a history of an extraordinary learning Communityby peter d. klingman

edited by bill castellanoand susan kelley

A week before Christmas in 1966, a simple resolution was passed by the School Board of Orange County. It called for the establishment of a community junior college “as soon as practicable with the hope it will be officially opening September 1967.” Within days, a lease for space had been signed, and within the month, an advisory committee was searching for a new president. Unnamed, unstaffed, and unwanted by many in the community, Valencia had finally begun.

A new college in six months. That was Albert T. Craig’s daunting challenge in early 1967. Local controversies, political inaction and national turmoil. That was what complicated his job.

The news from outside conservative Central Florida was both disturbing and chaotic – race riots in American cities, tens of thousands demonstrated against the Vietnam War and war in the Middle East, all while 300,000 “flower children” experienced a counter-culture Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Despite local and international turmoil, Al Craig refused to be distracted. He assembled an entire institutional infrastructure from scratch; hired an administrative team, faculty, and staff; determined a name for the college; secured a temporary campus location; created a course schedule, registration process, college catalog, student handbook, library, bookstore; and the myriad of other basic services and processes that are critical for college operations.

Valencia Community College A History of an Extraordinary Learning Community tells the story of how Al Craig, a small group of educators and the help of community giants, led by Raymer F. Maguire, Jr., met that six-month challenge. However, the Valencia story didn’t begin or end there.

Earlier in this History is the story of how powerful political and educational interests fought against the creation of the school. Some wanted to preserve Orlando Junior College, a private institution with admissions policies excluding certain minority groups. Others wanted to protect the newly created Florida Technological University (now the University of Central Florida) from having to share public higher education dollars. The author recounts an intense multi-year battle between supporters and opponents of the public junior college with candor and clarity.

Later, readers explore four decades in the Valencia timeline on three paths:

“Places” – the unique and fascinating circumstances that led to the development of each campus as a learning hub for Valencia.

“Programs and Partnerships” – a showcase of the rich and enduring connection between community needs and College responses.

“Perspectives” – the enduring work of furthering Valencia’s evolution into an authentic learning-centered institution by inspiring and facilitating extraordinary educational results from students. Above all else, Valencia Community College A History of an Extraordinary Learning Community is a remarkable story of teaching, learning, and serving Central Florida … one student, one business partner and one industry at a time.

Valencia gratefully acknowledges the support of theOrlando Sentinel as we produce this history.

isbn# 978-0-615-20468-0

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Table of ConTenTs A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR ................................................................................................ 7A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORS ............................................................................................... 8FOREWARD .............................................................................................................................. 9

part 1 places

Place and Community .................................................................................................................. 13Central Florida As It Was .............................................................................................................. 14Orlando Junior College and the Old South in Central Florida ............................................................... 15 Building the Florida System ........................................................................................................... 18History and Destiny Meet: The Challenges to Founding Valencia Community College .................................. 19Destiny’s Champion: Raymer F. Maguire, Jr. and the Founding of Valencia ...............................................24Tradition Begins: Opening Valencia Junior College .............................................................................26The West Campus – Locating a Place of Learning ................................................................................ 31East Campus: Continuing the Vision ...............................................................................................37Valencia’s Open Campus and a Fight for Learning Legitimacy ................................................................ 41Building the Third Campus: Osceola County .................................................................................... 44Winter Park Campus: Expanding Access to All ....................................................................................52Places: An Epilogue .....................................................................................................................54

part 2 programs and partnerships

Introduction: Valencia Comes of Age ..............................................................................................57 The Evolution of Academic Programs and Partnerships ................................................................... 59 Degrees Conferred ...........................................................................................................59 Technical and Engineering Related Programs .......................................................................... 60 Technology Business Incubation ........................................................................................... 61 Information Technology (IT) .............................................................................................. 61 Criminal Justice Institute ...................................................................................................62 Culinary Arts ..................................................................................................................62 Healthcare ......................................................................................................................63 Holocaust Center and Studies ..............................................................................................64 Staff and Program Development (SPD) ..................................................................................64 International/Intercultural Education ...................................................................................65 Leadership Valencia ..........................................................................................................65

The College in the Community; The Community In The College ...........................................................66 College Night .......................................................................................................................66 Valencia Community College Foundation ....................................................................................66 Endowed Chairs Program ........................................................................................................67 Valencia Community College Alumni Association ..........................................................................69 Public School Partnerships ......................................................................................................70 Tech Prep .......................................................................................................................70 College Reach-Out ...........................................................................................................70 Dual Enrollment ................................................................................................................... 71 Honors Program ................................................................................................................... 71 Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) .................................................................................................72 Math and Science Enrichment ..................................................................................................72 An Observation ....................................................................................................................72

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Embracing the Value of Diversity ....................................................................................................73 Diversity: A Deeply Held Value .................................................................................................73 Planning for Diversity ............................................................................................................74 Students with Disabilities .........................................................................................................76 Programs for Women ............................................................................................................. 77 Program for the Homeless .......................................................................................................78

Learning Outside the Classroom ....................................................................................................79 The Arts .............................................................................................................................79 Visual Arts ......................................................................................................................79 Madrigal Dinners ............................................................................................................ 80 Visiting Artists Series ........................................................................................................ 80 Valencia Character Company .............................................................................................. 80 Theater and Entertainment Technology Program ...................................................................... 81 Film Production Technology Program .................................................................................... 81 Graphics Technology Program .............................................................................................82 Campus Life ........................................................................................................................82 Student Newspaper ...........................................................................................................82 Literary Magazines ............................................................................................................83 Matador Week/Matador Day ................................................................................................83 Athletics Program .............................................................................................................83 Intramural Sports .............................................................................................................84 Music Programs ...............................................................................................................84 Student Government Association (SGA) .................................................................................84 Service Learning: Valencia Volunteers ....................................................................................84 Brain Bowl .....................................................................................................................85 Florida Association of Community Colleges (FACC) .................................................................85 Transforming Student Services in a Changing World ......................................................................85 Counseling and Advising ....................................................................................................86 Project MORE and Student Success .......................................................................................86 LifeMap .........................................................................................................................87 Epilogue ........................................................................................................................87

part 3 perspectives

The Valencia Community College Story of Transformational Change ....................................................... 91 The Backdrop ......................................................................................................................92 Encouraging Dialogue and Consensus Building (1995-1998) ............................................................94 Moving From Talk to Action (1998-2000) ..................................................................................101Embracing the Value of Diversity .................................................................................................. 104 Making the Main Thing the Main Thing (2000-2003) ................................................................. 104 Reflection and Direction (2003-2006) .................................................................................... 106 The Past is Prologue ..............................................................................................................110The Orlando Sentinel Story .............................................................................................................. 111 Shaping the History of Central Florida ...................................................................................... 111 The Early Years .................................................................................................................... 111 From Small Town to Major Metropolis ...................................................................................... 111 The Modern Era .................................................................................................................. 112

INDEX ..............................................................................................................................113-118

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a message from The auThor

When I received approval to write this history of Valencia Community College, my initial thought was very personal. What a privilege it is to write about the era, the issues, and the events that shaped my own work and life in the Florida community college system. The growth challenges of enrollment, the building of campuses, the need for rapid expansion of programs, and the perpetual lag in revenues impacted my life as a faculty member, as a dean, and as a college provost. No doubt empathy and sympathy both helped me to more truly understand Valencia. Writing the story of one of the nation’s very best institutions — a reputation Valencia has richly deserved — is a large responsibility. Valencia is today a modern, sophisticated, and complex place, filled with faculty, staff and students in multiple locations and serving many diverse constituents. And each member of the Valencia family is a recipient of the legacy of excellence the founders and builders over the last four decades left to them. My job, as I saw it, was to convey the idea that Valencia’s legacy of and commitment to excellence was no accident. It is instead the meaningful substance of the institution’s history. I hope you, the reader, will think I succeeded. Every author knows their work is never produced in a vacuum, and I am no exception. Beyond their official functions as editors and leaders on this project, Susan Kelley and Bill Castellano were incredibly supportive and helpful. They patiently put up with my torrent of questions. They provided more thoughtful guidance than anyone could reasonably expect, and they led me to a supporting cast of other helpful Valencia folks — Rita Moore, the Valencia History Advisory Committee, Valencia Librarians and other Library staff, and the Marketing and Media Relations Office. In addition, Paul Gianini, James Gollattscheck, and the late James Wattenbarger assisted the author in understanding the why for much of what is written. Most important to me, Susan and Bill became my friends. And I shall always treasure that. There are two others who I must publicly and gratefully acknowledge. Without them, this book likely would lack whatever good I produced and include many more author’s errors than it might. The first is Jay Hines, my research assistant. He organized a mountain of news clippings and research materials. He fact-checked and proofed drafts. Jay’s energy and enthusiasm for this project

as well as his young eyes helped make this a book that both of us are proud to have worked on together. If I had sole control over this work, Jeanne Diesen would be credited as my co-author. Her career in Florida’s community college system as the education advisor to former Governor Martinez and as a deputy director of the entire system allowed her to lead me through the morass of issues, politics, and personalities that shaped not just Valencia but also the whole state. Neither of us can count the years that we have worked together, the numbers of ideas and projects we have shared, or the months and hours of discussion we had over this book. At various times in my career, Jeanne has been my boss, my colleague, and my mentor. She has always been my lifelong friend. The words you read are mine; the thoughts, the insights and wisdom are most assuredly ours. No one from the outside could interpret the history of Valencia better than Jeanne. And no one could have shared it with me so freely or so well. The English playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said that all great works have three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. They just do not have to fall in that order. In many ways, his thought describes Valencia best— a great work that has begun and is far from finished. And while this book ends in 2006, Valencia does not. Its past history is its prologue, and I have no doubt that its legacy of excellence will travel undiminished to its future. Everyone and anyone associated with Valencia will be better off because of it. I know that — because I am. So last, I thank all at Valencia for this opportunity to contribute my part. peter d. klingmanOctober 2007

Peter D. Klingman is a florida historian and author.

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a message from The eDiTors

We thank you for your interest in this, the first History of Valencia Community College, covering the 1967-2006 time period. As you read this volume, we believe that you will find, as we did, that what shines through are the people who have made the College what it is and who constitute the Valencia family: the students, the faculty, the staff, the alumni, and the College’s many supporters in the community at large.

So many people have played significant roles in this story that it just isn’t possible to mention all of them. This History attempts to relate representative stories of the efforts of those people – the people who created, delivered, participated in, supported, and advanced their life goals through Valencia’s rich array of educational programs. For every person named there are thousands who are not, otherwise no coffee table would be able to support this book.

In addition, it is not possible to describe all of the major events in the life of the College, for they, too, have been far too numerous to recount. Instead, this work attempts to capture highlights and present them in appropriate historical perspective.

Every family needs a home, and the Valencia family is no different. Therefore, this History also focuses on the places that constitute Valencia, from its birth in portables in 1967 on Oak Ridge Road, to the multi-campus institution that it is in 2007. For many of you, at least one of those places has served as a home away from home, whether you invested your time there as a student, a professor, or a staff member. We hope that the story of the creation and growth of the physical places that are Valencia bring back warm memories for you.

We wish to thank Peter Klingman, the historian with whom Valencia contracted to write this work. Peter, we thank you for your patience, professionalism, and your enthusiasm. It has been a great pleasure to work with you.

We also want to thank the members of the Valencia History Advisory Committee, who provided guidance as we selected our historian, as we decided upon the structure of the book, and as we made difficult choices about which of many wonderful programs and partnerships would appear in this volume. Those committee members were: Joan Andrek, Judi Delisle, Geraldine Gallagher, Ronald Reinighaus, Michael Shugg, Peter Smith, Geraldine Thompson, and Roberta

Vandermast. Charles Killinger and Steve Norman served as valuable resources to the editors and the Committee on technical issues. The historian, the editors, and the Committee were assisted ably by Valencia’s Learning Resources Center staff, including Donna Carver, Judi Delisle, and Dennis Weeks; by Thomas Greene, Special Assistant to the President; and the staff of the Marketing and Media Relations office, including Joan Andrek, Don Burlinson, Christian Campagnuolo, Mary Jane Jones, and Grace Rosales.

The patience and skill of Rita Moore, Executive Assistant to the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, cannot go unmentioned. Rita helped us to make corrections and additions to the text as it evolved, organized meetings, managed our budget, and fielded many phone calls as the History was written and edited. Thank you, Rita.

As co-editors, we bring a combined 60 years of experience at Valencia to this task. We are grateful for those years of learning and growth, and we appreciate having been given the privilege to edit this History so that the story of this great institution will be permanently recorded. We thank our President, Sandy Shugart, for giving us this once in a lifetime opportunity.

We are proud to submit this History to you – it is our story, it is your story. To the extent that there are errors, please know that they are unintended, and we ask your understanding and forgiveness. But above all else, we ask for your continued support for Valencia Community College in the years ahead, so that it remains forever, “an extraordinary learning community.”

bill castellanoValencia Class of 1970Professor Emeritus of Political Science

susan kelleyVice President, Institutional AdvancementOctober 2007

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forewarD

The History of Valencia Community College chronicled here tells of a College populated by people of extraordinary commitment, talent, energy, and hope. These, and many other strengths, have made and continue to make Valencia a remarkable place to learn and work.

It is a story about “Places,” though we know that the only real purpose for facilities is to provide the best possible environment for student learning. As you will read, the vision, dedication and courage of community leaders working with College staff for four decades have made it possible for Valencia to provide a quality learning environment for our students. And that work continues as we plan today for the development of two additional campuses to serve our community.

It is a story about “Programs and Partnerships,” the rich connection between community needs and College responses. As is reflected in these pages, community is more than just our middle name; it is our reason for existing.

It is a story about “Perspectives.” Perspectives on transformational change – the really hard work each day of evolving into an authentic learning-centered institution inspiring and facilitating extraordinary learning results from students. Important transformational work has been undertaken in recent years, but the journey continues.

Finally, it is a story about courage; about having the heart to pursue a vision of educational opportunity in spite of serious opposition, obstacles and challenges.

T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets, “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Whatever role you may have played thus far in Valencia’s 40 years of exploration, you may well be at the place I find myself … proud of where we’ve been and optimistic about where we are headed.

sanford c. shugartPresident, Valencia Community CollegeOctober 2007

part one p l ac e s

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PlaCe anD CommuniTy

Valencia Community College possesses a unique and strong sense of place. Its institutional identity, and therefore its institutional history, is tied to its important places – its place as a national community college leader, its place as a leader among Florida community colleges, and its place as a vital institution in the Central Florida community. Had Valencia “been there” all along, a pioneer organization with roots as old as its community or even the Florida community college system, its heightened sense of place probably would diminish. In its stead might be the more natural and intimate understandings of “always been there” or “can’t remember when it was not there” that only comes with time and connection. Yet, because Valencia was among the very last of the Florida community colleges to be established, and because it came into existence accompanied by local controversy, its sense of place remains well fixed within its institutional memories.

