By Vicki Maxa, a member of DCCL Cohort 2 and Assistant Professor and Counselor at Grand Rapids Community College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Introduction In the State of Michigan, community colleges rely on three traditional areas for their funding: property taxes, governmentally provided revenues, and tuition. …

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Changing the culture of an institution. That was the expectation when North Central Michigan College (NCMC) attended its first Achieving the Dream (AtD) Strategies Institute in Texas in 2007. Now, five years later, the College is well on that path. However, in retrospect, it is evident that the College was making progress in that direction prior to the laser-like focus on student success that AtD brought with it. The College did not change course with AtD; AtD resources and expertise allowed it to get there much faster. Looking back on North Central’s AtD journey, the successes were immense and the future holds great promise for this small rural community college in northern Michigan.

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Mara Fulmer is a teacher, a mother, a wife – and a member of the second DCCL student cohort. She also has a husband, Keith, who has recently entered hospice. While she took a semester off to deal with the serious illness of her husband, …

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For emerging leaders, opportunities and challenges do not come often; however, when they do, we need to be prepared to overcome, achieve, accomplish, and demonstrate that we have the leadership skills to face them and that we can sustain these leadership skills in the future. But what leadership “gift” do you need to “flower”? What skills will advance “promising young people” to that leadership level? And more importantly, what will sustain developing leaders into the future?

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