned in the intro, this is an all-volunteer peer-to-peer program for retired and semi-retired tri-state area residents, and now Quest is affiliated with CCNY.

Donna is also a partner and co-founder of Cooper Lake Road, LLC, which holds virtual 12-step and other recovery-focused workshops under its ReTooling Recovery brand. As a former member of the board of the Healthcare Business Women's Association, Donna held several senior volunteer positions. I'll just list a couple of them here. She's Director of Public Affairs, Director of Communications, and helped to receive its 2005 Strategic Transformation Achievement Recognition, the STAR Award.

Some of Donna's additional achievements are the previous board positions for the Hoboken Fund for a Better Waterfront, and serving six years on the Communications Committee twice as Chair of the ARC, which is formerly the Association for Retarded Citizens of the United States, during which she managed the strategy and communications for the rebranding and name change, and led the team's development of a three-part PSA series, Don't Throw Me Away, which was nominated for an Emmy.

And Donna, I can't go on past this paragraph without asking you to tell us what this organization is now called.

Donna Ramer05:23

It's called The Arc.

Vincent Boudreau05:23

It's called The Arc.

Donna Ramer05:24

It's called The Arc.

Vincent Boudreau05:24

Oh, that's wonderful. Okay. Donna majored in psychology at San Jose State University and currently resides in New York City. Donna, welcome to From City to the World.

Donna Ramer05:34

Thanks. I appreciate that. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about Quest. And I just want to say, I am born and raised in New York. I am a New Yorker, and the goal was always for me to go to a city college, but things changed over the years. I ended up going to college on the West Coast. So, it's good to be back.

Vincent Boudreau05:54

Yeah. I should say, actually, I was just out at San Jose State. We at City College have... We participate in a group called Braven, which is a proactive advising program that began... Braven is independent, but its first client was San Jose State. We adopted it two or three years ago. The Braven conference was at San Jose State, and I've worked really closely with the president of your alma mater. It feels a little bit like City College West Coast in terms of the student constituency.

Donna Ramer06:24

I think you're absolutely right about that. And I do have to say here that I left San Jose in 1976, so I've been back in New York now for 49 years.

Vincent Boudreau06:35

Well, this is a radio show, and anybody listening to your voice will know that you're a New Yorker.

Donna Ramer06:40

Oh. Okay.

Vincent Boudreau06:40

So let's start at the beginning. What drew you to Quest lifelong learning, and what does the program represent for you personally as a participant, first and now as the president?

Donna Ramer06:54

I didn't know anything about Lifelong Learning. A friend of mine told me about it about, oh, eight years ago. And from the first that I heard of it, I thought, "This seems like an interesting place to be," because I am intellectually curious. I do a lot of reading, I do a lot of research, but I was also looking for a place to go. I didn't want to just sit in the back of a room and audit classes. I wanted to be in a place where I could be really involved.

And I happened to be one of those people who likes committee work. And so, Quest gave me an opportunity to use my presentation skills to present classes. It gave me an opportunity to meet people and to socialize. It gave me a place to go so that I wasn't sitting home alone.

And I'm 76. And we all know that as you get older, the biggest challenge is being alone, and what being alone can be. And I needed a place to go. And when I walked into Quest at 25 Broadway, I said, "Okay, I'm home. This is where I want to be."

Vincent Boudreau08:01

That's wonderful. I mean, one of the things, I think you alluded to it, I was going to ask you what makes Quest different, but I kind of know the answer to that, which is a lot of the programming, a lot of the instruction comes from within the Quest community. Could you talk a little bit about that, and if there are other things that you think set Quest apart from other lifelong learning enterprises, let us know about that too.

Donna Ramer08:27

Let me change that. Lifelong learning by nature is continuing education, but it has come to mean a very specific thing, which is a program in which people who are retired and semi-retired teach their own courses and take their own courses. There is an umbrella organization called Osher, O-S-H-E-R, that administers lifelong learning programs across the country in different universities. So, a university can go to them and become part of them, but then you become part of Osher. You are not independent.

Quest is different from other lifelong learning programs. There are other independent ones. Because we are independent, although we have an affiliate relationship with CCNY, but we also have a very collaborative relationship with CCNY. So the difference between lifelong learning in this context and, let's say, continuing education, is that typically with continuing education, you're going in, you're sitting in the back of the room, there's a professor who's lecturing, and you may be allowed to interact, and at the end of the class, you go home.