To know Valencia Community College, one must first know Central Florida. To know a place is to know its essence – the heart, soul, and culture that drives its being. The rhythms of everyday life, the comings and goings of people, and the sights, sounds, and smells of a community etch themselves deeply to create emotional and physical attachments — familiarity, comfort, security, loyalty, and pride. These are the elements creating a sense of place and community. And in knowing a community as it is, one then unconsciously experiences the community that was. No enduring culture springs up overnight or phoenix-like, consigning a poorly remembered past to oblivion. Rather, the good and the lasting from the past carry forward, contributing historical achievements, developments, and successes to the records of a contemporary era. That Valencia Community College is today an extraordinary learning community is testimony to the fact that it always has been what it is today — an extraordinary place in an extraordinary community.

As a community college opens doors, its surrounding constituent community usually welcomes it with celebration, appreciation, pride, and enthusiasm. More often than not the benefits are immediate and clear-cut. Community leaders recognize the impact a community college can make. Business leaders envision new and upgraded job skills that can attract new businesses and companies to their tax rolls. Parents calculate the financial and social benefits of young adults

sticking closer to home rather than attending universities further away. Adult students with families seeking new careers or advancement appreciate the convenience of part-time and evening classes. Government officials appreciate new revenues that accrue to local tax rolls with constructing a campus, hiring a new faculty and staff, and servicing college students. In meeting these expectations, the history and the culture of the institution begin to take shape.

Sometimes, however, change-resistant cross-currents also can impact an institution’s early culture. Change is not always nor easily welcomed. Vested interests in the status quo of a community can be threatened by change. Members of traditional power structures of a community — those in prominent political, economic, and social positions of influence – may find themselves defending their historical past on the most elemental of levels. When something has worked, especially over a long period of time, why change? And when the perception is of change imposed from outside their community, defenders of historic culture, practices, and institutions can become even more determined in their opposition. Such was the case of Valencia’s opening in l967; an opening accompanied by widespread positive expectations, yet there were historical forces of change-resistance opposed to its establishment in Central Florida.

For the visitor and to the tourist, modern-day Central Florida and the Greater Orlando area stretching over Orange, Seminole, Osceola, and Lake counties assault any sense of place and community. The sheer size and complexity of its tourist attractions, hotels, services, companies, and businesses are overwhelming: 105,000 hotel rooms, 4,300 restaurants and 95 tourist attractions dominated the landscape in 2006. Upward of 50 million tourists per year arrive to encounter the vacation and entertainment paradise of modern-day Central Florida. When they come, visitors discover an environment tailored to their vacation needs.

What vacationers do not typically uncover is the everyday community and sense of place. Greater Orlando and Central Florida are home to its permanent residents — the schools, parks, lakes, churches, shops, and businesses that comprise daily living centers of activity for citizens. Beneath even the residential and commercial layers of place and community is the area’s history — one of old ways abutting new needs and of traditional social conservatism and progressive economic

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hamilton Disston, a 19th century developer, pursued profit by developing citrus and land sales after the regional cotton industry disappeared.

development contesting for dominance. It is an old story in human history. It is the history that directly shaped the founding of Valencia Community College.

CenTral floriDa as iT was

Old Central Florida is but a short distance from the bustling Orlando city limits. In the marshes and palmettos of still undeveloped acreage, one can see the Central Florida of 200 years ago – when Seminole cattle ranged over the land and white settlers were few. Travel Interstate 4 from Orlando southwest toward Tampa, and the land sweeps back in time to the Armed Occupation Act of 1842, the line of settlement and homesteading established to segregate Indians and whites in frontier Florida. Fort Gatlin was established. It was one of a line of Central Florida outposts defending white settlements against Indian attacks. Exit Orlando for nearby Kissimmee and see yet today remnants of drainage canals that Hamilton Disston had dredged in the late 1880s. Disston, a 19th century version of a modern developer, pursued visions of profit from citrus and land sales after the regional cotton economy had disappeared. Frontier land – the “Wild South”— was what Central Florida had been until the modern era.

Rapid growth in Greater Orlando and Central Florida followed World War II (WWII). Some who

came were returning servicemen who had trained in Florida, seeking its sunshine and postwar employment opportunities. Others were newer military personnel preoccupied with the Cold War. The region’s major air bases in Orlando and Pine Castle expanded, bringing new construction payrolls, support businesses, and residential communities. The biggest postwar spurt of growth in Central Florida, however, was a by-product of the newest American frontier – space. Once the United States Missile Test Range opened in l955 at Cape Canaveral, Orlando’s rapid growth reflected the pace of growth in the space industry.

The Martin Company jumpstarted Orlando’s road and building boom in 1957, when it purchased 7,300 acres in Southwest Orange County. Soon its employees, numbering near 8,000, were spreading throughout the community, buying and building in Maitland to the north, Pine Hills to the west, and Rio Pinar to the east. The Martin Company’s commitments to Greater Orlando were soon followed by others. Within only a couple of years after Martin came to the region, 72 more space and space-supporting businesses graced Greater Orlando. By the early 1960s, 300,000 people were living in Greater Orlando. The city changed its motto from Orlando, the “City Beautiful” to Orlando, the “Action Center of Florida.”

The space and defense industries spawned Orlando’s rapid growth and were joined by the

The martin Company was a key player in Valencia’s early days and in spawning orlando’s rapid growth.

Disney Corporation, which accelerated it. In 1960, Walt Disney turned to Florida as a possible venue for expansion. Two major areas in the State occupied his attention. One was Ocala, located some 100 miles to the north of Orlando in gently rolling countryside dotted by horse farms and a rural community atmosphere. The other was Orlando, already well into its development of new infrastructures and efforts. Keeping pace with its new population growth and awareness driven by the space industry and its ancillaries, the Greater Orlando area was also attractive to Disney.

The history of how Disney World landed in Orange County is detailed and complex. At its base, however, it is a simple tale: Walt Disney and his top executives one day were in a small, light aircraft looking down at both locations. As his plane flew over the acreage under consideration, Walt Disney noted not just the great expanse of potential acreage to the west of Orlando’s center city, he at the same time, and with obvious pleasure, also took note of the roads and connecting highways already there or under construction that eventually would allow millions to travel to his planned entertainment complex. Walt Disney saw the potential of the Greater Orlando area and said to his fellow corporate flyers that day: “Put it here.” The region’s sense of place and community would never again be the same.

orlanDo junior College anD The olD souTh in CenTral floriDa

Alongside planning for Disney were other construction projects of all kinds — expressways connecting Cape Canaveral, the airport, downtown office complexes, residential construction projects, a beltway surrounding Orlando, and a new high- tech university. Logically, a new, public community college should have seemed equally valuable. Some, but not all, community leaders who were planning, promoting, developing, and directing the massive growth in Greater Orlando and Orange County welcomed the potential educational opportunity when Valencia was first approved for funding in 1961 by the Florida Legislature. However, opposition and resistance from some of the old guard establishment surfaced. Because of Orlando’s existing private junior college (Orlando Junior College) and its historic relationship with the community, Valencia was unwelcome to some – a scar on its institutional beginnings, but also a catalyst for excellence in its early days. The controversy over Orlando Junior College (OJC) is still embedded in Valencia’s history. Although OJC has long since disappeared, the controversy nonetheless played an important role. At the time of Valencia’s founding, had the controversy not occurred, Valencia might not have had the superb leadership of Raymer F. Maguire, Jr. on politics and policy matters it needed at the beginning, and

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orlando junior College (ojC) held classes at the magnolia school prior to moving to its permanent campus.

judson walker (center), the long time superintendent of Public instruction for orange County, began surfacing the idea in the mid-1930s that a junior college could have value in Central florida.

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Albert T. Craig and his inaugural administration might not have been there to lead it. Valencia’s early history was a turning point: it changed the history of OJC, it changed what had been traditional Southern education in Central Florida, and it changed the community for the better.

As late as 1967, Greater Orlando’s sense of place and community was still tied to an Old South, even as it, like other southern communities, was required to join the New South of the Civil Rights Era. “Old” was the region’s historic and traditional cattle and citrus culture; “new” was its developing space, defense, and tourist industries. Reverence for the past and a vision of the future for Central Florida clashed over Valencia Community College’s creation in l967. Orange County stood at a crossroad of a segregated Old South school system and an increasingly integrated, modern, and culturally diverse array of educational needs among its burgeoning population. Valencia represented the latest and best in modern community college missions, dedicated to open access and equal educational opportunity for all who entered. OJC, founded during WWII by the Orange County School Board as a private community college to serve white residents, was still in 1967 the standard bearer for a vanishing but not departed educational system.

OJC was a latecomer to the American, and indeed, to Florida’s community college movement. Judson Walker, the longtime Superintendent of Public Instruction in Orange County, had first been elected to his office in 1932. Three years later, he began surfacing the idea that a junior college could have value in Orange County and Central Florida. With Orlando mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Superintendent Walker would mull over the idea another five years before the Board of Instruction would take action. In December 1940 the Board authorized a feasibility study and in February 1941, OJC was born.

Walker patterned the new junior college in the classic American track of those private municipal community colleges at the turn of the 20th century. Communities that opened junior colleges (only later named community colleges) believed them “good for business” and for the community economy. Those academics who had led universities a half-century earlier into establishing elite “feeder” junior colleges would have found some comfort in Walker’s thoughts: “The prime purpose of any advanced educational

system,” Walker said, “is to teach the youngster to think, to teach him how to reason clearly and directly. That is where most secondary schools fall down. But a junior college, properly staffed, would be of untold benefit in training young men and women to fill a place in the community.” But the superintendent was focusing on Orlando, Orange County, and Central Florida, not on providing better-prepared students to universities elsewhere.

Judson Walker believed it was impossible for high school graduates of his own Orange County educational system to take what he called the “essential courses of citizenship” – English, History, Science, Algebra, Language, Music, and Art – and crowd in business and vocational work skills at the same time. “Therefore the junior college would be supplementary to the high school, carrying on the work started in high school with specialization in work which will help the student to find a job when he gets through his course.”

In selling Orlando Junior College to his own Board and the Central Florida community, Walker leaned hard on the good economic sense a junior college made. Not only would junior colleges cost less for students and their families, compared to university tuitions, those costs were monies that did not have to leave Orange County to be spent with other schools, businesses, and merchants in cities where universities were located. “The junior college would mean hundreds of dollars to Orange County which goes out to some other city in actual cash.” Municipal revenue could increase spending in the local economy and students would be better prepared for local jobs in the returning prosperity of post-Depression and war-time Central Florida. These were superior motivations for Central Florida to welcome and support the founding of OJC. No opposition to OJC was to be found in 1941, but there would be soon thereafter.

The Orange County School Board’s approval to operate the new junior college did not extend to granting it operating funds. Fiscal shortage, common in the Depression years, caused Walker and the School Board to create for OJC an anomalous structure, one identical to its predecessor model, St. Petersburg Junior College in Pinellas County. OJC began as and would remain throughout its existence a private junior college dependent on private sources of revenue. There were simply insufficient funds

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in the Orange County school budget for a junior college’s two extra years. And, there were not yet public funds available for junior colleges in Florida. By structuring OJC as a private, self-supporting institution, the school gained an advantage of cost containment and controls over curriculum, scheduling, staffing, and in admitting and teaching students.

But OJC was not entirely separated from the public sector. Today, it would be strange for any public Board to even consider starting, controlling, and managing a private enterprise. Though an outgrowth of a public Board of Instruction, OJC was incorporated as a private, non-profit venture. It was a curious blend. Walker and the county School Board were the first president and trustees. And, while they served as the administrative leadership of the new Junior College without salary, to avoid the obvious charges of “double dipping” or conflicts of interest, Morris Hale, Sr., the initial Dean of OJC, was also hired to run the Orange County vocational school in the old Magnolia School building on Magnolia Avenue. Not coincidentally, the Magnolia School was assigned to house OJC’s first classes. More curiously, Dean Hale’s monthly salary as Dean of OJC came from surplus funds the School Board’s regular bookstore had accumulated in a separate account.

It is ironic that just as Valencia was established amid community controversy in l967, so was Orlando Junior College in the early 1940s. Equally ironic is that Martin Andersen, publisher of Orlando’s morning and evening newspapers, was central to both imbroglios. Shortly after its founding in the middle of WWII, Orlando Junior College ignited a war-related community controversy of significant size. The School Board made a decision in 1942 to house Orange County State Defense School classes, funded by the State Board of Education, in the Magnolia School building along with its own vocational school classes. OJC classes created intense community wrangling over the space and its use.

Walker and the School Board were attacked for their decision to add OJC classes to the defense-related classes in the Magnolia School. The superintendent and Board insisted the old building could provide adequately for all. OJC academic classes were on the third floor, and the heavy machinery required

for the Defense School was in the basement. The two programs did not conflict at all, according to Walker. Nor did either program interfere with the Board’s own vocational education classes. The Defense School shared equipment already housed there for the vocational school. The State later added additional equipment for the Defense School that the School Board’s programs were able to use. For Walker, the brouhaha was a non-issue.

Not so for others. The Orlando Star-Reporter derided Orlando Junior College, labeling the Junior College “Walker’s pet.” It seemed at least partly justified. Because it could not afford to do otherwise, OJC offered no vocational training at all in its early years, only those “citizenship essentials” courses Walker and Hale favored. To Robert Dolly, then Florida State Director of Vocational Training, Walker and Hale were in charge of an institution that was not a “real” junior college. Without vocational training and only offering academic courses, it was little more than high school enrichment. To Director Dolly, OJC was nothing more than Walker’s and Hale’s “little red wagon.” Superintendent Walker argued that when the Defense School equipment arrived, that problem would disappear. To outsiders, however, it appeared that state Board and local Board were locked in conflict.

