LaGuardia

Community College

A Case Study in

Academic Audacity

Urban studies empowers students and reinvigorates the
curriculum at a college inspired by New York's feistiest
mayor and America’s boldest educational philosopher.

By JOANNE REITANO

LaGuardia Community College’s logo graphically
represents the college’s namesake, Fiorello LaGuardia.

Joann Reitano is professor of history at LaGuardia Conimunity
College of the City University of New York
(CUNY), where she has taught since 1975.
She is departmental coordinator of history and
college coordinator of urban studies. She is also a
member of the AAUP’s Committee on
Community Colleges and of CUNY’s
University Faculry Senate, on which she chairs
the Community College Caucus

32 ACADEME

ommunity colleges are curious phenomena,

simultaneously assailed and admired for their

audacity in challenging the conventional

college model. Praised for accessibility, flexi-

bility, and versatility, they are assumed to

lack academic integrity. Complex colleges
that offer developmental, career, liberal, and continuing edu-
cation, they are often dismissed as nothing more than aca-
demic supermarkets. Some scorn these uniquely American
teaching institutions for the very democracy they represent,
while others berate them for making “false promises” of social
mobility. The fastest-growing sector of higher education, serv-
ing over half the nation’s first-year students, community col-
leges still stand on the margins of academia.

Yet they are in the forefront of a remarkable metamorpho-
sis that has occurred across higher education in the United
States. This transformation began in the 1960s and has marked
the most radical shift since the Jand-grant colleges were intro-
duced in the 1860s. Indeed, the practices of community col-
leges, once considered unconventional, now permeate the
entire academic structure as career-oriented curricula and
work internships proliferate, as developmental education
(often camouflaged) infuses liberal education, as controversies
over nontraditional students rage, and as pressures to diversify
pedagogy mount. At the same time, many faculty fear a loss of
academic quality, the balkanization of the curriculum, and the


trivialization of teaching. In our rush to
educate so many students, have we sacri-
ficed educating the whole student? Has
the community college movement deni-
grated or democratized higher education
in America?
; By way of beginning to answer these
‘questions, it might be useful to consider
the history of one community college,
whose evolution exemplifies the dilem-
mas of higher education in transition, but
Whose stubborn commitments offer possi-
‘strategies for resolving those dilem-
Created in 1970, just as the City
liversity of New York (CUNY) was
plementing its controversial open-
missions policy, LaGuardia Community
lege was in many ways a flower
the product of a decade that chal-

cation.

averick Institution

ged the establishment, including the status quo in higher

©'youngest of CUNY’s six community colleges, LaGuardia
: Town from 500 students to 11,000 matriculants and
;000 nonmatriculants who speak ninety-seven different lan-

In our rush to
educate so many
students, have we

sacrificed educating
the whole student?

LaGuardia Community
College

guages. The college uses converted facto-
ry buildings situated in a transportation
hub adjacent to the world’s most multi-
cultural neighborhoods. This reality-
based institution is particularly interest-
ing, because it was founded in the image
of two very different, but oddly comple-
mentary, idealists. The first was its name-
sake, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, the feisty
little man who served as dynamic mayor
and major booster of New York City
from 1933 to 1945. Multiethnic, multi-
lingual, nontraditional in appearance,
style, and politics, LaGuardia provided
inspiration for a community college that
prided itself on being a maverick.

An ardent advocate of public educa-
tion, LaGuardia built ninety-two
schools, reduced average class size, and

expanded educational services for the physically challenged.

He understood that learning occurs beyond school doors and,
besides reading to children over the radio, inaugurated free
park concerts, brazenly conducting a few himself.

Throughout his life, LaGuardia championed the under-
privileged and underrepresented. Clearly, the urban commu-
nity college was a perfect place to honor LaGuardia’s humble

JULY-AUGUST 2002 33



origins, pluralism, humanitarianism, faith in public education,
and love of New York City.

The second source of inspiration for LaGuardia Community
College was John Dewey, the renowned Columbia University
philosopher and AAUP founder, who represented the other
end of the academic hierarchy. Yet Dewey’s ideas were hardly
elitist. He insisted that intellectual opportunities should be
accessible to all and that students should be empowered to par-
ticipate actively in the discovery process. True learning, he
believed, would integrate ideas with experience, offset “nar-
row specialization,” and promote a “sympathetic understand-
ing of different viewpoints.” No longer dull, irrelevant, static,
and aristocratic, education would become the key to individual
freedom, perpetual renewal, enlightened community, and
social progress.