Lifelong learning programs such as ours, you don't. You collaborate, you're involved, you're part of. And because we're in all lifelong learning programs under this model, are by nature, all volunteer. In some ways, you're participating in your volunteering either through coordinating courses, presenting in courses, sitting on our council, our governing board. We have 19 committees. I think we're about to have 20.

And so, there are a lot of ways that you can be involved any given semester.

Vincent Boudreau10:24

You alluded to the affiliation relationship between Quest and City College. And could you sort of explicate what that looks like, but also like, what is that... I mean, the earliest contribution was simply, kind of hosting as a space, right? But that's grown over the years. Could you talk a little bit about why it matters that you have a relationship with City College?

Donna Ramer10:48

If we go back in history, and we just celebrated our 30th anniversary. And when we were doing the research, one of the things that really interested me was the fact that we have been, Quest has been, affiliated in one way or another with CCNY and CWE since we were founded. And we were down at the Lower Hudson Facility. And that's where we held our first classes in 1995.

Vincent Boudreau11:15

Oh, wow.

Donna Ramer11:17

And so when CWE, Continuing Worker Education, moved from that space to 25 Broadway, we tagged along. And it was right around, and I don't remember the year that that happened, but that's when we signed an official agreement. Before that, we were renting space from you, from CCNY, and now the affiliate relationship really has to do with the collaboration.

Which is another thing that we found with other lifelong learning programs. They don't have collaborative relationships with universities they're housed in. And so, we work very closely, especially with Davi Saroop, who is the business manager at CWE, and Dean Mercado.

And we get involved in a lot of the technology that is offered in terms of hybrid, what our needs are, what CWE's needs are. We sponsor scholarships for several CWE students, both as an organization and several of our members are sponsoring individuals as well.

So there's that give and take of how we share space down there. And of course, the space is empty during the day, because the students typically work during the day, which is why it works so well for us.

Vincent Boudreau12:45

And I should say, we talked about CWE. I referenced the Division for Interdisciplinary Studies. CWE was originally established because of an agreement with the unions and the city, as a place where working adults could get a matriculated degree. And it became the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies when we, the college, decided that it was significant enough not to be just a little program off to the side, but to be a division just like the engineering school is a division, the social sciences are a division, and all the rest of it. So it's appropriate to put Quest and the Center for Worker Education together, and I think there's a lot of cross-pollination.

I want to just poke a little bit more around this peer-led structure of it. It sounds fascinating. First of all, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I'm going to put you on the spot. I know you love all the courses that are given, but were there one or two that really, for you, exemplified how the life experience of one of your colleagues in Quest turned into a really rich educational experience for Quest members? And we're going to stipulate that they're all fabulous, right?

Donna Ramer14:04

They're all wonderful courses. And personally, I gravitate toward the literature and theater courses, and some of the quite unusual courses.

There's one this semester that is quite interesting. It's called Theater Works, and Art Spahr is the lead coordinator of Theater Works, and he's had a lifelong love of acting and writing. And what he's done is he's created this course in which there are different pods. And some people in the course are writing scripts, others are acting in the script, some are directing. So it brings together a group of people who are interested in some form of entertainment and of theater, movies. And so, this has been a lifelong passion of his, and this is how it's come together. And I happen to be in that course, and it's just a lot of fun.

Vincent Boudreau15:09

So this is going to lead into the question about peer-to-peer learning. So Art Spahr is teaching the course. Is this something that he did in his professional life?

Donna Ramer15:19

No.

Vincent Boudreau15:20

He's just interested in theater and developed the expertise?

Donna Ramer15:23

Yes. We have a lot of people. Most of us teach courses that we have no background in. If you have a passion for something and you want to do it, and you're willing to do the work, then you submit a proposal to our curriculum committee. They'll review it and give you the green light for the following semester or whenever. For example, I have always loved reading Toni Morrison. I did not have an expertise in Toni Morrison, but I led a course. I had two coordinators, and we did it from a thematic perspective rather than from a, "Let's read a book and talk about it." And so, we looked at her books, the theme of forgiveness, the symbolism. There was a lot going on. We also took a look at her play and her poetry, and her opera.

And here's where we are collaborative with CWE and CCNY. And we were very fortunate that Professor Kathlene McDonald came in, who teaches English and led one of our discussion groups. This was a discussion course and specifically on her book "Beloved," Morrison's book "Beloved," because it is so rich in symbolism, and it was just really fully understanding the book.