Martin Andersen stepped into the issue. The powerful publisher of the Orlando Star-Reporter and the Morning Sentinel, he judged Walker to be sincere and the School Board to be technically correct. But nonetheless, he believed OJC was detrimental to the real issue simmering behind this bureaucratic conflict. For Andersen, it was all about American patriotism and supporting the war effort: “We want our county and our town to produce its share of tools for Stilwell’s boys, MacArthur’s boys, and Nimitz and the boys under our flag in Africa and everywhere else. We think the Junior College, which now invests a considerable part of the Magnolia structure, was a fine piece of peacetime progress in education. But it has no place in today’s picture.” Andersen demanded that OJC suspend operations in favor of the State Defense School until the war was over, to the point of threatening a court injunction. Among the issues lending weight to Andersen’s opposition was the Defense School’s parachute packing class. N. B. “Pop” Nelson, the Defense School Director, had requested permission to use

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the Magnolia School’s auditorium for his class, but the Board refused. Not even the School Board’s lease agreement for the T. K. Johnson Buildingon the corner of Garland and Livingston streets, meant exclusively for the defense training classes, silenced critics. At various times in print, Walker was accused of political “featherbedding” — creating Orlando Junior College so that he would have a job if he lost re-election for superintendent. The superintendent was also accused of misfeasance of public tax monies (the issue being Dean Hale’s salary source), and, worst of all, of being unpatriotic. Two original Board members resigned rather than resist the political heat that Walker, Hale, and the Board had inspired over OJC and its space.

Two events brought peace and resolution. Walker resigned as President of OJC in l944, although he remained Superintendent of Public Instruction until 1952. The other was the purchase of a permanent campus for OJC, a transaction Walker initiated before his departure. The property from then on housed Orlando Junior College as it today houses its successor institution, Lake Highland Preparatory School. It was located at Marks Street and Highland Avenue and encompassed Lake Highland and about 20 acres of land. It was at the time owned by John W. Martin, former Florida Governor. Born in Ocala and living then in Jacksonville, Martin agreed to Walker’s request for a reduced sale price for OJC’s benefit. For the next 20 years, OJC functioned rather traditionally as a private, Christian-based, two-year college. Enrollments grew steadily if not spectacularly, and new buildings were brought on-line. Community funding and support steadied the small Junior College as it embedded itself into Central Florida’s Old South sense of place and community.

builDing The floriDa sysTem

The move to the Lake Highland property saved the College from an early demise, but another, far more fateful decision in 1947 by OJC insured a later demise. The trustees refused public funds from the State of Florida to transform OJC into a public junior college, preferring instead to remain a private Christian college. Twenty years later, when Valencia Community College’s public traditions of excellence began, the new community college would be the direct beneficiary of OJC’s decision to remain

private. Had its governing Board decided differently, Valencia might never have come into being. In fact, Valencia’s first major turning point came well before the College itself appeared.

During the two decades between the OJC decision to remain private and the founding of Valencia, much happened in Florida and in the nation that inspired the Greater Orlando community to want and need a public community college in its midst. Two major historical forces, one national and the other statewide, came together, blending inseparably and forever. First was the emergence of the civil rights movement and the formal end to the era of segregation. Ending segregation in American law (or de jure segregation as it was called), did not produce an automatic end to the de facto segregated existence in daily living for minorities in Central Florida, however. But, alongside other regional institutions dealing with social changes of massive scale and size, Valencia Community College would play a profound and strategic role for minorities. In welcoming students that OJC as a private junior college would never have enrolled, Valencia’s first days and years were indeed extraordinary, allowing many more people from diverse backgrounds to participate in the region’s growing modern space and tourist culture. Just as OJC was linked with the Old South, Valencia Community College in the Civil Rights Era would become inseparable from Central Florida’s “New South” sense of community and place.

james wattenbarger is often referred to as the “father of the florida Community College system.”

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The second major historical movement was the building of a Florida community college system, of which today Valencia is an integral part and a proud and respected leader. The modern Florida system evolved from the merger of previously segregated junior colleges that had existed in the State between 1933 and 1967. The integration process began in l957 when the Florida Legislature adopted the recommendations of its new Community College Council (CCC), led by its first Executive Director, James Wattenbarger, and Florida’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Thomas Bailey. The Council called for the creation of 23 new junior colleges throughout Florida in addition to the original four that already were operating. The CCC also determined that 13 areas in Florida with large African-American populations, including Central Florida, warranted building and opening new junior colleges. The intent was to permit an unfettered accessibility to higher education and to greatly expand it by placing academic classes and vocational/technical training within commuting distance of a substantial majority of Florida’s population. The Legislature also decreed that each new junior college only be authorized to commence operations with local School Board approval and authorization.

On the State level, overcoming segregation in education was the goal defined by and supported by LeRoy Collins, who served as Florida Governor from 1957 to 1961. A racial moderate who insisted that law must be followed faithfully, Governor Collins personally believed in Florida’s destiny to deliver an equitable and integrated educational system for all Floridians. Yet, in the wake of the 1954 landmark school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, he understood that Florida’s Old South culture was deeply entrenched and resistant to change. The State Constitution, unaltered since 1885, still mandated segregated schools; Article XII, sec. 8 simply and clearly forbade children of different races to be taught in the same schools.

But that same section also required that “impartial provisions” should be made for both. With Bailey and Wattenbarger providing expertise, Governor Collins ingeniously proceeded to build Florida’s modern and integrated system of higher education using the “impartial provisions” tool of segregation. Under their leadership, Florida’s community college system began by first building separate African-American

and white junior colleges. These efforts were carefully timed so that each new institution and the new system overall would be able to withstand political and social shocks stemming from cultural resistance and the anticipated efforts to discredit the educational value of junior colleges to their communities.

To accomplish their goals, Collins, Bailey, and Wattenbarger turned to African-American educators to implement the critical first stages of development. A number of new African-American junior colleges were created in Florida on the campuses of existing African-American high schools. Bailey, Wattenbarger, and the Governor understood the strategic importance of this. The African-American high schools provided immediately a tier of experienced administrative and academic leadership and facilities for the new junior college institutions. The strategy was designed to also appeal to local school boards. Each school board had to produce master plans only for future integrated facilities. Once integrated junior colleges were in place, high school campuses that had developed junior colleges would then be able to accrue the additional facilities. The strategy was successful. Predominantly African-American junior colleges opened after l957 in several communities.

At the same time as these African-American junior colleges came online, separate white junior colleges also were created under the CCC planning model. Daytona Beach Community College started in l958, as did North Florida Junior College in Madison. Brevard Community College was established in l959. By the mid-1960s, consistent with Governor Collins’ vision and goal of an integrated system of education, slowly but surely African-American and white junior colleges in Florida merged. The result was Florida’s community college system of the modern era.

hisTory anD DesTiny meeT: The Challenges To founDing ValenCia junior College

According to the CCC plan, a new African-American and a new white junior college in Orange County had been scheduled to join the system well before 1967 when Valencia began operating. The Florida Legislature, in accordance with the CCC plan, authorized in 1961 another new junior college in Central Florida, one among the last planned in the State. Also in this last tier of projected expansion

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for the community college system were two new institutions scheduled for Hillsborough and Pasco-Hernando counties. But Florida Governor Farris Bryant vetoed the capital outlay request for Valencia, claiming it was purely and simply not wanted by the Central Florida community.

That Valencia failed to happen in 1961 as proposed was the inevitable result of destiny’s opportunities running headlong into history’s traditions. Once again, Orlando Junior College was the principal theater for community conflict over the future of Central Florida and education. Morris Hale, Jr., OJC President, and Martin Andersen, Publisher of the Orlando Sentinel, were the principal defenders of history and OJC. Raymer Maguire, Jr., a prominent Orlando attorney, led destiny’s challenge to the status quo along with Ed Fallon, Vice-President of the Martin Company, and Joseph Brechner of local television station, Channel 9.

In many respects it was a curious fight. In other ways, it was a very traditional battleground involving religion, race, tax support versus private funding, and state versus local controls of education. Opposing positions were staked out by some of Central Florida’s highest-stakes players over Valencia. Soon after its arrival in the area, the Martin Company management realized that Central Florida’s labor force lacked a number of skills needed to compete in the space exploration

business. The Martin Company required college-level technical skills and training, both for an expanding pool of new employees and for upgrading the existing skills of their current labor force.

Absent a public university or junior/community college that could help, Ed Uhl, Vice-President of Martin, approached Orlando Junior College. Uhl offered $1 million to OJC if the institution would begin vocational and technical training for Martin. In doing so, Martin would also have required that OJC overturn its traditional policy prohibiting minorities and Jews from enrolling. President Hale and the OJC trustees refused. A few years later, the State of Florida tried to do the same thing. In l962, the State Board of Trustees Committee came from Tallahassee, seeking interviews with Andersen and Hale, attempting to assess why there was so much opposition to a public junior college in Central Florida. It was well known that Governor Bryant’s veto of the 1961 appropriation had come only at the direct request of Martin Andersen, the publisher of the Orlando Sentinel.

Hale, more than Andersen, viewed the push for a new public junior college as anti-OJC. For President Hale, the issues were both historical and personal. By 1961, the school was well along its own educational path. Just three years earlier, it had completed construction of a major new science building and had changed its legal name in hope of someday becoming a four-year institution In 1961 it received its accreditation. Four years after that, Harry Leu of Leu Gardens fame would donate enough money to construct and open a new student center named in his honor. Hale’s vision was that his junior college would grow to become a premier private, four-year university. On a far more personal basis, however, Hale’s response to the visitors from the State Board of Trustees Committee reflected his own fervent religious fundamentalism. His religious beliefs in time had come to dominate his institution’s mission. Hale’s personal religious fervor surfaced in a torrent of what would today be viewed as extremist comments when he met with the State trustees group. He did not want Jews and minorities as students at OJC.

Martin Andersen’s opposition to Valencia was, on the other hand, quite different. He clearly supported Hale and OJC with editorials and columns against the funding for a public junior college. Although

orlando sentinel Publisher martin andersen (left) receiving an award at monmouth oaks, florida, in 1967.

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born in Mississippi, Martin Andersen was not a staunch segregationist; he termed himself a racial moderate. He was a devout Christian, but not a fundamentalist. He recognized the South’s traditions of race and religion, and offered those to his readers as cause to deny funding for Valencia. He had remained an advocate for Orlando Junior College from its inception (except for the wartime flap over defense classes). While history caused him to defend OJC, it was destiny that led him to champion Florida Technological University, the deeper reason for Andersen’s opposition to a Central Florida public junior college.

Martin Andersen was a Central Florida transplant. He had arrived in Orlando from Texas in the early 1930s. Without substantial means and by borrowing heavily, he purchased the newspaper that would eventually become the Orlando Sentinel. Unlike many living in Central Florida in the 1960s who had never experienced such rapid economic, social, and physical changes as the community faced, Andersen was more than just comfortable with the rapid growth. He understood how a community underwent development and changed from a small town with limited resources and outlets to an urban center bursting with opportunity.

Andersen had witnessed and learned large lessons from two important historical eras while living in Texas. Both were profoundly important in shaping his vision as publisher and for his own strong sense of community and place in Central Florida. First, in the 1920s, as a newsman in Austin, he learned the power of the press in shaping community opinion. Andersen had watched Dallas, Texas, change dramatically. Under the leadership of George Dealey and his Dallas Morning News, the Dallas community beat back the Ku Klux Klan. Following a 1921 parade of Klansmen that numbered nearly a thousand, Dealey commenced a campaign of front-page editorials on Klan violence in America. Advertisers pulled ads from the News and subscribers cancelled subscriptions, but the publication neither buckled nor backed off. Three years later, the Klan could no longer elect their candidates to any local Dallas political office. As the community learned to reject bigotry and violence from Dealey, so, too, did Martin Andersen learn from Dealey how to display the courage of his own convictions, no

matter how controversial or unpopular, in a free press.

Although Andersen left for Central Florida in the next decade, he often returned to see firsthand Dallas’ dramatic growth and economic boom stemming from the 1930 discovery of oil. In just two years, Dallas became headquarters for 28 new businesses that moved there to take advantage of an oil-rich economy. And, when Dealey helped engineer Dallas as the site of the Texas Centennial Exposition to which 10 million visitors came, Martin Andersen again learned more extraordinarily useful lessons for his later activity in promoting and directing growth in Central Florida. In part, it was the Dallas growth patterns and their effects that explain Andersen’s role in opposing the founding of Valencia.

Martin Andersen was the acknowledged power “behind the throne,” directing much of Central Florida’s modern development that began with space-related industry, followed by Disney’s impact. Along with William “Billy” Dial, the Orlando attorney who later became president of what would become Sun Bank (today SunTrust), Andersen pushed hard for a “space university.” For him, the University of Central Florida (née FTU) was to become the ultimate elite high-tech space university. Andersen believed wholeheartedly in the economic development benefits FTU could bring to Central Florida. As Dealey had wanted to create a world-class university in Dallas that could benefit an oil-based economy, FTU for Andersen was to be the Central Florida space industry’s “MIT.” Yet before the State of Texas could fund its own university for the oil industry, the Methodist Church had established Southern Methodist University with the same goal and mission. Andersen wanted no such competition for the public university in Central Florida. Even after selling his newspaper to the Chicago Tribune syndicate in 1966, Andersen was among the original 89 financial contributors who put up the money for FTU’s land acquisition, and he and his wife would continue to support UCF financially for many years.

The analogous situation to Dallas was present in Central Florida. Not just one, but four educational institutions already were in place or planned for Central Florida before Valencia came online in

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1967. A technical college was what the Martin Company had first wanted in Central Florida. Rollins College in Winter Park, founded by the Congregationalist Church, remained steadfast in its commitment to the liberal arts and uninterested in expanding its mission. Seminole Community College was planned and would be operating in the east-central part of the region by 1965. Little wonder that Hale prayed for and fought for his Orlando Junior College to remain as it was. With increased help from the community, Hale believed that his private school could transform itself into Andersen’s elite space-oriented institution without sacrificing either its religious themes or segregated classrooms. But when OJC failed to capitalize its opportunity to become the vital higher education resource for the Martin Company’s technical needs, preferring its discriminatory policies instead, FTU assumed that role and mission in the mind of Martin Andersen.

Andersen also had a pragmatic educational issue in mind in opposing Valencia’s establishment. This was the offering of freshman and sophomore courses. Similarly to the founding of the University of South Florida in Tampa, and unlike the regional universities planned or established in Pensacola, Jacksonville, and Boca Raton, FTU was able to offer lower division, freshman and sophomore courses as its educational birthright, and a community college would threaten enroll-ment in the lower division.

Larger survey courses and general education courses at the lower levels of a college education had been, and still were, the most financially rewarding for colleges and universities. A junior college’s traditional academic mission was to provide those courses as well. A junior college coming online at the same time as the university with its own ambitious growth plans and needs was seen as a competitor for students and, therefore, for revenues. For Andersen, a new junior college in Central Florida, draining tax dollars and charging lower tuitions than FTU, was unnecessary, especially as a competitor for funding and community support.