These two men were brought together in the original mis-
sion statement and organizational plan of LaGuardia
Community College. Emboldened by idealism, its founders
optimistically proclaimed their intention
to “combine practical experience with
classroom learning, innovative education-
al methods with traditional approaches, so
that students may be better equipped to
deal with the complex society in which
they live.” Aware of the challenge of
making college a real option for nontradi-
tional students, LaGuardia was deter-
mined to find new ways to keep the open
door from being a revolving door.

Accordingly, LaGuardia’s logo graphi-
cally represented a little flower (for
‘Fiorello) with its center symbolizing the
student. Two stems emerged from and
encircled the flower. One stood for edu-
cation through experience; the other for
education through the classroom. Thus
were the professor and the politician
entwined in LaGuardia Community
College’s commitment to bridge the ivory tower and the real
world for people historically excluded from the academy.

The college pursued its goal by institutionalizing unconven-
tional academic policies, such as a quarterly calendar, an inter-
disciplinary divisional structure, and creative courses, including
a required interdisciplinary social science course organized
around the work theme. Grades were limited to Excellent,
Good, and Passing, with failing students given No Credit and
allowed to repeat courses. Faculty, counselors, and cooperative
education advisers formed student support teams.

LaGuardia was the third college and the first community
college in the country to make work internships a degree
requirement. It also adopted a unique, experiential version of
the general education core curriculum focused on studying the
city. Equipped with an innovative, pragmatic, and humanistic
blueprint, LaGuardia celebrated its inner-city, democratic
social mission. Audacity reigned.

Rapid growth and the demands of outside circumstances
compelled change; time tamed the lion. Accrediting bodies
and licensing exams, articulation pressures from senior colleges,

34. ACADEME

LaGuardia was
determined to find
new ways to keep

the open door from
being a revolving
door.

creeping bureaucratization, serious financial constraints, and
conservative educational politics subdued LaGuardia’s idealism
and undercut its individuality. The process was, however, slow
and always incomplete. For example, although the college
shifted to letter grades long ago, it only recently adopted plus
and minus grading. Although the quarter system was aban-
doned, it was replaced with a modified, not a regular, semester
structure. Our academic year is now divided into two terms,
each consisting of one twelve-week and one six-week session.

Because of a university-wide mandate lowering the number
of credits required for graduation, the work internship require-
ments were reduced. Marking an even more drastic departure
from the past, the Cooperative Education Division recently
became a regular department. Nonetheless, LaGuardia remains
committed to the value of work internships and retains them as
a graduation requirement. Over the years, the original interdis-
ciplinary academic divisions were split into departments, but
three interdisciplinary units remain. The interdisciplinary social
science course became a regular intro-
duction to sociology, but an interdiscipli-
nary capstone course now enriches the
liberal arts program.

Even though LaGuardia has regular-
ized much of its curriculum and shifted
to a 60 percent adjunct workforce, it
continues to support students through
learning communities and to demystify
teaching through collaborative learning
techniques. Keeping abreast of pedagogi-
cal innovation, it is busily training faculty
to use instructional technology. The col-
lege has continually expanded its public
service mission with strategies as diverse
as a program for the deaf, three alterna-
tive high schools, a family college, trans-
fer programs with Vassar and Barnard
Colleges, and an extensive, impressive
municipal archives. Decidedly more con-
ventional, considerably less audacious, LaGuardia faced reality
while adapting or finding new ways to pursue its old dreams.

Urban Studies
Yet problems remained. Poised precariously between the
worlds of the book, the workplace, and the community, facul-
ty often found themselves at odds with one another. Perpetual
struggles over credits, resources, class size, and full-time faculty
lines—exacerbated by issues of mutual professional respect and
the corporatization of the university—have eaten away at the
college’s unity of purpose. Multiple missions evolved into sep-
arate agendas. While classroom-driven faculty became alienat-
ed from numbers-driven administrators, faculty increasingly
advocated programmatic specialization at the expense of intel-
lectual integration. On many levels, LaGuardia developed pre-
cisely the type of academic polarization, replete with “false
dualisms,” that Dewey considered so destructive to effective
schooling.

Fortunately, Fiorello LaGuardia’s spirit can rescue the col-
lege from John Dewey’s dilemma. Like the mayor for whom it


was named, LaGuardia Community College has always been
dedicated to its city. In fact, it was the first and remains the
only college in the country to have an urban studies graduation
requirement. Early on, it was scaled back from four courses to
one, and later it was forced into regular time blocks (instead of
having a whole week of concentrated study followed by week-
ly hourlong sessions). Nonetheless, the urban studies require-
ment still makes a LaGuardia education unique.

