COMMUNITY COLLEGE ACCESS BY DAYTON SMITH

During my two years of AmeriCorps service, I’ve had the pleasure of working at two unique community colleges in Montana – Salish Kootenai College in Pablo and currently Great Falls College MSU. Prior to my first service term, I was completely unfamiliar with the culture or operation of a community college as I pursued my undergraduate degrees exclusively at the University of Montana in Missoula.

Over the past two years, I’ve come to admire the opportunities available for students and professionals alike at these smaller colleges that offer primarily associate’s degrees and only a handful of bachelor’s programs. So much so that I think I may have missed out myself by not beginning my academic career at a community college.

It goes without saying that there is truly a sense of community on these campuses. Both that I’ve worked at have unique quirks but they are the same in the sense that everyone knows everyone, instructors provide drastically more intimate classroom experiences, and the chance for students to achieve individual recognition is greatly increased. Whether we’re discussing scholarship opportunities or involvement in student groups, I found that the students who seek them out benefit greatly from being on a smaller campus.

Now, my service through Montana Campus Compact is of course meant to be specific to college access. At times I found myself questioning how much my day-to-day work was addressing this objective, particularly when time had passed between my interactions with high-school seniors.

At both locations, I eventually came to realize that my service was still very much working within the college access pipeline and would often remind myself that many associate’s students still need an extra leg up to achieve their academic goals. They may need financial education, which I could provide our students at SKC on an informal, regular basis. They may need basic homework help.

In the case of my role with the Digital Design Tech Department at SKC and the Tech4Good program, my days often consisted of breaking away from traditional office work anytime a student needed words of encouragement, a helpful critique on their design work, or most importantly career pipeline advice and assistance.

Once I arrived at Great Falls College my role was working in the area of Student Activities and I had the pleasure of promoting efforts of both the student honor society as well as the student government. The dedication of the students involved blew me away and seeing some of these same students graduate with numerous accolades on their way to a traditional 4-year school once again reminded me that college access doesn’t end after high-school.

What I realized is that the concept of “college access” isn’t limited to after-school educational programs, FAFSA workshops, and scholarship application assistance. These are all important aspects of the pipeline, but in the best scenarios it goes beyond that and continues into our young careers. At this point, I’m satisfied with my decision to spend the past two years focused on service learning. As is often said, being in a leadership position gives you the opportunity to learn just as much if not more than what you teach others. For these experiences and more, I am grateful and excited to continue my career in areas that likely apply to college access in one way or another.