As the publisher of the Orlando Sentinel, Andersen had a powerful public voice at his disposal, and he used it relentlessly. Never one to retreat from airing his opinions, Andersen instilled fear in all Central

Floridians who wished to curry favor with the public. Politicians needed Andersen’s support to win elections, and that included the members of the Orange County School Board. Thus, when in the editorial pages and in his own columns of the Sentinel, Andersen would argue that Florida’s junior colleges were a good thing, but not in Central Florida, he was heard by all. It was his opposition that caused the delay in founding Valencia for the six years between 1961, when Governor Bryant vetoed the original appropriation, and 1967, when the junior college finally came online. Indeed, only after he had left the Sentinel would the Orange County School Board consent to authorize the creation of Valencia.

What Anderson failed to appreciate was that Valencia Junior College was very necessary to Central Florida. The “Baby Boomer” population brought an unprecedented number of college-aged Floridians to the doorsteps of colleges and universities. At the same time, the State of Florida had raised university entrance requirements, and 60% of high school graduates found they had no opportunity to enter Florida’s higher educational system as a result.

The situation was compounded by a State revenue shortfall. Florida had taken on all that it could afford implementing new junior colleges and new regional universities. Andersen felt that a space industry-oriented university would more effectively and efficiently meet Central Florida’s educational needs. Never a devotee of taxes nor public funding as a matter of principle, adding an additional college to the community’s financial and development burdens made no sense to Andersen. Raising private funds did. Dealey had shown him in Dallas how to manage powerful community movers and shakers, and manipulate a community’s social attitudes and culture. Andersen had watched the Dallas Citizens Council, a small group of prominent citizens and wealthy business interests put together by Dealey, raise large private monies for economic development projects as well as to battle the KKK. One did not raise taxes to cover a shortfall or promote economic development; one raised private dollars instead.

For Andersen, opposing Valencia was not just about religion or race; it was also about space and money. His chosen vehicle for changing the

a series of wlof-TV (Channel 9) editorials, beginning in 1960, promoted the creation of a local public junior college.

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community was a Dallas-like citizens’ council, the Central Florida Development Committee. The committee was composed of Central Florida’s more powerful movers and shakers, including Billy Dial. Dial asked Andersen to call his friend, Governor Haydon Burns, to move up the appropriation request for FTU from its 57th position on the State’s capital outlay priority list. As testimony to Andersen’s power and influence, Burns vaulted FTU to the No. 1 position. Just as importantly, when the new space university needed private dollars to acquire land, it was Andersen and the Central Florida Development Committee that anted up.

Not all the community’s power rested upon history or sided with Andersen. Arrayed on Valencia’s side were strong issues, powerful forces, and prominent people as well. Orlando television station Channel 9, under the leadership of Joseph Brechner, entered the fray, sponsoring a long series of pro-junior college television

editorials. They were designed to cover all the controversial and contested issues surrounding higher education in Central Florida. The first editorial in the series appeared in 1960, disagreeing with Morris Hale following a televised debate between OJC and the School Board. The issue was public versus private schooling, and the Board, whose approval for a new junior college was required, was moving closer to accepting the necessity of a public junior college. Hale argued it was not needed, but Channel 9 adopted the School Board’s opposing position — “we cannot neglect the future and leave the responsibility for public education in private hands.” When Governor Bryant vetoed the appropriation for a junior college in Orlando, the station described Orlando citizenry as “birds in the wilderness, waiting for the educational show to start.” The station agreed with State Superintendent Thomas Bailey that raising the admission score to the university system did not have to close the door to a postsecondary education through attending a junior college – except in Central Florida where no door yet existed to open, thanks to the Governor’s veto.

Numbers and statistics reinforced Channel 9’s editorial support. In l957 there had been but four junior colleges in Florida; by 1961, there were 24. In that year, 27,000 students were enrolled statewide; by 1970 twice that number was projected. The station also pointed out that very few of the 3,500 technical job openings were filled by junior college graduates. “As Brevard and other major areas develop their junior colleges, Central Florida, where the need is the heaviest, neglects its opportunity.” The television champion for a junior college labeled it a lack of foresight. Not until 1967, when FTU President Charles Millican endorsed the proposed junior college and indeed offered his assistance in its creation, would the Orange County School Board, in the wake of Andersen’s retirement, finally grant its approval for Valencia in accordance with the original CCC requirement to begin developing a junior college.

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DesTiny’s ChamPion: raymer f. maguire, jr. anD The founDing of ValenCia

Historians debate history’s turning points. Some events or decisions in history seem to slice through time, separating so clearly and cleanly events that passed before from events that followed. History’s turning points in those rare instances are beyond dispute. Others only assume the dimension of a turning point with passage of time and retro-spection. The conflict over Valencia’s birth is one of those. Lee Henderson headed the community college system in Florida during the long and arduous conflict era of establishing Valencia. He was the system’s point person in the muddled conflict over Valencia, OJC, and FTU. Henderson’s role was restricted by the requirement that Valencia needed School Board approval before operating, but his perspective was not restricted. With clarity and precision that only time allows, Henderson observed: “Valencia Community College had the longest gestation period of any of Florida’s public community colleges, but I’ve often thought that maybe that wasn’t all bad, because when it finally came into being it came as one of the best planned and finest community colleges in the country.”

The key turning point in Valencia’s difficult gestation process — the signal event that made Henderson’s observation about Valencia’s excellence from the beginning so true — was the choice made by Jack Jennings, then chairman of the Orange County School Board, to name Raymer Maguire, Jr. as his representative to the initial Valencia Junior College Advisory Committee. More than anyone else, it was Maguire who successfully overcame the opposition and led the fight for Valencia. And it was he who made the institution credible at a time when that was not an automatic possibility. Like Andersen, Maguire, too, had supported enthusiastically the creation of FTU. He had also been among the original financial contributors to the university. Maguire, though a self-described “university man,” quickly learned and enthusiastically embraced the junior college mission.

The creation of Valencia forced Andersen and Maguire onto separate paths and into conflict with each other over the best interests and direction of higher education in the region. But quite unlike

many who disagreed with the powerful publisher, Maguire did not fear Andersen’s wrath. For many reasons, he was able to deliver credibility, clout, and excellence to Valencia. As Valencia’s difficult founding was unique among Florida’s community colleges, Maguire’s leadership was also unique. Maguire’s decision to accept Jennings’ appointment to the first Valencia Advisory Committee was a major turning point for the College. Without him, Valencia may well have been delayed or even permanently waylaid. With Maguire’s leadership, however, a vision of excellence was present at Valencia’s creation. Such is what makes a turning point so clear and so rare.

Maguire grew up possessed of a strong sense of place and community. He was, after all, the quintessential Central Florida “homeboy” who had made good. During World War I his father had established the law firm that his son would eventually head. By the 1960s, there were 75 lawyers in Maguire, Voorhis & Wells. Father and son both attended the University of Florida Law School and were members of Blue Key, the university’s honorary leadership fraternity and the breeding ground for “Old Boy Networks” and enduring connections in 20th century Florida. Governors, legislators, justices, capitalists, developers, and businessmen were forever linked by membership and friendship, and Maguire put those friendships and influence at the disposal of Valencia. Raymer Maguire, Jr. served as a powerful counterbalance of influence, politics, and community to Martin Andersen in the College’s early years.

Maguire was a member of an extraordinary and accomplished family. His father’s family migrated to Central Florida in 1885 and settled there. His mother’s family arrived in 1904. Both pioneer families took advantage of Central Florida’s frontier opportunities. Raymer Maguire, Sr. established a law practice that grew and prospered alongside the growth in citrus and tourist business cultures. Charlotte Maguire, his stepmother, was a pioneer of a different and remarkable sort: she was Orlando’s only woman physician during World War II and later helped to create the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, and served as a high-ranking female in the Nixon administration.

A powerful family, a distinguished education, and potent political connections honed Raymer

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Maguire, Jr.’s leadership skills for steering Valencia through its early controversies. So did his knowing the nature of Martin Andersen. As a young man, Maguire had watched Andersen and his father feud for three years over the Sentinel’s publishing of comments that had been made by a Maguire houseguest, Brigadier General Robert L. Scott, disparaging union leader John L. Lewis. Raymer Maguire, Sr. was furious at Andersen, and in turn, for three years, Andersen kept Maguire’s activities and name out of his newspaper before they agreed to patch their conflict.

Of far greater and lasting value, however, is that, unlike Andersen, Maguire, Jr. understood junior and community colleges. He learned firsthand about and prized the junior college’s mission and purpose. He may have been, by his own admission, a “university man” when Jennings appointed him to the new Advisory Committee, but he absorbed quickly the vision of Valencia’s place in the community. Maguire took the time to learn how junior colleges in Florida worked. In his first months, Maguire traveled extensively to meet with trustees, presidents, senior staff, and other key administrators of 10 different Florida junior colleges. His goal was to learn what to do, and equally what not to do. What his traveling and learning produced was the institutional imprint of excellence that continues to this day to define

Valencia Community College. In later interviews, Maguire outlined what he learned – big, complex ideas simply expressed by a leader who had accepted his role as destiny’s champion for Valencia and its future. In a fast growing county, the first campus should be concentric of the population, not in the center, because second and third campuses would be needed. Plan for 10, 20, or more years, not present needs. Get the Board to firmly establish what is policy making and what is administration of the College, and resolve only to be involved in policy making. Set academic goals for the College.Have the money of the College handled by a bank based on competitive bidding, not on political influence. Build solid buildings. Design the building for the need. If the budget would not permit finishing the interior building in that budget year, as least the structure was in place.

Develop a clear understanding of what the Junior College could be to the community leaders, high school teachers, students, and other interested people in order to have public support. It was not in the best interest of the College to have a permanent Chairman of the Board.

In the political milieu that was the late 1960s in Central Florida, and indeed in Florida and the nation as a whole, education and politics grew so intertwined that they no longer separated for

raymer f. maguire, jr. in his orlando law office.

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Valencia’s first advisory board: (left to right) Dean engstrom, edward fallon, Valencia President albert T. Craig, Virginia bryan, rev. s.m. Peck, and raymer f. maguire, jr.

many public institutions. Success in budgets, appointments of presidents and trustees, the receipt of grants, and even community support required uncommon political savvy. Less obvious to some was the need to inure teaching processes and learning processes from politics as much as possible. Maguire learned that lesson very well. Facing the opposition of much of the old guard’s allegiance to OJC, the emerging advocates for FTU, and even the local newspaper, Raymer Maguire, Jr.’s commitments to Valencia were in actions and in beliefs, simply extraordinary.

TraDiTion begins: oPening ValenCia junior College

A week before Christmas in 1966, the combined incoming and outgoing School Boards of Orange County unanimously passed a simple resolution. Their resolution called for the establishment of a community junior college in Orange County “as soon as practicable with the hope it will be officially opening September 1967.” Within days, a lease for space had been signed, and within the month, an advisory committee was searching for a new president. Unnamed, unstaffed, and unwanted by many in the community, Valencia had finally begun.

The enabling resolution’s simplicity belied the complexity and frenzied pace of work needed to get

Valencia underway in less than a year. An important first step had been taken. When Maguire accepted his appointment and the others were chosen for the Advisory Committee (which later became the Board of Trustees), sound leadership at a policy-making level for operating Valencia was in place. Those first Board appointees were extraordinary. Not only were they leaders in their respective segments of the Central Florida community with dedication and commitment, they ushered in a new sense in Central Florida of community and place. They knew the college was needed and wanted by many whose voices had not been heard during the founders’ debate.

Serving with Maguire on the original Advisory Committee were four other community leaders. Edward Fallon, a Martin Company Vice President, had been an outspoken defender of the junior college for a very long time and believed the College was needed to fill the technical labor shortages for his company. Virginia Bryan came to the Board as an active leader of the League of Women Voters and an articulate spokesperson for professional women in Central Florida. Dean Engstrom was closely tied to citrus industry interests and to the growing West Orange County. Reverend S. M. Peck led an African American congregation and provided the Board with valuable connections and insights.

The next turning point was hiring Albert T. Craig as Valencia’s inaugural President. He, too, was special. At the time of Craig’s selection, the process for hiring a community college president was pretty basic: a Board searched for and settled on a candidate, submitted the name to the State for final approval, and tasked out what needed to be done. Ultimately a blending of politics, personality, and passion makes for ideal presidential talent, and Craig was perfectly suited to starting up Valencia on a time-compressed schedule. Before he was appointed, the Advisory Committee members interviewed a number of candidates, (all recommended by Lee Henderson of the State community college system), but only Al Craig stood out, and he did so for his unusual approach to his interview. Craig appeared for his final interview with a ready-made senior staff. Jim Gollattscheck, soon to become the first Academic Dean, and Roy Kinnick, to be the college’s first Dean of Student Services, also came to the interview with Maguire and the Board. The standard interview became a consulting session in which the Advisory Committee received advice from Craig and his staff

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early faces of Valencia: (left to right) raymer f. maguire, jr., first board Chair, jane scroggs, first employee and administrative assistant to the President, and albert Craig, first President.

on what to do, how to do, and in what order the myriad tasks had to be accomplished if they wanted to meet their ambitious schedule for opening classes. That interview process ended the presidential search process abruptly. With a starting salary of $21,500 and a car provided, President Craig began work on March 15, l967. Classes were but six months away.

Craig and his staff were Pinellas County school system transplants. After receiving his doctorate from Florida State University, Craig had served nearly eight years as a public school administrator before being named Dean of Administration at St. Petersburg Junior College in l965 and Academic Vice-President less than two years later. Gollattscheck and Kinnick were Craig’s close colleagues and friends; Gollattscheck spent the year after Craig left the Pinellas County school district as Acting Superintendent. With the addition of Jim Kellerman as Registrar, Craig and his team set to work. No offices, no campuses, no operating policies, no faculty, no college catalog, no curriculum, and no students were in place. All had to be in place to meet an August deadline for classes to begin.

While Craig and his staff were churning out the necessary work details to begin operations, the Advisory Committee, under Maguire, was equally hard at work. This was not a body intended to merely delegate, authorize, and account for

executive decisions. The Advisory Committee truly was “advisory” in name only; Orville Davis, the Orange County Superintendent, and the Board of Public Instruction had made clear they expected the College’s Advisory Committee to function officially until such time as they would be appointed by Governor Claude R. Kirk, Jr., and organized as the first Board of Trustees of the Junior College in a formal capacity.

One of the Advisory Committee’s functions was to oversee Valencia’s first budgets. Although the revenues were appropriated through the School Board, the State of Florida contributed its share of $231,714 and the Orange County School Board added an additional $219,000. 1967 and 1968 were difficult years in Florida education. Massive growth in opening and expanding institutions of higher education as well as public schools caused Governor Kirk to propose education cuts, and the Legislature agreed. The State’s Minimum Foundation Program was both unequal and inadequate to the task of funding education. As a result, the Orange County School Board was required to supplement Valencia’s budgets to a greater degree than planned. This was happening as private sources were shoring up FTU’s budgets for the very same reasons.

