MCC and CCC Collaborate on Project Supported by HCFHE Grant
MANCHESTER, Conn. (September 27, 2018) – Manchester Community College and Capital Community College were awarded a $2,500 grant in the Hartford Consortium for Higher Education’s 2018-19 Faculty, Staff and Student Cooperative Grant competition. MCC’s Interim CEO Dr. Tanya Millner-Harlee will co-lead a team with CCC’s Interim CEO Dr. G. Duncan Harris in sponsoring this year’s Common Read activities to be held at both institutions.
The Common Read is a popular program implemented all over the country within schools and communities to help enhance and support more thoughtful decision making as we make choices for our future. It invites readers to read and engage in one single text that explores controversial topics such as racism, ethics and poverty.
This year’s Common Read at MCC and CCC, The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore, examines what Moore calls “inflection points,” or pivotal turning points in his life and the life of another young man, also named Wes Moore.
The grant will fund an effort to bring the MCC and CCC first-year experience classes together for discussions, videos, workshops and panels to talk about race, class and opportunities.
The Common Read was kicked off with a panel discussion at MCC Wednesday, September 19. Dr. Harris and Dr. Millner-Harlee were joined by Instructor Luz Londono-Diaz and Professor Pat Sullivan, who spoke to students gathered in GPA Community Commons about their own “inflection points.”
“The Common Read program has been successfully implemented at MCC since 2014,” Dr. Millner-Harlee said. “This year’s efforts will continue our legacy of lifelong learning, and hopefully go a bit beyond, as many MCC and CCC students have similar competing interests as do the characters described in the book.”
Dr. Harris added, “I used The Other Wes Moore in a first-year experience course I was teaching and found that it had a profound impact on the students. The themes and life lessons are fertile ground for group discussion and I’m excited about partnering with MCC to introduce the text to even more readers in our region.”
The grant will also serve as seed money for a proposal to bring the author personally to the campuses as a guest speaker. The team is currently working on raising the additional funding to make this important part of the Common Read experience happen.