So we are very collaborative with CCNY and CWE when it comes to bringing in professors. We've had Susanna Rosenbaum come into one of our other courses, which is a popular course, Upheavals in American Literature. And Martin Woessner came in, and he did a great presentation on Terrence Malick. So we look for opportunities to bring in someone from the outside, primarily from CCNY CWE, because it's such a great resource, obviously.

Vincent Boudreau17:30

Right, right, right. So I want to be careful on how I ask this.

Donna Ramer17:37

Uh-oh.

Vincent Boudreau17:38

No, it's not a tricky question. So, if you go into a college classroom, you have a professor who will come into the classroom girded with their research and their PhD, and their years of teaching. And so there is a real kind of authority relationship, intellectual authority relationship, between the instructor and the students, maybe more than should be.

I think one of the advantages of a City College classroom is, our students typically are very comfortable questioning intellectual authority. That's not always the case. In Quest, what you basically have are people who have gotten themselves ready to teach a course, teaching people who are also, in every way on paper, equally credentialed to talk about, have expertise. And so how does that... I mean, it really is a peer-to-peer dynamic. And I wonder if that changes the way teaching happens in a classroom. Are there difficulties associated with that, or is it always kind of a positive?

Donna Ramer18:41

I don't see the difficulties because people who join Quest fully understand this dynamic, and that there are some of our classes that are taught by professionals, people who did it for a profession. Or, for example, our Across the Universe course is taught by one person. And Michael Hamburg is a lifelong devotee of studying the universe. He didn't do that professionally, but it was his avocation. And he's a docent at the Museum of Natural History in that area.

There are also people, members who were professors or currently professors, such as Sandy Kessler, and he's teaching a course called The Federalist Papers. He has an expertise in this. He's taught this. But then there are the rest of us, and we do lots of very different things, because we have an interest in it or it's something that we've done in the past, like Art with his love of theater. So we all come together.

One of the great things about Quest is, as I said, members come in knowing who we are, and if the presenter can't answer a question, no different from a professor; there's probably somebody in our classroom who can answer the question.

So, it's much more collaborative. I think where we see perhaps a little bit of a difference, or maybe not, is that our presenters, our members, have different presentation styles. Some present and a straight lecture and say, "Don't ask questions till the end." Others want to get involved. I personally love discussions. So the more questions and the more discussion. I don't care if I finish my slide presentation or not. I love a good discussion. So it depends somewhat on the presentation style, but there is that understanding that we may have to Google something.

Vincent Boudreau20:45

Right, right, right. And now you can. In introducing you, I talked a lot about your various credentials and big, long career, and communications and related field. Does that shape the way you think about Lifelong Learning, do you think? Or is the background really doesn't enter into it too much?

Donna Ramer21:04

I think I went into communications because I had an interest in learning, and because I had an interest in learning lots of different things. And I was always on the consulting side, not on the client side. And so I always had a variety of clients.

And my favorite part of engaging with a new client was doing the research about the client, the product, the issue, the industry, and really delving into who they are and how they fit into their industry, as well as the community at large.

Vincent Boudreau21:40

The other part of your background, I mean, you've been deeply involved steering volunteer organizations as well. And Quest is a volunteer organization. You mentioned 19 going on 20 committees. That's a lot of volunteerism. Is that a challenge, or is it a challenge to fill the positions, or is it a challenge to give everybody who wants a position, a role in the organization, or is it all just fine?

Donna Ramer22:08

Yes, yes, and yes.

Vincent Boudreau22:09

Okay.

Donna Ramer22:11

It's a challenge to fill the positions in some cases because it's a lot of work. We're older, we are retired. We've been there, we've done that, and in some cases, we are willing to do it to a certain degree.

There are some people at Quest, like at any organization, that have taken on, for lack of a better word, the lion's share of the work. But there are people, members who come in and they're willing to do something, but they don't want to really be that engaged.

And so, it's sometimes a little difficult to encourage people to step up. So we have, don't forget, we have two different ways to volunteer. One is through our committees. The other is that we absolutely must have people step up to present, to lead courses. And one of the things about our courses is that the overwhelming majority of them are not taught by one person; that each class within that course is most likely being taught by somebody else, because they have an interest in a niche within that course theme.