The target goal was for the new Junior College to enroll 500 full-time students in its first year.

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These first students, Craig had determined, were to be first-time-in-college freshman only. He and his small staff did not have the time to set transcript evaluation and transfer credit procedures in place in addition to all else required in order to open in the fall. The tuition charge for the new Valencia students was not yet based on a fee per credit hour but rather a fee per semester, and there was an additional fee for out-of-state residents. The School Board approved a maximum fee of $100 per “session” as the semester was then known, and an additional maximum charge of $275 was established for non-Floridians who attended. Class of 1967 graduates of Orange County high schools were given enrollment preference.

Before much of anything in way of preparation could be done, however, the new Junior College needed a name. As Craig pointed out, college catalogs needed printing and distribution, and the name of the College had to be on them. Clear to every Board member was that it somehow had to reflect the notion that the College was located in Orange County. That meant a citrus-derivative name for everyone, but what? Orange County Junior College was ruled out because the school was planned to serve two counties: Orange and Osceola. Orlando Junior College was already taken by the private school. When School Board member Russell Pounds proposed naming it Tangelo Junior College, he was overruled. After Superintendent Davis reported that Valencia (after the Valencia orange) was not used by any school in the United States, the Board voted its approval for the new institution to be named Valencia Junior College. The name would last only a few short years: in 1971 it would change to its permanent identity, Valencia Community College.

Twelve portables, a muddy parking lot, and cramped quarters at Mid-Florida Technical Institute on West Oak Ridge Road marked Valencia’s opening on August 21, l967. Registration had be- gun four days earlier, and Craig and his staff were ready. The College administration in six months had hired 31 faculty members, purchased some 5,000 books for its new library, and supplemented Mid-Florida Tech’s office, classroom, and lab spaces with its own. Valencia was not exactly an “instant college,” as the local newspaper described it, but it was an amazing display of energy nonetheless. The Orange County School Board was a great help

to Craig and his staff. Compared to other Florida junior college openings, Valencia’s was a model of educational system support and assistance. The School Board bought and located 12 new portables for the College’s use besides the supplemental appropriation. As a result, the College opened offering a fuller array of courses than might otherwise have been possible, including night courses. From day one, students at Valencia were able to complete a night degree, with all freshman and sophomore requirements.

There was even a first partnership with the community: a school for inhalation therapy students was opened at Orange Memorial Hospital (now known as Orlando Regional Medical Center) to coincide with Valencia’s opening classes. Freeman Cary of Orange Memorial Hospital and Easton Smith of the American Registry of Inhalation Therapists were the new program’s directors. The program, open to high school graduates and Valencia students with superior grades in physics and chemistry, was a harbinger of Valencia’s deep tradition of excellence in partnering in the community. Not only was the hospital providing superior medical direction for the College, but also the entire arrangement was one of the very first of its kind among Florida’s junior colleges.

Each principal member of Craig’s initial administrative staff had much to do to bring Valencia to life. Kellerman provided registration, enrollment, and business procedures; Kinnick organized student government and other student affairs functions; and Gollattscheck provided the courses, faculty, and schedules. On all fronts, administrative creativity was needed to accomplish the goal of starting on time, and sometimes problems were overlooked until noticed at the last minute. One example was the problem of physical education: Florida mandated physical education as a degree requirement in 1967, and there were no athletic fields or gymnasium at Mid-Florida Tech. Thomas Garcia, one of the new faculty members that Gollattscheck had hired, proposed a working solution. Out in front of the technical institute’s main administration was a large enough green space for limited outside physical education activities. Gollattscheck purchased golf clubs and archery equipment, and a nearby bowling alley offered its lanes for student use.

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Three weeks after opening for classes, Dean Kinnick organized the first student government. Elections were held on September 7, 1967 for Valencia’s inaugural “Council of Twenty” as the student group was called. Because its student government association was responsible for all extracurricular activities at the College, Kinnick wisely decided that it had to be fully operational before any clubs or activities would commence. Peter Ballas, an Orange County student, was elected first chairman on September 21. The Council of Twenty organized the first procedures, student government constitution, and elections under Kinnick’s watchful eye. By the end of November, a fully functioning student government was in place and the College’s first “selling” seminar for students seeking jobs over the holiday season had been held. Valencia staff were assisting students with resumes and finding Christmas season employment. On December 2, the first Valencia student-sponsored dance was held, a semi-formal affair. Craig and his wife, Ruth, hosted the first College reception at the Treetop Room of the Langford Hotel in Winter Park to introduce Valencia Junior College to Central Florida. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Potter (he was Chairman of the Orange County School Board), Mr. and Mrs. Raymer Maguire (he was Chairman of the Valencia Advisory Committee), Mr. and Mrs. James Higginbotham (he was Orange County Superintendent of Instruction), and the new Student Government President, Blakely Mason, were invited co-hosts.

Valencia was not only open, but in the truest terms, it was already a success. In January 1968, the College’s second semester, a much larger enrollment than anticipated or planned for occurred: 760 students registered. It was the kind of enrollment increase that Valencia would face from then on. Enrollment growth was also positive proof that Valencia immediately needed its own permanent campus site.

Surrounding the opening at Mid-Florida Tech in 1967, and the College’s move to the West Campus in 1971, a number of important events transpired to shape Valencia. By far the most significant occurred in December 1969 when the College gained full regional accreditation. President Al Craig noted: “From the day this College was founded, we have been working towards this goal. This honor is a

reflection on the students and faculty who have worked so hard.” Accrediting a college is neither simple nor is it achieved without much effort. It is a full examination by the regional accrediting body, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), of all the college processes — physical plant, finances, academic programs, faculty qualifications, administrative policies and procedures, library, support services, and others – to judge the College’s fitness to deliver college-level educational programs and services to students. Accreditation was crucial to Valencia’s growth; it signified its legitimacy among its peers and in its professions. Valencia’s students could transfer their earned credits and degrees anywhere because the College’s accreditation had been achieved. Important as well was the decision by SACS to make accreditation retroactive to include Valencia’s first graduates who had graduated earlier in 1969.

The second significant event was Al Craig’s departure from the College presidency. With the College underway, and the West Campus acquired and under construction, Craig stepped down. He wanted to teach after a 32-year career, 29 of which were in administration. His administration of Valencia’s first years had been remarkably successful. The original 500 students had multiplied five-fold, the original 31 staff had mushroomed to over 100, and most importantly, he had set the future tone and direction of the College firmly in place. “There has developed at Valencia a philosophy of concern,” wrote Craig in his letter of resignation, “a mutual respect between administrators, teachers, and students; a striving for excellence; a pride in past accomplishments, and an awareness of much that is yet to be done.” Craig’s resignation became effective on June 30, 1970, and he accepted a teaching position, “always his eventual goal,” at the University of Central Florida (the former FTU). His replacement was James F. Gollattscheck. Gollattscheck, a graduate of the University of Florida who had been one of the keys to Valencia’s success right from its beginning, was the first illustration of another hallmark of institutional excellence, i.e. Valencia’s ability to transition from administration to administration without turmoil. Upon accepting Craig’s resignation with “regret,” the Board of Trustees immediately announced Gollattscheck as Valencia’s second president. There was no discussion of a national search, a

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following albert T. Craig’s resignation in 1970, james f. gollattscheck, pictured above, became Valencia’s second President.

change needed in administrative direction or personnel, or any wavering from the plans for Valencia’s future.

The ease of the presidential transition was in keeping with what Valencia was fast becoming. Gollattscheck knew the immense challenges facing Valencia in the coming years — how to grow and expand without losing touch with the Institution’s original purposes and mission, how to keep in touch with students, how to work with and within its community, and, most of all, how to inspire and maintain excellence in the classrooms. Growth would bring its own problems and responsibilities, he noted in accepting the position, Valencia’s location would allow it to become “one of the great junior colleges in the nation.” Under his leader-ship from 1970 to 1984, the college continued its march towards becoming exactly that.

A third big step forward happened for Valencia that year. The Florida Legislature adopted after many years of discussion the State articulation agreement. The agreement revolutionized relationships among community colleges and the recently created regional universities in Florida.

Although the University of Central Florida had been granted from inception the right to enroll freshmen and sophomore students, a major reason for opposition to Valencia’s beginnings, other new universities in Florida were restricted to upper division (junior and senior-level) enrollment. In planning the Florida Community College System 15 years earlier, Wattenbarger had also planned for a “2 + 2” tier in which graduates of local community colleges could be admitted to senior universities without penalties. Prior to 1971 and the articulation agreement, community college students faced a number of obstacles in transferring to upper division institutions. The agreement resolved two major transfer issues: it guaranteed Valencia’s students could transfer with associate in arts degrees to senior institutions; and it was the first step in smoothing over what had been a very difficult transcript process. Coupled with a new statewide common course numbering system implemented a few years later, the articulation agreement helped to settle debates that had been ongoing in Florida’s higher education communities before Valencia was established.

For a long time, Florida institutions of higher

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education debated whether undergraduate educa-tion at a community college equaled undergrad-uate education at universities. Articulation and common course numbering ended the need for individual registrars to review course catalogs and course descriptions on a course-by-course basis before deciding whether to count a completed course for credit. American History I or Freshman English, for example, were given the same numbers throughout Florida. Transfer students from community colleges to universities (and the Florida taxpayer) were the big winners. The Florida articulation agreement and its component parts, including common course numbering, distinguishes Florida’s higher educational system in comparison to the rest of the nation to this day. Today articulation has expanded to include Florida’s private colleges and universities, and even extends into the public secondary schools. In this case, Valencia’s earliest graduates and faculty were lucky that their College’s opening had been delayed. Valencia avoided many of the major educational and bureaucratic hassles that had plagued its sister institutions well before 1971.

Not a matter of good or bad luck, but a matter of sadness nonetheless, was Maguire’s decision to resign from the Valencia Board of Trustees in July 1972, soon after the West Campus was opened and formally dedicated. After five years of hard work and dedication, Maguire decided he needed to concentrate more on his law practice and that Valencia was safely on its way toward greatness. The Orlando Sentinel took special note of the occasion: “Fortunately for the College, he is not divesting himself of all work there. He’s still on a board or two, but left the trustees in order to lighten his work load.”

Legacies, as opposed to historical memories, are hard to define. To this day, Raymer Maguire, Jr.’s efforts to launch Valencia remains an embedded legacy for the College. On the West Campus, students, staff, and faculty pass each day through the welcoming doors of the Raymer Maguire, Jr. Library, the very front of the campus. It is likely that few pause to reflect on why his name is proudly and prominently displayed on the building’s façade. For newer faculty hurrying to classes or offices, for students busy with their own hectic schedules, for vendors delivering products, or for the visitor seeking directions, Raymer Maguire’s

name on the building is all but invisible and what he did for Valencia is all but unknown. His legacy, on the other hand, is not. Without Maguire, there might not have been a Valencia at all, and certainly the West Campus — its beauty and its functionality — owes its presence and sense of place, in large part, to him.

What separates legacy from history is largely the difference between accidental circumstance and intentional event. Maguire, Craig, Gollattscheck, Board members, administrators, charter faculty, and students worked to make Valencia successful. That Valencia flourished and succeeded beyond expectations was no accident; it is built upon a foundation of close cooperation between the College’s first Board, led by Maguire, and the administration, led first by Craig and then Gollattscheck. The personal commitments to excellence everyone made in the beginning years of Valencia continues to be at the core of the College’s standards of excellence. Valencia’s extraordinary learning community today is a remarkable legacy.

The wesT CamPus — loCaTing a PlaCe for learning

Of all the important places in a community in which a community college establishes its presence, none is more readily identifiable than its main campus or campuses. College campuses serve traditional purposes, educating and supporting students, providing safe and secure learning environments, social and athletic activities, faculty offices, and libraries. In big cities and small towns across America, college campuses stand out as landmarks of institutional identity, of cultural stability, of economic mobility, and of social and educational activity.

What makes them special as physical places is that college campuses look the way they look intentionally. They are designed environments. Geography, topography, hydrology, and ecology combine and are coalesced with engineering, structural design, construction materials, and functionality to create a sustainable learning community. There is a process, not unlike planning for a residential community today, that takes place before an architect’s vision becomes reality, blueprints become buildings, and a college

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campus assumes its natural and rightful position among the critical hubs of daily living activity in a community. The West Campus of Valencia Community College one sees today is the product of just such a process.

A drive on Kirkman Road (State Road 435 North), between Highway 50 and Interstate 4, reveals the wisdom in the lesson about campus locations Maguire learned 40 years ago. Today Kirkman Road is an overcrowded ribbon of concrete, edged every square foot on both sides by businesses, services, restaurants, shopping, offices, apartments, and Universal Studios. Traffic flows slowly, especially at peak times and rush hours, complicated further by necessary road widening and repairs. Kirkman Road is but one more hugely trafficked road in Greater Orlando, the by-product of growth, development, and expansion in the area. Nestled in, but not a victim of, this modern-day section of Greater Orlando growth is the Valencia West Campus.

Finding and acquiring a permanent campus location was a high-risk venture for Valencia and for Maguire. The current West Campus then was among 14 specific possibilities for the new junior college’s first permanent campus. Besides representing a wide geographic slice of Central Florida and varying topographic elements, the

sites collectively as well as individually also placed Valencia at further political risk if a mistake in selection was made. There were several crucial issues. First, the land had to be purchased at fair market value or acquired through condemnation or eminent domain proceedings. If the final choice cost more than its perceived value, political heat would be forthcoming from the public. If an eminent domain procedure resulted in legal wrangling, further negative publicity and delays would plague the new institution. It also was inevitable that new suburban development activity would surround the campus’ development. Financial and economic benefits would accrue to some, but not others in the community. Fairness and objectivity by Maguire and the Board were going to be carefully scrutinized. Finally, there was no desire to challenge the eastern portion of Central Florida where FTU and Seminole Junior College were ensconced. Thus, the decision on locating the first campus was a major issue in its own time, and another historical turning point for Valencia. Maguire knew that. He also knew what to do to minimize the political risks inherent in site selection and land acquisition.

In l967, as Valencia was opening at Mid-Florida Technical Institute, its temporary first home, a permanent site selection process and a site

Valencia’s first two Presidents, james f. gollattscheck (left) and albert T. Craig (right), were two key players in guiding the College though the development of its initial academic infrastructure and to the acquiring of the property and creating the first permanent campus.

