Mott Strong

Our new Strategic Plan was developed through a highly inclusive process over a number of months, with input and ideas from students, faculty, and staff, as well as our many supporters out in the community, whether they were business leaders, union members, nonprofits, philanthropists, government officials, MCC alumni and retirees, the K-12 and higher education sectors, and many others.

This plan was adopted by our Board of Trustees in December. The end result is “Mott Strong.”

Mott Community College is a member of the Strategic Horizons Network (SHN), a unique, collaborative learning community with an agenda focused on organizational learning. The height of the SHN expertise lies in alternative futures, disruptive innovation, and strategies for transformation that lead to extraordinary performance and growth in community colleges. Collectively, nine community colleges courageously reimagine and transform work to ensure that the communities we serve thrive.

Strategic Horizons Network Presidents have become more self-aware of the continued racism, inequality, discrimination and hate that exists in their communities and throughout the nation, as well as the reality of racial stress and trauma that seeks to decimate black and brown residents’ lives. The Network recognizes the importance of collaboration and synergy between member Presidents in this complex environment that can impact real and meaningful change and model deliberate efforts to create systemic inclusivity. The philosophy is to lead and innovate by “pushing the envelope.” To that end, member Presidents have pledged to continue the tradition by unapologetically standing in solidarity against racism and the systemic biases of oppression that create discriminatory modes of intersectionality. Presidents will spend the requisite time to self-examine our respective personal biases, strategies, and environments in an effort to uncover hidden institutional fragility, while facilitating strategies that educate, enlighten, and transform individual lives.

These unprecedented challenges require unconventional solutions that deliver positive student success outcomes leading to sustaining wages across cultures, ethnicities, genders, orientations, religions, age, disabilities, and veteran status, and income equity across races. Mott Community College will not opt out of the work, but instead will commit to these actions in our 2022-2024 Strategic Plan through the strategies outlined that move the institution beyond current efforts:

1. Denouncing racism and inequity in all aspects of the College and the communities we serve.
2. Taking a strong public position against racism and inequity while working to build community systems for equity, inclusion, and racial justice.
3. Getting uncomfortable in the relentless pursuit of rooting out systemic biases.
4. Pushing ourselves to create environments and strategies that close the achievement gap for student success.
5. Guiding and supporting all students to complete degrees and certificates that lead to family-sustaining wages.
6. Delivering high quality academic and training experiences that include partnering with employers to build equitable hiring outcomes and income equity.
7. Implementing innovative and unconventional tactics that create systems of inclusivity and increase student success.
8. Ensuring our College community policing practices are welcoming, bias-free, and reduce racial stress.
9. Hiring faculty, staff, and administrators that reflect the racial composition of the nation and provide an environment that prepares students to live and work successfully in a diverse and inclusive world.
10. Infusing inclusive and equitable experiences throughout the employee and student tenure that includes ongoing education, training, core curriculum requirements, activities, and events.
11. Providing avenues for difficult conversations to occur that seek to bring about understanding and substantive change.
12. Tracking our successes and failures with disaggregated data based on race that drives curriculum improvement and institutional changes leading to equitable and inclusive outcomes.

In 2020, The MCC Council was formed with the purpose to maintain employee and student success at Mott Community College by strengthening policies, procedures, processes, practices and actions with College-wide inclusion. The MCC Council promotes systemic inclusiveness and ensures that the College’s strategic vision, mission, priorities and foundational beliefs are achieved through current policy, operations, and College actions.

In March 2021, The Council unanimously approved a measure to recommend to the Board, through the President, amendments to Board Policy 5814 (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) that provide expanded definitions of equity and inclusion. In addition to representing the College’s foundational values, the rationale for the expanded definitions was to further demonstrate the significance of equity and inclusion to College policy, and to enforce the idea that the two concepts are equally weighted with diversity.

The Board of Trustees continues to embrace and prioritize its belief in DEI, recognizing the efforts of the College President, the Executive Cabinet, and the College’s faculty and staff, particularly the members of The MCC Council, for their conscious work to ensure that the College actively addresses the issue of social justice in education through the creation of teaching and learning environments that support all students and staff equitably. The Oxford dictionary defines social justice as: “justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.”

Based on the preceding information, the following resolution is adopted.

Be it Resolved, That

The Charles Stewart Mott Community College Board of Trustees

Reaffirms its commitment to taking necessary and appropriate steps to dismantle barriers to ensure all individuals have access to resources and opportunities. The Board will remain uncompromising in its support of providing students, employees, and the community at large a diverse, equitable, and inclusive college environment, which includes continuing to ensure civil liberties and constitutional rights, and

Be it Further Resolved, That

The Board embraces opportunities for all identity categories as identified within Board Policies 5200 (Equal Educational/Employment Opportunity (EEO)/Non-Discrimination), 5814 (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and 7008 (Student Success), with the understanding that it means building a vibrant, intellectual community that offers and respects a broad range of ideas and perspectives for all individuals. The Board approves and stands with all who constructively protest racism, social injustice and all forms of inequity, and will continue to promote and advocate for inclusion, creating an environment where all individuals are valued for who they are and what they offer. The Board respects and values the differences in our students, faculty, staff, volunteers and community and fosters a welcoming environment of openness and appreciation for all.

Reviewed and Submitted by:

Anne Figueroa, Chairperson
November 22, 2021