So, for example, I'm a co-coordinator of a course called Emotional Dichotomies Within, which is kind of very diff- Well, it is a very different course from anything we've done before. We actually had someone who was a CCNY student, did his undergrad-graduate work here, and worked at CCNY. He's now a PhD candidate in neuroscience. He came in and he taught one of the classes in that course. I did healthy values and unhealthy values. The lead coordinator did fear and anxiety. And we have someone coming in who's doing shame and guilt.

So for the most part, the courses are taught by six or seven different people throughout. Sandy Kessler, who I mentioned before, teaches the entire Federalist Papers class. Roy Clary, who teaches our Shakespeare course and who is a retired actor, but also acted in a number of Shakespearean plays, he teaches that course.

Vincent Boudreau24:42

Okay. Start to finish.

Donna Ramer24:44

Start to finish, but that's a course where we read the plays out loud. So there's a lot of participation, and other people come in and they'll do 15 minutes of, "Here's how this fits in." All right. So it's, there are multiple platforms for our courses.

Vincent Boudreau25:03

Yeah. What's it like for someone who hasn't been a teacher to teach? I mean, imagine if it's my first time and I've never done it, I might flash back to a teacher I admired and try to figure out what that style might be. But I mean, do you have a lot of nerves for someone coming up for the first time? Do people think about pedagogy, and I'm going to teach this using the Socratic method, or it's going to be discussion, or I'm just going to lecture? How does pedagogy emerge among a community of people for whom it wasn't their profession?

Donna Ramer25:40

I would assume it's different for different people. And for most of my career, I was a communications trainer. So I've worked with a lot of people who get stage fright. I work with a lot of people who need to read their presentation, that they don't have the facility yet to interact a little bit more easily with the classroom.

But one of the things that's great about Quest is that you don't have to jump in with both feet and do an entire presentation. We have courses where you can do a 15-minute piece. For example, our short story class, you can decide to just pick a short story and everybody will read it, and then you can just lead the discussion. So it's just coming up with a couple of questions.

So there are different ways you can do that. One of our oral interpretation of poetry course is very similar. You can, for that week's poetry, you can say, "Okay, I'll do this one of ancient Greek, and all you have to do is read it." So we have a way to help our members increase their confidence level and their style for presentations.

Vincent Boudreau26:58

I have one last question, and I want to ask it to you as the president of Quest: what's next for the organization? What plans do you have? I know certainly maintaining the great work you've been doing for years and years and years, but is there something that you want to try out or a branch of Quest that you want to develop further?

Donna Ramer27:16

Actually, it's interesting because council is taking a look at that right now. And right now, our goal, of course, is to maintain the integrity of what we've inherited. And I was very pleased that when I became president, I inherited a well-run, well-established organization, that I think we need to continue with.

And we're open to new things. I think the one collaboration that we're looking to build, and I had a long conversation with Dean Mercado not too long ago, is how can we bring in more CCNY CWE professors? Because each one of our courses is entitled to bring in one outside professor.

How can we build a different base for our courses? And that's the meat of what we do. So in terms of collaborations and partnerships, I'm not seeing that. I can't see where we would go with any other collaboration. And it really is in, how can we build a more robust, more platform for our members that is perhaps a little bit more social, maybe having a little bit more travel involved, doing a little bit more of what we already do.

Vincent Boudreau28:46

I hope part of that would be dipping a little more robustly into the uptown resources of City College, because I know-

Donna Ramer28:53

Absolutely.

Vincent Boudreau28:54

... Across the departments up here that we feel that would love to work with Quest.

Donna Ramer28:57

And Dean Mercado is right on top of that with me.

Vincent Boudreau29:01

I'm glad. Now, after our conversation with Donna Ramer, the President of Quest Lifelong Learning, we are going to switch gears a little bit and shift the conversation to expanding lifelong learning through higher education, workforce partnerships, and community development. And joining us is a longtime friend of CCNY, Dr. Michael Flanigan.

Tell you a little bit about Michael. He currently serves as the director of corporate and engagement and development at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, that's BMCC. And before joining BMCC, and this is particularly important, Michael worked as the senior associate at the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, which is a valued partner of CCNY, and was also at Medgar Evers College as the director of Caribbean, of the Caribbean Research Center.

He also served as academic development manager for the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Liberal Arts and Senior Development Manager and Major Gifts Officer in the Division of Communications and External Relations. And all of that was at Medgar Evers College.