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selection committee were created, chaired by Maguire. The committee focused on two critical characteristics for Valencia’s future success: 1) the site chosen had to be accessible to Osceola County residents and its potential students, and 2) the site had to be consistent with the region’s obvious expansion. These factors alone ruled out placing the first campus downtown or in proximity to Mid-Florida Tech. As Maguire himself pointed out, Orange County eventually would possess a very large community college, but it had to be a multi-campus learning environment. He and Lee Henderson, Executive Director of the state community college system, envisioned as many as 15,000 students on three campuses of 5,000 students. Where the first campus was placed would certainly determine the locations of the Valencia campuses that would follow.

The site selection committee was more than a sub-committee of the Advisory Board; it was a group that collectively had considerable political skills and technical expertise. Included were two sitting community college presidents whom Maguire had met during his early visits, Sam Neal of Manatee Junior College and Fred Lenfesty of neighboring Polk Junior College. Also serving were Don Bulat, Director of Planning for Miami-Dade Junior College, C. E. “Gene” Chick, Director of Admin-istration in the Florida Department of Education, James Strawbridge, Director of the Division of Community Colleges, and Lee Henderson.

In many respects, this committee put together by Maguire was another example of the excellence he inspired in Valencia’s earliest years. Combined with Maguire’s own considerable political acumen and skills, the group’s work at selecting a site for the first campus reflected a clear understanding of how to navigate the potentially volatile waters of public scrutiny. Maguire sheltered decision-making from the internal administration of Craig. Neither Al Craig nor his senior staff was out front on the committee. Directly and overtly, the group’s site recommendation that would spearhead any decision by the School Board would need to fend off as much criticism as possible of both the School Board and the College. Any controversy stemming from their actions would be aimed at Maguire, and away from President Craig. Maguire’s sensitivity to local politics equated to political protection for the

College administration, and a similar protective shield was extended also to the Orange County School Board. No member of the School Board served on his group and, therefore, none could be accused of exerting undue influence on the final decision.

These were hardly minor considerations, given the nature of the extant site selection process in that day and time. The operative rules in Florida for selecting a community college site allowed far less regulation by the State than is true today. Local interests in the site prevailed. Maguire and his group were functioning under the 1947 Minimum Foundation Program rules under which responsibility for site selection rested with School Boards, and State government was limited to financially supporting local decisions. There were no established State criteria to limit a decision on a given site, once made. Local Boards, local economic development, local politics, and local power determined a junior college campus site. Fortunately for Valencia and especially for the West Campus, Maguire knew well how to blend and bend local political power to accomplish the College’s mission and still meet the community’s need to have a junior college in place.

Proximity and expansion considerations eliminated several site possibilities. They ranged over Greater Orlando’s western geography. They included a number of lake frontage properties and land-only sites. Valencia Junior College’s goal was to acquire at least 150 acres. As most of the available possibilities included lakes or submerged land, the amount of usable land was an important consideration. As the committee surveyed sites and considered its options, land market value in Greater Orlando in 1968 was running between $2,000 and $4,000 per acre. Had the committee found it necessary to do so, it could also have recommended the School Board acquire any desired site under the laws of eminent domain or by condemnation. Although more complex and usually more expensive than purchasing at fair market value, eminent domain and condemnation proceedings both eventually became a part of the West Campus acquisition process.

The land that is today the West Campus was purchased in two parcels, one large and one much smaller. Together, the total was 200 acres.

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The largest piece was owned by L. B. McCleod, Jr.; Brantley Slaughter was the principal owner of the smaller piece. The process of acquisition took until November 1968. Once the site on Kirkman Road was acquired as the first permanent campus, master planning for the West Campus began.

The School Board hired a nationally recognized school architectural firm from St. Louis to supervise two local architectural firms in designing the campus. The St. Louis firm of Helmuth, Obata and Kaasabaum partnered with Stevens and Walton, Inc. and Murphy and Hunton, Inc. to produce the initial plan.

Valencia’s Master Plan was unique. Unlike other Florida community colleges designed and built during the 1950s and 1960s, the Board did not choose to replicate other existing plans in the system, but rather to create a plan specific to the Kirkman Road property. Master planning the campus blended two discrete ideas and their component parts into a whole. The educational purposes, mission, and objectives for the campus, established by the Board, administration, faculty, and students, were meshed by the architects with three design elements: physiographic determinants, perceptual qualities, and off-site influences. The result was a permanent hallmark of Valencia’s passion for excellence. The campus long has been acknowledged as one of the most beautiful in the nation.

The major physiographic determinant was its location. Kirkman Road historically had been little more than a connecting highway between SR 50 and the Martin Company. With the rapid growth of the space program decades later, and the completion of I-4 and the Sunshine Parkway routing through Orlando, Kirkman Road became more than a connector road; it was a location centerpiece of southwest Orlando’s growth and population explosion.

By the time Valencia acquired the West Campus property, the area was already growing at a rapid pace. And because the location was at the epicenter of future growth trends in Orange and Osceola counties, it was the ideal illustration of Maguire’s firm opinion that one planned campuses for the future, not merely for the present.

The property itself is topographically beautiful. The land on which the West Campus sits is a gently rolling terrain sloping from its northern and western boundaries eastward to Lake Pamela. Just beyond the far western edge of the campus, fortunately not inside Valencia’s property, lies a sinkhole, a common feature of Central Florida topography. There were none on the campus land. Lake Pamela itself is a 17-acre “water table” lake, meaning it is neither spring-fed nor supported by any underground aquifer source. Ground water and surface water runoff from the higher portions of the property sustain Lake Pamela.

The lake’s water quality was as important a consideration for the planners as the lake’s location itself. The planning process included a recommendation from the Orange County geologist who, in surveying the site, strongly suggested that water runoff from roads and parking lots on the property could destroy Lake Pamela. Those runoffs contain pollutants that would not merely make the lake less useable and less beautiful by Valencia, they would destroy it eventually through eutrophication, a slow process of choking life from the lake. To prevent this, the West Campus was designed with a water drainage channel that flows across Kirkman Road to this day. It is open and operational at all times to drain down Lake Pamela during periods of excessive rainfall.

When Valencia acquired the site, a combination of natural vegetation and orange groves covered the land. As master planning progressed, it was determined to keep the dense stand of pine trees as a buffer from Kirkman Road noise and congestion and to eliminate the orange groves for building space and for maintenance reasons. The groves were the main land-use section for the campus, and Lake Pamela was and is its most dominant visual feature.

Before the first brick was laid, the educational purposes of Valencia were melded to the physical demands of master planning. The size, based on the numbers of students to be served, had been already determined. Overall, Valencia was to plan for 15,000 students located on three separate campuses in the two-county district. The West Campus was first, scheduled to provide educational programs and courses to 5,000 full- time students.

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The administration and the Board reached another turning point. To meet the College’s goal, the master planners developed the West Campus around four central concepts required by the College’s leadership. The four crucial concepts were: 1) a compact campus, 2) a protective walkway linking all facilities, 3) instructional modules that combined diverse educational functions, and 4) a building pattern that allowed for logical expansion. Those four design concepts do not merely explain the physical aspects of Valencia’s West Campus today; they also define materially and visually the current educational services and programs the campus provides. Had the Board ignored or discounted these concepts in this master planning phase, Valencia’s West Campus would not only look very different, in all likelihood it might also function very differently. Central to its future as an educational landmark among learning communities, these four elements symbolized more than Valencia’s earliest commitment to excellence. Long before the phrase or idea of a learning community gained currency, West Campus planners, architecturally and educationally, had created a beautiful campus in which learners could flourish.

The intent to create a compact campus was driven by the visual dominance of Lake Pamela and the desire for it to remain a visual respite from campus activities, sights, and sounds. Unlike most college campuses that are designed to front on a commons or a quadrangle and are usually operational or administrative at their core, buildings on the West Campus fronting the lake are the social and public spaces that support instruction, including the cafeteria and the library. The instructional spaces face in the other direction onto the parking lots and pedestrian walkways. The result is intentional: West Campus students can park and rush to class or they can rest, study, or socialize between classes on the lakeside. They do not do both in the same place at the same time.

The compact campus design on Lake Pamela forced the master planners to address parking and vehicular traffic uniquely as well. There were 3,000 parking spaces planned for the West Campus. Neither Board nor staff nor architects wanted a single massive parking lot to dominate the campus’ interior as though it were a shopping mall. Yet compacting buildings meant spreading parking out. Planners incorporated two solutions

into the West Campus. First was the visual breakup of the available parking spaces, produced by wide green spaces between parking lots, and second was the circular road on the outer edge of the campus that provides entrance and egress for vehicles. The perimeter road is bermed. The berms prohibit being visually overwhelmed by parking lots at any point on the road or while on the campus.

The landscaping of the campus, especially the berms, is a signature feature of the West Campus, and the design was accomplished at no cost to the College. Bert Foster, an established local landscape architect, designed and produced the landscaping for the campus. Valencia was among the first Florida community colleges to contract with a landscape architect. The protective covered walkways on the West Campus are also exceptional. There are walkways on ground level and also on the second floor completely connecting the campus buildings as the “spine” of the design. They were intended to ward off the summer rainstorms and thunderstorms that plague Central Florida on almost a daily basis. Another valuable feature of the walkways was that they shielded students, staff, and visitors in wheelchairs from inclement weather. Less obvious is that they were also designed to allow for maximum interaction among students, faculty, and staff regardless of weather conditions. Ground floor walkways can be found on other Florida campuses, but the second floor-covered walkway was unique in providing a secondary circulation pattern for the West Campus as it would grow and expand. This feature prevented the same kind of “pedestrian gridlock” that plagues other rapidly growing campuses not so thoughtfully designed.

The third crucial concept giving shape to the West Campus’ distinctiveness was its instructional modules. Traditional college campus architecture follows the maxim: “Form Follows Function.” In its essence, the rule is that buildings are designed for specific purposes, i.e. a science building or a faculty office building. And, while spaces within any educational building might be intentionally multi-functional, whole buildings typically were not.

West Campus instructional spaces were intended to be multi-functional and flexible. As the campus was opening in 1971, multi-functional space and flexible instruction were relatively new advances — in both architectural and educational design. Community

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colleges had embarked on new and greatly expanded educational missions. Far removed from the original and narrower academic purposes of a junior college, open access, adult education, developmental education, and community education required new patterns of instruction. Valencia’s Board and administration committed themselves to building a campus that emphasized student inclusion and involvement. The Master Plan accounted for the College’s intentions. All students were encouraged to feel a part of the campus’s life and activities. Social interaction was defined as a priority of West Campus student activities, for example. For the program to be successful, College personnel and students had to interact. The flexible modules were a critical element in promoting that interaction.

While other community colleges brought online earlier than Valencia also had begun experimenting with flexible models of instruction, including an “Oxford” university style of “colleges” within buildings at Hillsborough, none had chosen to design flexible spaces to suit their instructional goals. Valencia, on the other hand, did. The Master Plan called for identical instructional modules linked by the walkways. The modules were identical in design, construction, and building materials, and intended to serve between 800 and 1,000 students. Each module was comprised of the same square footage and use: 5,000 square feet of general classroom space, 11,000 square

feet of open lab space, and 2,250 square feet of faculty offices. Expansion plans allowed for optional large lecture halls that could be added as necessary.

One of the more significant outcomes of planning and construction — a growth plan — was enhanced by Valencia’s commitment to instructional flexibility. It was also the fourth critical concept of the West Campus Master Plan. College officials and architects developed an expansion plan that included logical phasing. As the campus grew, programs could be shifted, relocated, and regrouped with general ease because spaces were identical. The West Campus plan noted that some labs would not be equipped in Phase I, serving as a temporary library instead, while other modules served first as instructional spaces for art and music before becoming homes to biology and health. The West Campus reflects another of Maguire’s learning lessons: build good, solid buildings first and then worry about dollars to equip them. Under his leadership, the College did that. The buildings are poured in place concrete, not pre-cast concrete or stucco. Long-term maintenance and repair costs have been kept down as a result. But the most compelling, indeed nearly incredible, evidence of the extraordinary planning that went into the Master Plan was in its management of costs.

in october 1977, raymer f. maguire jr. (center), cut the ribbon dedicating the new west Campus library building, named in his honor.

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Change orders in public sector construction are common: often they occur because public sector administrators by and large are not experienced at visualizing blueprints or imagining how operations would work in a planned space. That kind of experience usually resides with educational architects. Second, change orders occur when prior planning is incomplete. Last minute details tend to surface and create change orders that cause costs to increase. It is only competent planning and honest communication between college staff and architects that can hold change orders on new construction to a minimum. Change orders for each building on the West Campus were extraordinarily minor. That was a reflection of the partnership and communications commitment of Valencia and Hunton Brady, a local architectural firm, to work wisely and well with the College’s Board and staff to produce excellent buildings and a campus within budgeted costs. The results are still dramatic evidence of the partnership’s commitment to excellence to this day: most West Campus buildings actually went online well under budget!

Upon entering the West Campus today, the visitor senses the wisdom of its planners. One can instantly understand and appreciate the national acclaim for its attention to excellence and beauty the campus has received over the years. Visitors, staff, and students are not merely thrust into a busy campus and academic life. Rather, as the circular drive begins winding around Lake Pamela, one first captures the peace and tranquility the West Campus was designed to manifest. From across the lake, nearer to Kirkman Road itself, the campus appears as a whole. It conveys a silent sense of solidity and pride. Travel closer and the harsh sights, sounds, and congestion of Kirkman Road disappear. The congruent blend of environment and construction on the West Campus takes over. There are no students walking or waiting at intersections to cross your path. Signage is unobtrusively placed to provide directions. The campus berms gently roll onto the parking lots that are sheltered from sight until one reaches the instructional side of the campus’ “spine.” Only then do buildings, classes, and people come into detailed focus. Then, the transition from the outside world to the special place that is Valencia’s West Campus is complete. It is a deliberate transition, designed a long time ago with enormous skill, foresight, and care by

the College, the College community, and the architects and nurtured over the years by provosts Jim Kellerman, Barbara Guthrie-Morse, Bob Holland, Anita Harrow, Edmund Gross, Paul Kinser, and Paula Gastenveld. The West Campus is a place where Valencia excellence begins, but does not end.

easT CamPus: ConTinuing The Vision

“Now the work begins,” President Gollattscheck announced in July 1973 as Valencia acquired land for its second of three planned campuses. The College Board of Trustees approved the purchase of 80 acres in the eastern portion of Orange County, about 10 miles from downtown Orlando and nearly twice as far from its campus on Kirkman Road. The land was purchased in two parcels: the first 70 acres from Catherine McKellar and an adjacent 10 acres from Mrs. O.W. Chapin of Connersville, Indiana. The price was the same for both — $7,500 per acre.

