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Nurturing generations of citizens, workers, and participants in Philadelphia and the surrounding region

Dr. Donald Guy Generals is the president of the Community College of Philadelphia, an open-admission institution in Philadelphia, PA. Established in 1965, the college is the largest public higher education institution of in the state, and has helped nearly 700,000 Philadelphia residents earn degrees and certificates that launch them into successful careers. The college plays a crucial role in the city and state’s economic development, with 78% of graduates finding employment in Philadelphia, and 93% in the Greater Philadelphia region.

EDWIN WARFIELD: Can you walk us through some of the milestones of your tenure? Were there lessons you learned from your prior experiences at Katharine Gibbs and Mercer that you have applied to the Community College of Philadelphia?

DR. GUY GENERALS: The college promise, the Guided Pathways, workforce development—they are probably the top three things that I’m most proud of. One of the first things we did was create our version of the college promise. We set up a scholarship program for all graduates of Philadelphia schools: as a last dollar project, last dollar program, they could come to Community College of Philadelphia—“last dollar” meaning after financial aid and whatever that gap was, we guaranteed that they would not have to pay anything to fulfill their tuition obligation. It was a very popular program. At this point we have about 400 students in there. And because it was so new and so consistent with the conversation about free community college, we certainly received a lot of attention for that. At one point, Vice President Biden and his wife came to the school to acknowledge it and to roll out one of President Obama's last large grant programs. We continue to run that and it's very successful.

In addition, we reorganized the entire college. You asked me about the lessons learned from Mercer and what I brought to Philadelphia: my philosophy was that the college needed to be organized around the interests and needs of the students. That required a unified approach. It required a greater organic approach between the various departments—academic, student affairs, business—to ensure that the student is at the center of all activity. We reorganized the college, which sounds easier than it actually is, and we placed everybody under one senior vice president, and then we implemented what’s referred to as Guided Pathways, which is an approach to streamline the trajectory of students from the point that they come to the college to when they graduate, based around what their career interests are. So, while we don’t take away the idea of students have curiosities and they have to find themselves, we really push them to make a commitment to a career or to a trajectory of where they want to go relative to their career and their prospects. If they want to transfer, we have a liberal arts curriculum—that liberal arts curriculum requires a certain amount of required courses, general education courses, and some of the collateral courses.

The Guided Pathways model is a national model. It’s designed to transform community colleges to accelerate their time from application through their completion and their graduation. In introducing Guided Pathways, we again were national leaders. The Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation funded this nationwide, and there was a competitive process by the Association of Community Colleges, and we were one of 30 to be accepted into that program. I’m very proud of that. The outcomes are that graduation rates have increased, our retention rates have increased, and we've made a lot of progress in terms of reforming an institution that had been in place for 50 years. It's only been not quite four years—three and a half years, I still have a couple of months before I get to that four-year point—but I think it bodes well for where the future lies relative to the college.

The other thing I am very proud of—the college was not very serious about workforce and economic development. Our workforce efforts were in the academic program under the academic business division, and so I created an entire division that was focused purely on workforce and economic development. The difference between the two is that I did not want our efforts to partner with businesses, to provide training opportunities, to be tied into the very traditional, slow processes of academia. We needed to be more closely aligned with the business cycle and with the business needs of communities—if someone came to me and said they needed a training opportunity next Monday, I wanted to be able to do that—so we created a senior level position and put provider resources into that division, and now we are very much tied into the city's efforts for workforce development, and we are one of their senior partners—it’s an unofficial term, but we are certainly a partner in Mayor Kenney’s efforts in providing training and workforce opportunities across the city.

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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