Before joining Medgar Evers College, Dr. Flanagan served as Vice President and Director of Community Relations for J.P. Morgan Chase and Citibank. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Education Solutions International, Harlem Week, MACADEMY, and Opus Dance Theater and Community Services.

During Harlem Week, he leads the Jobs and Career Fair, which happens every year right here at City College in the Great Hall. The Climate Change Conference, which I think we're also really happy to contribute to every year, and the National Urban Health Conference and Banking and Finance Conferences.

So he's deeply, deeply involved during Harlem Week and virtually everything they do that targets education for older citizens. He is a former New York City Workforce Investment Board member and a former chair of the American Foundation for the University of the West Indies.

Dr. Flanigan earned his PhD in higher education leadership management, and policy from Seton Hall University and received the outstanding research award from that university for his dissertation. He received his MBA from the Leonard M. Stern School of Business at NYU, an EMPA and a BBA from Baruch College of the City University of New York, and a certificate in corporate community relations from the Boston College Center for Corporate Community Relations, Carroll School of Management.

Michael, that is an impressive resume. We actually were out of time, so we're going to have to wrap up the show now. But no, welcome to From City of the World. We're really glad to have you on the show and in our lives here.

Michael Flanigan31:42

Thank you, Vince. It's a pleasure to be here. And as you would say, that's a great sounding resume for bio, but it's all part of the subject matter of this discussion and conversation today, right? It all ties into lifelong learning.

Vincent Boudreau32:01

Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. So you've worked across academia, and you're in business and community development. So you've pulled from huge sectors of work. How have these experiences shaped the way you think about lifelong learning?

Michael Flanigan32:15

So, when you start out for me in academia, it's almost didactic. It's getting the basic skills together, your fundamentals, critical thinking, and so on.

And once I started to volunteer, because I did a lot of volunteer work during my time at Baruch, did my undergraduate degree, what really helped me, I was editor-in-chief of the school paper, and I wrote a lot. So I got to be engaged in some of the issues of the time, internally and to some degree externally around the campus. So that got my feet and my interests whetted in terms of community.

When I started to work with J.P. Morgan Chase, coming out of Baruch, having my undergraduate degree, I started to do my MBA at downtown NYU. But more importantly, as I went through the retail network, I started to engage with nonprofits. And so it's really reinforced my appetite and also interest in nonprofit work and community work.

And I think one of the highlights of my career as a retail branch manager, which is at 14th Street and 5th Avenue, was working with a nonprofit that was working with justice-impacted individuals in Rikers Island.

And I hold those memories so fondly, because we introduced to them this basic process of getting a stipend, which they would get every week for attending. So we opened accounts for them so they could get, A, money go directly into an account, B, get comfortable using an ATM. And so that was kind of like their first entree into banking, avoiding check-cashing places, paying a fee, and so on. So that was for me one of the... I never forget that. It's one of the first nonprofits/community engagement endeavors that I engaged in.

I was also on the board, and fortunately, to be on the board, of the 14th Street LDC bid at that time, with folks like Rob Walsh, Ken Adams, who's now the President at LaGuardia Community College.

And, I found that moving from academia to business, in business, there are a couple of things. Yes, you have this regimen of goals and targets that you have to meet, but what I found in doing my MBA while I worked, because I went to school at night, and what I found was, A, the students that I was learning with at that time, were pretty much my peers, were all working in the day and going to school at night.

Vincent Boudreau35:11

And how old were you while you were doing the MBA?

Michael Flanigan35:14

I was in my late 20s.

Vincent Boudreau35:16

Okay. All right. So starting to be kind of in the lifelong learning space.

Michael Flanigan35:19

Exactly. And, what was great about that is as you're going along, you're starting to now make the connection between the academic requirements, the academic fundamentals, and the business world. And if you want to move up in the business world, you have to upscale. So, there it is, lifelong learning. You start to get the certifications, you start to do the MBA, and anything else that's going to make you ready for the next opportunity. And so I see lifelong learning as, one of the aspects of lifeline learning, in my opinion, is to be proactive and preemptive.

Vincent Boudreau36:03

Proactive and preemptive. Very nice.