The eastern location fit with the College’s longer-range expansion plans. Having placed the first campus in west Orange County, the fastest growing section, Valencia’s East Campus location was under much less rapid growth pressure. Tourist attractions and related development were of greater consequence in west Orange County. But there was a steady population increase on the east side in residential developments and services that eventually would find the campus convenient. With the eastern terminus of the East-West Expressway (now Route 408) nearby, the location also was accessible for commuters driving even further distances. First planning estimates for the East Campus were for 1,500 full-time equivalent (FTE) students.

Absent a master architectural plan or a specific educational expansion plan when he recommended the purchase, Gollattscheck in 1973 was continuing to clarify the vision of what Valencia was to become. There were several possibilities for developing the campus in the future, including vocational-technical programming in automotives and air conditioning. Initially, though, the planned opening in two years would primarily unveil college transfer programs for associate in arts degrees, one permanent building, and a number

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of “portables” or temporary buildings that had been in use at the West Campus. Gollattscheck suggested it was possible at first that faculty would move between the two campuses, although a permanent East Campus faculty would eventually be hired. As the East Campus grew, a central administrative site was also going to become necessary. With no architectural design in front of him, Gollattscheck guessed that the East Campus would probably look similar to the campus layout on Kirkman Road.

As it developed, however, the East Campus differed from West significantly and its own unique and special sense of place emerged. Equally beautiful and equally functional, the East Campus style and architecture is rooted in a different historical tradition and responds to an entirely different natural environment. It is a superb architectural example of “fitting in.” The East Campus is not a refuge from modern day noise and congestion as is the West Campus. East is more connected to its surroundings, a serene reminder of the historical and natural Florida that once was.

East Campus acreage sits on the banks of the Little Econlockhatchee River. Originating deep in Osceola County to the south, the “Little Econ” meanders northward and joins the “Big Econ,” a tributary that empties into the St. Johns River in Seminole County. It is one of Florida’s blackwater riverine environments: the presence of tannin in the water creates its special coloring. In some parts the river is a still pristine reminder of Florida’s wilderness paradise of centuries past. Seminole Indians camped on its banks in the 19th century, hiding from advancing soldiers in the Florida Indian wars. Herons, hawks, and egrets still make their home high among the river’s cypress and hardwood stands, and gators still glide silently in search of prey in the dark river water.

The Econ River basin ecology, well before the East Campus had been acquired in 1973, was threatened by development projects. Many intended developments, such as “Rocket City,” were intended to capitalize on the space industry between Orlando and Titusville. Some did well; others did not. And, although environmentalists protested other proposed riverine development plans, Valencia’s plans were not. Slowly, east Orange County and the river basin were indeed changing.

Reynolds, Smith and Hills, an architectural and engineering firm, prepared the Master Plan for the East Campus. Sensitivity to the river was one of the three physical determinants that shaped Valencia’s East Campus. From the front of the property on Econlockhatchee Trail to the river’s edge is a drop in elevation of about 25 feet. On its highest ground, the land was pastureland, generally free of trees, of sandy soil, and usable for building construction. Between the high ground and the river was a section of sloping land that included scattered trees and also was usable for construction. A flood-prone swamp area on the river’s edge, amounting to nearly 25% of the acreage, was not usable for building out the campus.

The property was shaped like a parallelogram with the longer sides on the Little Econ River and on Econlockhatchee Trail. That shape determined how and why the East Campus is as it appears today. Overhead power lines on Econlockhatchee Trail required the College to preserve a 100-foot easement on the front side of the property. That power line easement affected not just where buildings could go; it determined parking lot sizes and layout, access road design, and landscaping. Along with the easement, planners also had to account for eventual road widening along both the Trail, running north and south, and the intersecting road, Kaw-Lige Lane, an unpaved east and west artery in 1973. The intersection of the Trail and Lane was planned to be the main entrance to the East Campus.

Valencia’s Board desired Reynolds, Smith and Hill to focus, much as before, on creating a beautiful place for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. As planned, the East Campus was, as had been true for the West Campus, designed to be compact and built out incrementally so that growth in students could be accommodated without major transitions and turmoil-raising moves of spaces, equipment, and people. The planners recommended a number of architectural enhancements intended to improve the campus’ “visual character.” They included planned walkways, open spaces, outdoor courtyards, and retention ponds. The “Little Econ” tree line along the river would remain the dominant visual feature.

The plan called for the initial campus building to be constructed on the northern side of the

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property and for athletic fields to be built on the southern side. Three access drives were designed to allow commuters to enter the campus parking lots: one in front of the building; one (the major intersection) in the center, and one providing access to the athletic area. Eventually, the fields would be removed and relocated and the south side of the parallelogram would become additional parking. A planned interior roadway was necessary to connect the parking lots and to allow for parking to be nearer to the buildings.

Because of land shape, campus construction was to be linear from north to south as expansion occurred. To break the look of a line of buildings, the planners chose to create smaller open court-yards by using the original placement of the portables on angles. So, too, would the original buildings be open on those courtyards and angled as well to break up the linear positioning required by the land shape. No decisions about programs had been made when the Master Plan first was produced, and the first structure online was a general classroom building for instructional purposes. Not until Gollattscheck appointed David Evans, who had been Valencia’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, as the Provost of the East Campus in 1974, did detailed educational planning get underway.

In keeping with Valencia’s commitment to excellence in all things, nearly 15 years after the

East Campus opened the original Master Plan of Reynolds, Smith and Hill was re-mastered to improve and enhance the campus. In 1989, the College Trustees were ready to approve plans for constructing a major new addition. The new building was the permanent Learning Resources Center (LRC), now known as the Library. In the intervening years, as the campus had grown, permanent buildings, including the Performing Arts Center and Art Gallery, continued to be positioned along the line, replacing the relocat-ables. Each building added was turned slightly toward the intended small courtyards that had been created for the relocatables in the master planning. But as the line of buildings approached the middle of the parallelogram at the campus main access point, a decision was made to ask the architectural firm of Hunton Brady, who had designed West, to “re-master” the East Campus planning documents. Hunton Brady had won the bid to design East’s Learning Resources Center.

Two issues concerned the College. One was to correct the visual lack of depth caused by the construction line. The other was to create a central focus area for the campus. What had been missing from the beginning of development was a center entrance point — a readily recognizable area on the campus in which students, faculty, guests, or visitors could gather and mingle. Also, the Performing Arts Center and Art Gallery would benefit from

The first east Campus administrative Team: larry bowden, Paulette Poyner, rubye beale, Thomas ribley, and David evans.

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a congenial gathering space for students, for those attending performances, for gallery tours, and for campus socializing. East Campus, in other words, needed its own central sense of place — the reason traditional college campuses typically were built with a commons or a quadrangle at their center. The new additions to East, however, posed a special challenge. It was important to mesh the new buildings with existing buildings in terms of materials and style.

To break up the linear look of the campus, Hunton Brady architects turned to one of America’s earliest campus architects for inspiration. Among his many achievements, Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, was also an accomplished architect. It was he who designed in the 18th century the University of Virginia, and it was his design to which Hunton Brady turned to solve the visual, architectural, and educational challenge of how to alter visually the East Campus’ line of construction. They borrowed Jefferson’s mall and rotunda concepts that grace the entrance of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for the new area and buildings at Valencia’s East Campus.

The new buildings and their positioning on the central mall added depth and a fresh visual perspective to the East Campus. Hunton Brady designed unusually shaped buildings around the campus mall. There were two reasons: one was to soften the original construction line, and the other was to lessen the amount of fill dirt needed on the campus’s sloping terrain in the rear. Where there had been no connectivity between buildings, a long perimeter walkway was added completely surrounding the campus. The front walkway, next to the interior main road that stretches the length of the campus, also provided additional safety to campus pedestrian traffic as well as ease of movement from classes to cars or from building to building. Walkways in the rear on the riverside were added to allow a closer outdoor view of the natural beauty of the Little Econ River below. Round window mallions, terrazzo flooring, rope pre-cast concrete on the exterior, and interior cast-in-place columns completed the link between original and new construction.

The re-mastering results were spectacular and lasting. With landscaping that includes berms

and pine trees to block out traffic noise on the Trail, one today does not sense the original line of construction upon entering the East Campus. Rather, it is the grace and elegance of the rotunda and mall that seizes the eye and produces positive first impressions.

Valencia’s East Campus today is an American classic. Part of the architectural genius of the East Campus is its harmonizing of place and community – juxtaposing symbols of the area’s historic past with modern-day community development. Not far from its entrance, off Highway 50, is Old Cheney Highway, the two-lane road meandering toward the space coast, a tangible reminder of the lasting changes that space wrought in Central Florida. Traveling Highway 50 to the East Campus from downtown, Orlando unfolds the story of early eastward development outward from Orlando. Well before the space and tourist boom that mandated the West Campus location be on Kirkman Road, older retail businesses and early shopping centers mark Orange County’s original progress and expansion east. Past Lake Eola, Herndon Airfield, and Colonial Plaza Shopping Center on Highway 50 are simple reminders of Florida’s Indian past. Streets and avenues give way as place names to trails honoring Native Americans – Chickasaw and Econlockhatchee. Turn off Highway 50 to the Econlockhatchee Forest Preserve just 10 miles from the glass and concrete towers in center city and enter the natural world that Central Florida was when Raymer Maguire, Jr.’s parents and other Central Florida pioneer families arrived at the turn into the 20th century. Travel to the East Campus on Route 408, the East-West Expressway, allows one to avoid sensing the history that surrounds it, but it does provide a modern measure of Valencia’s growth and success.

Described by Gollattscheck as a commuter campus when the College acquired it, the East Campus’ proximity to the expressway was central to the College’s success. By the time the East Campus opened, enrollment growth on West Campus already had produced overcrowding. The new campus was there to serve the growth in eastern Orange County.

Central Florida’s growth in the first half of the l970s accelerated the need for the multi-campus College. Most other Florida community colleges

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in l973-1975 were experiencing reductions in enrollment and facing faculty reductions. Valencia was not; it had been averaging 10% to 12% growth since it began. The College had not been the beneficiary of the State’s community college enrollment projections when it opened, and there were no long-range population data trends that the State could supply to the College. Ironically, that was, for Valencia, a matter of good luck. In the early 1970s, most of the State’s projections for community colleges had failed to predict or plan for enrollment reductions. It was a shock, for example, when Miami-Dade Community College, the State’s largest in the system, was forced to cut 150 faculty positions in 1973-1974. Funding cutbacks threatened other Florida community colleges as well. Without statewide data history to rely upon, Valencia’s own growth-planning model and its budgeting process more accurately projected enrollment. No dollars were lost to painful reductions in staff or programs. Gollattscheck had been right to acquire the East Campus earlier than needed. In continuing to move the vision of Valencia’s future forward, his decision in purchasing and designing the East Campus in advance of, not behind the community’s growth, was more confirmation that excellence at Valencia was never accidental. To some, especially to those comparing western Orange County growth rates with those of the east, the East Campus seemed ahead of its time.

There were critics who questioned the Board’s decision to acquire the land at that time. For Gollattscheck, the East Campus was a political risk. But he and the College’s leaders understood their growth challenges to be more complex than just serving a slowly expanding east Orange County. They knew that in a short time, the West Campus would overflow and the East Campus would provide needed classrooms. The decision to start on the East Campus in the early 1970s took courage and vision. It, too, was a turning point in the College’s history, and the campus has been developed under the careful leadership of provosts David Evans, Carolyn Allen, Stanley Stone, Anthony Beninati, and Ruth Prather. Like so many other decisions at Valencia, it was an excellent decision for the College, for the community, and for Central Florida.

ValenCia’s oPen CamPus anD a fighT for learning legiTimaCy

Valencia was among the first American community colleges to implement an Open Campus. To President Gollattscheck, the Open Campus meshed perfectly with Valencia’s original mission and objectives, and in December 1973, he announced plans to begin such a campus. The concept was a transplant from Great Britain’s system of higher education. A Royal Charter had established the Open University in 1969, today Britain’s largest institution of higher education with nearly a quarter million students taking its courses each year.

President Gollattscheck’s decision to create an Open Campus at Valencia was based on multiple needs that deserved attention. There was a need to provide credit and non-credit learning opportunities throughout Orange and Osceola counties beyond the reach of the traditional campuses. Also, targeted segments of Central Florida needed community-based educational programs, such as programs addressing parenting skills, challenges of displaced homemakers, and adult literacy.

Valencia’s Open Campus was truly a matter of innovation and Gollattscheck’s philosophic vision, and it was created because Gollattscheck simply believed in the concept. The Open Campus did not result from a pragmatic or political need to find and fund growth. Other institutions in Florida faced with flat or shrinking enrollments may have sought first the financial gains available from open college programming. But in 1973-74, Valencia already was experiencing substantial enrollment growth without adding the Open Campus. Nor was Valencia offering the types of non-credit classes that would lead to questions of academic quality elsewhere in the State. In Orange and Osceola counties, “popular” non-credit adult vocational and personal enrichment courses were and continue to be provided by the public schools. Perhaps most important, Valencia’s Open Campus featured a strong credit course outreach that brought strong academic credibility to its operation.

In 2005, Gollattscheck noted that at his last Valencia graduation before he left the College many students had attended classes on more than one campus, some on all three campuses. Most exciting for Gollattscheck was the fact that one graduating student had never

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ray love taught an open Campus course at lake eola in the 1970s.

attended a class on either the East or West campus. He reflected back with pride, “That was the kind of outreach I envisioned for Valencia.” These potential community learners faced barriers to a college education that were more than financial. Their obstacles were the common working conditions of employees that restricted available free time to attend day or night classes on a campus, to make progress toward a degree in a lock-step acquisition of prerequisites and co-requisites, or to devote multiple hours to laboratory exercises. In short, working adults were not college-aged teenagers and could not be served in the same way. Nor could Valencia think of them that way either. These were the new students for whom the Open Campus was intended.

However, in establishing an Open Campus, Gollattscheck also unintentionally unleashed an educational revolution in adult learning at Valencia that would not be turned back. Begun as a non-traditional open delivery system, decades later it would encompass distance learning via technology. But its legacy has been etched into Central Florida even more deeply, since it was the predecessor to today’s forms of community-based education – the business and corporate partnerships that are part of Valencia’s commitment to the community.

Adult learning had always been a part of the mission of community colleges. It had been a part of the force driving the Martin Company’s support for the founding of Valencia a decade before. But the genesis behind changing Valencia’s name in 1971 from junior college to community college symbolized a more profound transition. Adults seeking educational services closer to home brought forth even more directly the complexities and challenges inherent in the word “community” to colleges such as Valencia. To encompass the growing diversity of community-based services delivered by two-year institutions, including credit, adult, technical education, and non-credit courses, “junior college” fell into disfavor. “Community college” had become more descriptive.