Unless their major specifies a particular course, LaGuardia
students can choose any urban studies course from a variety of
departments. These courses differ from ordinary courses about
the city because they are taught within the context of the
community college's academic culture. Each course incorpo-
rates independent, hands-on research plus two trips. In the

process of using the city as a learning laboratory, students get
out of the classroom and are propelled beyond the confines of
their own lives. Urban studies courses are educationally
empowering.

Because it is student-centered, academ-
ically compelling, and socially relevant,
the urban studies graduation requirement
reintegrates and reinvigorates LaGuardia’s
core commitments. It provides a mean-
ingful, memorable educational experience
that ‘transforms the accident of location [Urban
into an academic asset and translates our
public service function into an educational
philosophy. It may even provide a model
for helping community colleges nation-
wide provide a more cohesive and distinc-
tive learning experience for their students.

Urban studies promotes liberal educa-
tion by encouraging students to reflect
upon their taken-for-granted worlds and
by exposing them to different ways of
interpreting human behavior, ideas, cre-
ativity, and organization. Be it through
the study of anthropology, art, econom-
ics, history, literature, politics, or sociology, the individual is
examined in a larger framework. As students test theory against
reality, they become more aware, more analytical, more
urbane, and better prepared for life in a democracy.

Urban studies is the perfect partner to career education and
work internships, which are by definition experiential educa-
tion. In fact, several career programs have tailored the urban
studies requirement to their curricular and internship needs.
Employers themselves often remind us that understanding
urban life helps equip students for the pressures, diversity, and
cultural expectations they will encounter in urban work.
Furthermore, abilities developed in critical thinking, analytical
discussion, and group cooperation are precisely the liberal arts
skills needed for survival and social mobility in the postindus-
trial economy. In Dewey’s terms, marrying career education to
liberal education through urban education is a way to avoid
falling into the trap of narrow vocational education.

Although the college’s urban studies courses have always
emphasized reading, oral communication, critical thinking, and
writing, LaGuardia has recently decided to maximize their

asset.

studies]

transforms the
accident of location

into an academic

potential to reinforce skills across the curriculum. Conse-
quently, all urban studies courses have been designated “skills
intensive,” and students will include in their new LaGuardia
electronic portfolios a sample of work done in their urban
studies course. The urban studies requirement advances our
developmental education mission.

City-based active learning promotes a pedagogy that is par-
ticularly successful with nontraditional students. As urban resi-
dents, all students have something to contribute to class discus-
sion, thereby compensating for their insecurities as learners
while making college-level inquiry accessible, personal, and
relevant. The various activities used in these courses accom-
modate different learning styles, while the group projects and
the trips help transform a class into a community.

Urban studies also strengthens the college’s connection with
its locale. In the long run, understanding and interacting with
the city will make our students better citizens of and leaders in
their communities. In the short run, every time we invite a
politician to speak, visit a social-service
agency, interview an immigrant, poll a
businessperson, go to a museum or his-
toric site, seek information from a civic
group, or-tour a neighborhood, we are
goodwill ambassadors for the college.
Our name becomes familiar, our curricu-
lum acquires legitimacy, and our students
become real people instead of stereo-
types. As we reach out to our communi-
ty, we proclaim our pride in what we do,
whom we serve, and where we are.

LaGuardia’s urban studies graduation
requirement has remained a constant in
an ever-shifting academic universe com-
plicated by what often seem to be dis-
parate, and somewhat deteriorating,
goals. It reconnects developmental, liber-
al, career, and continuing education. By
grounding learning in experience, it
enriches pedagogy while bridging the gap between the aca~
demic and the real world. Above all, it empowers and educates
the whole student.

As a case study, LaGuardia Community College provides a
cautionary tale. On the one hand, it has lost a lot of its original
verve, uniqueness, and sense of community as reality and rou-
tinization have muted its deviations from the norm. Pursuing
academic legitimacy while being innovative, idealistic, and
multifaceted proved to be harder than anticipated:

On the other hand, the college has bent, but it has not bro-
ken. It remains committed to its own blend of LaGuardia and
Dewey—a vision of education that combines the traditional
with the nontraditional, integrates the classroom with the out-
side world, strives to welcome and nurture all students, hallows
education as the key to individual freedom, embraces its envi-
rons, and takes public service seriously. These democratic ends
are, after all, the hallmarks of the community college move-
ment and may explain why that movement has been so suc-
cessful despite its many detractors and the difficulties it con-
fronts. Audacity prevails. #

JULY-AUGUST 2002 35

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