Michael Flanigan36:05

Yeah. Because I'd always say, if there's an opportunity in the business, that time where they was working for JP Morgan Chase or Citibank, and I wanted to apply for that position, I would not want to be denied the opportunity because I was unqualified. There might be other reasons, but if you give me some other reasons that are not objective, I can argue. If it's objective, I can't argue.

So, at least from my perspective, lifelong learning for individuals is to make sure they're prepared, again, to meet the requirements that are required for the opportunity.

Vincent Boudreau36:50

I want to talk a little bit. So, BMCC is a two-year college, and I imagine you get students who are en route to getting a four-year degree. They're starting at BMCC. They'll go someplace else. That's almost your slogan, right? Start here, go anywhere.

Michael Flanigan37:08

Go anywhere.

Vincent Boudreau37:09

Right, right. But you probably also get a lot of people who are mid-career, who are changing. And so how does that approach to your degree-granting processes interface with shifts in the job market and shifts in people's lives? How do you approach that as an institution?

Michael Flanigan37:33

So it's approached in several ways, sorry. So we have the student bodies is one of the largest student bodies in the City of New York, along with CCNY.

Vincent Boudreau37:45

Well, no, actually you're much... Just to give us a sense, we're at 16,000. How big are you?

Michael Flanigan37:50

We're at 20,000.

Vincent Boudreau37:51

Yeah, you're bigger.

Michael Flanigan37:51

And that's the, quote-unquote, "academic side." The workforce development side, we have another 10,000 students.

Vincent Boudreau37:58

That's huge.

Michael Flanigan38:00

So it kind of goes to your question. We're looking at students coming in midway in their career, students at the start of their journey, and they're coming in both in the academic side and the workforce development side.

So, as we look at programs and from my end, which is the development end, how do I engage and interest partners, create relationships that are synchronized in terms of their mission and our mission to help these students? BMCC, 70% of the students are coming from households that have less than $30,000 annual income. 80% of them are getting federal aid to go to school.

And now they talk about the challenges that we know, their shelter, homelessness, food insecurity, et cetera, et cetera. So, when we approach it, we have to approach it in a holistic manner. So we have to take care of the academic side, but we also have to take care of the personal side.

Personal side could involve, like I said before, food insecurity, homelessness, but there are also mental health issues and challenges. Because these are students, and that range in age, whether they're 16, 17, 80, or 28, that we have to develop programs, which we do have at BMCC, that addresses the individual in an holistic fashion.

So we're very proud of our resource center because it not only provides food food, but dry food and also toiletries, et cetera. But it also refers students when they come in, because they're looking at a student in that holistic fashion.

So it refers them to their appropriate areas within the college. Workforce, just to transfer a little bit over to the workforce development side, they develop a lot of relationships, and they're at also Lower Broadway. They develop a lot of relationships with community partners, particularly, so they can tap into and also engage and share some of the practices that make the program successful.

Vincent Boudreau40:23

Can you talk about... Well, I'm asking you a short question before we go into the break, and then I'll come back with a longer question afterwards. The short question is, I want to give you the opportunity to talk to people about TAP for workforce development, because it's an opportunity that people may not know about that would be very useful for students going to BMCC's workforce development programs.

Michael Flanigan40:47

Yeah. So workforce development, I like to think of it as that option, opportunity, for students or individuals who just feel, well, I'm not really ready to go to college, and true or false, right? And especially in today's economy, where we look at a lot of vocational needs and with the economy rapidly changing, where opportunities in the area of technology, whether it's AI, it's being in a medical or health field.

Workforce development is a critical area in terms of what it provides, and also just that structure and setting, where someone can come in and get certifications that will provide very good income, besides the education and knowledge, it's good income that supports themselves and their families, but it's also a transferable knowledge. So, it's wherever they go, they're equipped to get that kind of job or just an opportunity to be part of services in their community.

And so, workforce development itself is critical. And like you just said, Vince, there are these opportunities for that education to be financed, whether true federal funding or, in some cases, through private funding.

Vincent Boudreau42:13

Yeah. This is a brand new program that CUNY, community colleges are at the very forefront of, where it used to be if you were doing a workforce development class, you either paid for it yourself or there'd be some kind of a grant. Now, if that class will hypothetically qualify for degree credit, you can actually get tuition assistance just as if you're a matriculated student.

So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, "I'd love to do workforce development class, but I'm not sure I'm going to get the money," this is a way to finance that. So come back in just a second with my longer question, I want to talk to you a little bit about, so now your formal position is working in development and business relations, and that can go a couple of different ways, right? I mean, obviously, when we do development work, one of the things we want is a financial investment in our programs.

But the other thing is, more and more frequently, especially with lifelong learning, keying our curriculum to the needs of the job market. And as the job market evolves, those sorts of relationships often are powerfully informative for curricular development.

So talk a little bit about your role in your position at BMCC and how the relationships you're helping to build also help shape the curriculum.

Michael Flanigan43:40

So, I like to consider myself a very lucky person. And when I say very lucky, I've been fortunate to have worked at some point on both sides of the funding equation. So, having worked for JP Morgan Chase and Citi, where I worked in community development, and I was actually reviewing grant applications, making decisions on funding. I was able to see what were the issues. I was on several boards, nonprofits in the community, which just invaluable experience there.

And then coming into the academic side now, where I'm doing the other side of the equation, where I'm applying for funding. So, at the academic side and even the workforce development side, as we make decisions around curriculum and courses and programs, it's a two-way street. So it's dynamic, you have to adapt to all the times, the changes. And so, from my perspective and the development side, if we look at the curriculum and I was changing and adjusting to meet the needs of the market and also to meet the needs of the case of BMCC, a very diverse population, very challenging population in terms of their financial status.

It's a blend of several things, right? One is making sure that we're preparing our students, especially the two-year college. We're preparing that student at the end of two years to be able to, one of two things, go on to finish their four-year degree. Or second, just go into the workforce.

So we complement the academic side with a number of programs around internship, experiential learning, and peer-to-peer mentoring. And the peer-to-peer mentoring is just so priceless within the college. So, there's one thing to be working at a curriculum or completing assignments in the classroom, but when you can work together as a cohort in different groups and associations within the college, we have Urban Male Leadership Academy. We have one of the few colleges that has a program called Project Impact, which work with legally challenged individuals, some cases coming out of the prison system, and they get a second chance to get their degree.

And so, from the development side, how do we connect the dots? So when we look at, when I do my research for foundations and corporations, I say, "Okay, which corporation and foundations are focused on these issues, or these areas?"

And now I can make that linkage. I can make a linkage to not only the curriculum, which is, as you know, as a president of a college, comes a lot from the academic side, but-

Vincent Boudreau46:56

Almost exclusively, right?

Michael Flanigan46:57

I didn't want to use that word. But from our side, we say, "Okay, this is what we see the needs are. This is what we see as priorities." And I don't want to say just needs. These are just imperatives for people to become socially mobile, to enjoy equitable opportunities.

And so, my job and the job of the development team is to say, "Okay, let's go out and get the resources." Sometimes it's not just money. That's great, you get your grants, but it's also expertise by bringing people in from corporations. And one of my favorite ways of engaging funders and potential funders is to bring them to the campus, let them interact with the students. Because there's that emotional heart-pulling, tugging thing that happens when we do that.

But it's also so they become invested. And before they give any support, whether it's funding or otherwise, they can see, "Oh yeah, this is what's really going to happen when we invest in this college."

Vincent Boudreau48:09

Yeah. I'm struck listening to your talk. You mentioned something that we were talking about with Donna earlier, peer-to-peer mentoring, but peer-to-peer in very different settings. And Quest has its own sort of peer group. What is it that peer-to-peer gives your student population that you think is particularly useful?

Michael Flanigan48:36

I would say, if I was to just summarize, there's three main things, right?

Vincent Boudreau48:39

Yeah.

Michael Flanigan48:40

One is, if you're in a cohort, you start together, you kind of push each other, pull each other, hold each other accountable. So where one student might think they're having a hard time, a bad day, whatever, they know they can come to that area within the college, physically, literally, meet, sit down, just share what's going on, and get encouragement and support.

The second is being accountable. So, if I know you're not doing your assignment, I'm going to say, "Why are you..." Because we're in a class together and I can see you're not answering the questions or you're not turning in your homework assignment, your paper, whatever. We're going to have that conversation outside of the classroom later on, because we're going to meet again.

And it's also, especially, we have a program called My Brother's Keeper, that we bring in students for about six weeks during the summer. These are high school students. And so they're coming into BMCC, going through this program, and then they all register and go on into the colleges, undergraduates. Again, that's a cohort program.

So wherever they're coming from in terms of high school background or different organizations, now they start to see, "Oh, I'm in a college setting. This person may know something I don't know," or, "This person has access to resources that I would love to be able to use." Now you're in that peer-to-peer setting again.

And it's so beneficial one-on-one and beneficial as a group, because there's so many synergistic pieces to be picked up.

Vincent Boudreau50:27

We're running out of time here. This went by very fast, but I did want to come back to your leadership of educational programs during Harlem Week. We talked about the job fair, and the Climate Change Conference, and the healthcare. These are all in your portfolio. And I wonder how you think about the chamber's role and responsibility in educating, not people that are necessarily in school or even in a formal program, but what does education look like in the Harlem community outside of the classroom and outside, in these kind of Chamber events?

Michael Flanigan51:04

So Vince, you're very familiar with the Chamber.

Vincent Boudreau51:08

Love the Chamber.

Michael Flanigan51:09

So I'm going to say some quick things for your listeners. The Chamber, as we know it, started in 1896; it's about 127 years old right now. I might be off by a year or two. But I got involved with the Chamber in 1996, and I was actually working at JP Morgan Chase at the time, and went onto the board of Harlem Week at that time.

And one of the things I learned over the years, especially on the mentorship of, for beloved and the departed Lloyd Williams, was just the seriousness of the Chamber, Chamber in terms of economic and community development. And this is, by and large, I don't think anyone can dispute the busiest chamber, at least in the Northeast.

Vincent Boudreau51:54

Yes.

Michael Flanigan51:56

I've been familiar with other chambers in the city, and they have meetings, they have programs, they're not in the community.

Vincent Boudreau52:04

Yeah, that's right.

Michael Flanigan52:05

These conferences that you touched on, whether it's the Jobs and Career Fair, it's a Climate Change Conference, it's the National Urban Health Conference, or banking and finance, are all focused on the motto of the chamber. The business of business is the business of people.

Vincent Boudreau52:21

Right, right.

Michael Flanigan52:22

How do we help our community? We go out into our community. The community, we should not be waiting on them to come into the offices of the Chamber, and that's the way we do it. The job and career, just to take that up, we did over four jobs and career conference this year at City College. The first year, we had 350 attendees, and we're like, "Yay, great." The next year, we had probably 1,500, like, "Super, we've grown."

The third year, we had 5,000. And it's great to talk about great numbers because there are two sides to that, right? It means there's a big need for jobs and employment, but each of these times we've had over 50 corporations, businesses in attendance, ranging anywhere from hospitals to the MTA, to the NYPD, to banks. And what we want to do is provide an opportunity for members of this community to come to City College. To explore the chances that they have in there and to engage with hiring officers from these different companies, as opposed to them being probably in some cases, intimidated to go in online or to even go into an office of a company and say, "I'm looking for a job." And that's one way.

The Climate Change, I mean, we just saw Melissa and what it's done to Jamaica and going to Cuba right now, I think, goes those same, but how do we engage our community at all levels, to get them to understand and to make it part of their daily conversation, that climate change is a real issue. That's not only going to affect their lives in terms of where they live, how they move around, whether it's transportation, how do they, their food supplies are affected by it, all these things.

And again, we're doing it by bringing this information to them, as opposed to them saying, "Oh, I see this on the radio. I hear it on the radio. I see it on the TV. It doesn't really affect me."

Vincent Boudreau54:31

Yeah. So we are running out of time, but I did want to give you, Michael, a quick second to rep BMCC and then Donna, the same thing with Quest. So if people want to get involved in BMCC, how do they do it?

Michael Flanigan54:49

So I'd say come directly to me. I'll make sure you get to the right point. You could, my email it's mflanagan, F as in Frank, L-A-N-I, G as in George, A-N, @bmcc.cuny.edu. I'm also going to give my cell phone number.

Vincent Boudreau55:13

Wow, that's dangerous. Go ahead.

Michael Flanigan55:15

732-991-7878. You can call or text.

Vincent Boudreau55:20

Okay. There you heard it, folks. Donna, what about Quest?

Donna Ramer55:24

If anyone's interested in lifelong learning and becoming involved down with at Quest, the best way to do it is to go to our website, questlifelonglearning.org.

Vincent Boudreau55:37

So I want to thank you for the work you're doing and thank both of you for being with us today. And to you at home, thank you for listening to From City to the World. I want to give a special thanks again to our guests and everybody else. We are out. Thanks, everyone.