While thought of as “a campus without walls” for Gollattscheck, the Open Campus, like the traditional campuses, also had concerns about acquiring a physical sense of place. Three factors determined his thinking: 1) Valencia had not yet established itself in center-city Orlando, 2) he

wanted Valencia’s central administration to have its own place apart from the traditional campuses, and 3) he wanted a non-traditional campus base for the Open Campus. The keystone of the open college concept was personalized instruction with flexible scheduling at non-traditional times and places. That was important for downtown Orlando as well. Weekend classes, classes in downtown locations including office buildings and churches, and self-paced instruction highlighted the new Valencia program. Moving his administrative operations downtown to center-city Orlando in 1973 gave Gollattscheck the perfect location from which to launch the Open Campus, and Valencia’s presence was a much-welcomed addition.

In January 1980, the Valencia Foundation purchased the downtown building that the College had been occupying by lease agreement. The National Office Building was owned by the Chicone family and was built in 1929. Jerry Chicone, Sr. had relocated to Central Florida from New Jersey in the 1920s boom period in Florida, one of the many tens of thousands of new arrivals who bought land, started successful businesses, and created modern Florida. The Foundation purchased the building for $600,000 and under such favorable terms that it was a mutual benefit to the College and to the community. Jerry Chicone, Jr., at the time a

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member of Valencia’s Board of Trustees and also chairman of the Downtown Development Board, convinced his father that Valencia was worthy of their family’s support. At his urging, his father provided more than comfortable terms of sale for the College. They offered a no-down payment purchase and advanced the College Foundation $150,000 for improvements and renovations. That was followed by the Chicone family’s donation of land for an expanded parking lot for Valencia employees. “It’s a community gesture,” Jerry Chicone, Sr. said. “We were in a position to do something for the community.” The Chicone Building is four floors high. Initially, the top three had been used by the Open Campus. Following the renovations, the College would use all floors. As Gollattscheck pointed out, the Chicone purchase meant that Valencia now possessed a permanent place in downtown Orlando.

The location enhanced Valencia’s ability to service non-traditional adult students. The Open Campus enabled students to attend Valencia without driving to the traditional campuses (an important factor with gasoline prices soaring in the wake of the oil embargo of l973-1974) and offered open admissions, open testing, and customized seminars and workshops. But there remained a large difference in courses

and content offered in the Open Campus from those offered on the East or West campuses. That difference was in offering non-credit as well as credit courses and in the way in which the curricular offerings were determined.

Community interests and needs determined course offerings in the Open Campus. After a century or more of “junior college” offerings in terms of freshmen and sophomore content alone, continuing education and community service programs took their place alongside traditional academic coursework. More critically in Gollattscheck’s mind, these kinds of programs allowed for permanent connections to students to be formed. He pointed out that at Valencia, the Open Campus would “. . . enable large numbers of residents in this area to begin a lifelong association with Valencia.” Lifelong learners never had to graduate; they had only to continue learning.

Valencia committed itself to community service early in its Open Campus programming: among the first programs were a testing center providing both vocational and academic counseling, a job referral and placement center, a Parent-Education project in cooperation with the Sorosis Club of Orlando, a women’s continuing education center, and a CITE (Center for

The open Campus provided numerous opportunities for non-traditional adult students to pursue lifelong learning.

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in 1973, Valencia began renting a Downtown Center in an old bank building at the corner of orange and Church streets in Central orlando. in 1980, the Chicone family donated the facility and a parking lot to the Valencia foundation.

Independence, Training, and Education) program for the visually challenged. Within its first year, Valencia was offering adult programs designed to meet a wide range of community and personal needs — the purpose of the Open Campus that Gollattscheck intended and the College proudly carried out. With the Open Campus, Valencia’s sense of place was no longer limited to physical campuses; it was everywhere it was needed or wanted. Dean Charles Sample, the initial administrative head of the Open Campus, jokingly described it as the “Anything, Anytime, Anywhere” branch of Valencia.

The Open Campus at Valencia was a turning point in educational delivery services to the Central Florida community. Many of its original programs have come and gone and others have effectively been transformed into current partnerships and programs for which Valencia has received much national acclaim and attention. The Open Campus (also known in later years as Central Campus) as it was originally conceived is a distant memory, and it has evolved as it should have. Thanks to Gollattscheck and Open Campus leaders, Charles Sample, Michael Hooks, Dick Fischer, Paul Kinser, Ray Love, Edmund Gross, Sandra Todd Sarantos, and their staffs, Open Campus contributions to Valencia’s mission, vision, and values have been real and permanent. Today

Valencia still embraces the values of community service and adult learning, including service to the non-traditional student, the working adult, and the first-generation college student. The College still cultivates its business and industry partnerships and is actively involved in distance education. Valencia continues to plan for expansion of credit program offerings closer to all segments of the College service district. All these have their roots in the Open Campus.

builDing The ThirD CamPus: osCeola CounTy

In the 1970s, when Valencia began to offer classes there, Osceola County had become a gateway to Central Florida’s past, present, and future. The north half of Osceola County experienced the burgeoning tourist growth spilling into Central Florida that the space age and Disney created. A plethora of new service businesses and industries arose along the Kissimmee corridor to Walt Disney World. Seemingly overnight, the population of the Kissimmee/St. Cloud region of the county exploded. On its southern end, Osceola County’s sense of place remained planted firmly in old Florida. South Osceola County was and still is cattle country, the northern edge of the State’s cattle industry that stretches down the peninsula to Lake Okeechobee. There, ranches and farms, not

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hotels, matter to the local agricultural economy. In the northern half, hotels, not ranches or farms, matter to the new tourist economy. Like its neighbor Orange County, Osceola County’s sense of place and community in the 1970s was transforming. That transformation dictated how Valencia would establish its own place in the county.

Unlike the original campuses, there was a lengthy process to creating a new campus from what began as a small branch operation. Common to all Florida community colleges when branches were established, the process began with “storefront” classes, followed by designated centers, and then the acquiring and building of a permanent campus. There was no guarantee that a permanent Osceola Campus would follow when the first storefront classes were started, and there equally was no guarantee later that creating the Osceola Center would result in a full campus ever being built. Politics, education, and finance had to be combined and measured to achieve the successful campus outcome all wanted in Osceola County. Each step forward required substantial effort and cooperation from many segments of the Osceola community to overcome pitfalls and roadblocks. For Valencia Community College in Osceola County, that process would take more than a decade to accomplish. That the Osceola Campus exists today is proof of the commitment and dedication of people who worked hard within the College and the community to make it happen. Valencia today is permanently established in Osceola County. It was neither natural nor inevitable that it happened.

Valencia always planned to move into Osceola County. From the beginning, the College’s district included both counties. In bringing the College on line, the Board of Trustees and the Craig administration knew Osceola County was to be home to the third major campus. When and where a third campus would be built was not clear when the Board sited the West Campus, but its Kirkman Road location took into account proximity and convenience for Osceola students who would have to commute from the adjacent county.

In 1974, Valencia began storefront classes in Kissimmee, the county seat. The Open Campus scheduled and managed the first classes. Opening classes in distant district locations was common among Florida community colleges in that

era. It was good educational practice and good economics. With alternating recessions and booms, and an unstable State taxing structure, funding educational growth in Florida had become an annual battle in the Legislature. Over the next decade, Valencia’s growth continued, mirroring the growth in the numbers of students at all levels in Florida’s educational system. It had become impossible to fund adequately the facilities and financial demands growth was placing on Florida schools, community colleges, and universities.

There were reasons for the under-financed and unmet educational needs even beyond the record numbers of students. In 1981, Governor Bob Graham and the State Board of Education adopted a resolution to put Florida’s educational system in the upper quartile of the nation by 1986. Quality issues strained education budgets as much as quantity and expansion. Faculty salaries were scheduled to increase; libraries were upgraded; new courses in science, writing, and math were added to curriculums. Although the State’s senior colleges and universities could control growth costs by limiting enrollments and raising enrollment standards, community colleges could not. Valencia and its sister community colleges struggled to balance higher academic standards and open access to all with a high school diploma or its equivalent. Storefront classes were a viable means to bring services and to offer classes to areas distant from traditional campuses and still control costs. Using mainly part-time instructors, community colleges could open storefront classes as needed in any location.

Valencia’s first step toward a permanent campus in Osceola County was to establish a designated center in conjunction with the School Board. Centers, unlike storefront classes, required State approval. The Osceola Center was approved in 1974 and established on Oak Street in downtown Kissimmee. It remained there for nearly a decade. By 1983, the Osceola Center was offering both credit and non-credit classes and had grown to become the largest of Valencia’s several Open Campus sites. That year, 360 mostly part-time students were enrolled. From initial offerings of only a few credit classes and an equally small number of non-credit classes in its early days, the Center was providing 25 non-credit and 22 credit courses.

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By 1983, students in Osceola County could contemplate achieving associate in arts degrees without travel to the West Campus. Kathy Smith, then a sergeant in the Osceola Sheriff’s Department, was the first county resident to graduate from the Osceola program without travel, having taken classes in the Center since 1977. Sergeant Smith’s academic career illustrates the significance of Valencia’s Osceola operation moving from storefront to designated Center. Storefront credit classes depended on student enrollment and class sizes typically were significantly smaller than identical credit courses on the East and West campuses. But there were always courses not easily available in the storefront mode; especially science labs needed to complete general education requirements. However, with the Center designation, Valencia’s commitment focused on completing degree programs in Osceola County. Offering degree programs in Osceola completed step one on a very long road from Center to its modern day campus.

The second step toward a campus in Osceola County was highly creative and unusual. In July 1983, Gollattscheck and Leon Hobbs, Osceola County Superintendent of Instruction, announced a joint venture: on the 120 acres of land the School Board owned between St. Cloud and Kissimmee, designated to be Osceola County’s third senior high school, Valencia Community College would establish a branch campus facility. On its surface, the joint venture made great sense. Community colleges in Florida were originally controlled by local School Boards. While working relationships between the two levels of instruction throughout Florida varied widely, they had always been close for Valencia and the Orange and Osceola County School Boards.

There were instances of conflict over offerings in vocational and adult education in other districts. Over time, the Florida community college system and the public education system had split over the issue. Of the 28 community college districts, half had acquired designations as area vocational-technical centers. In the other 14 districts, the designations resided with the School Boards. The Orange and Osceola School Boards controlled that designation. While some at Valencia might have preferred to become the adult area vocational-technical center, cooperation and good relations

between the local Boards had to override conflict to make the joint venture an opportunity.

Only by influencing local and statewide politics, however, could the College transform the opportunity into reality. By this time, the Florida Legislature had implemented joint-use legislation, but it had been designed for placing university buildings on community college campuses. In fact, the University of Central Florida had built one of the first joint-use buildings on the Daytona Beach Community College campus. But no one yet in 1983, outside of Florida Keys Community College and Central Florida Community College, had created a School Board/community college joint-use project such as that being planned by Valencia and Osceola District Schools. The two other colleges’ projects had been operating for less than a year when the Valencia joint project was announced.

The Osceola School Board estimated the cost for its 408-student high school at somewhere between $6 and $10 million in 1983. Gollattscheck and Hobbs envisioned a full sharing of the planned high school campus. Classrooms, administration space, and a cafeteria were among the proposed community college financial offsets that Valencia might contribute. Gene Thompson, Chairman of the School Board, said of the first discussions: “It’s serious, but just exploratory.”

Local politics were at work. The School Board in Osceola County scheduled a referendum on the new high school’s funding for September, but the amount of money had not yet been determined. Valencia’s contribution was central to setting the final amount needed in School Board bonds. Chairman Thompson suggested that if a deal could not be struck with the College in time, any monies acquired later than the referendum by Valencia would be used to retire the bonds early. Part of Osceola’s concern was not financial, however. If they were forced to wait for three years for additional tax levies to finance the high school, the two existing high schools would by then be overcrowded and on double sessions. With some political hyperbole, but also with some political visioning, Thompson suggested the possibility that no additional local tax dollars would be needed if the Florida Legislature funded the joint project. That had already happened in Osceola County when the Florida Legislature

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one of the storefront centers used for Valencia classes prior to the building of the osceola Campus.

funded the State’s first earth-sheltered school for Disney – the Reedy Creek Elementary School.

Local politics at Valencia also were at work. Valencia’s Board of Trustees at the same time demonstrated its commitment to the Osceola project by electing Joseph P. Shirah to a second one-year term as its Chairman in July 1983. A graduate of the University of Florida, Shirah was a longtime resident of St. Cloud, in Osceola County, who owned his own nursery and landscaping business. As Valencia Chair, Joe Shirah was in a position to move the project forward, and he did.

No School Board referendum happened in 1983. Gene Thompson had been accurate. With out State commitment, a local referendum measure increasing school taxes would have been difficult to pass and the funding strategy shifted. A decision was made by the School and College Boards to try for a legislative appropriation in the 1984 legislative session. It was a sensible political decision although as uncertain in outcome as a referendum would have been. Curtis Peterson, then President of the Florida Senate, represented Osceola County in the Florida Senate. Because of his position as well as his personality, Peterson was one of the State’s three most powerful politicians, ranked with the Governor and the Speaker of the House. If Peterson’s support could be garnered, a legislative appropriation for the project seemed far more certain than the passage of any local referendum would have been.

Before the new strategy of the Boards could be cemented, a huge change in the history of Valencia Community College occurred. On December 2, 1983, Jim Gollattscheck announced his resignation from Valencia after serving as its President for 14 years. Gollattscheck had been there from the beginning – from Al Craig’s final interview through the development of the West and East campuses, the Open Campus, and the proposal for Osceola. He had seen the initial 500 students grow to more than 40,000 in l984. More importantly, his administrative style had allowed Valencia to mature into excellence without turmoil and chaos. For 14 years, in and of itself an extraordinary tenure for community college presidents, Gollattscheck had served, led, and nurtured Valencia. His “presidential” door had been open to students, faculty, staff, and

community. He was as likely to hold meetings in a staff subordinate’s office as his own, and for years on the campuses he had periodic open meetings, with no pre-set agenda, that anyone could attend.

Gollattscheck had acquired a national reputation and a stake in the national community college movement. The American Association of Community and Junior Colleges (AACJC) offered him the position of Vice-President for Informa-tion Services, a logical choice for an acknowledged champion of open colleges, community-based learning, and distance education technology. AACJC represented the interests of 1,200 community colleges across the nation, acting as their national voice, their congressional lobby force, and their resource for grants and technical assistance services. After two years of service on AACJC’s Board of Directors, it made sense to him that it was time to move on to the national level.

Good college presidents are good politicians. Gollattscheck was no exception. One of the principal assets good politicians possess is a sense of timing. His sense that the timing was right for his departure from Valencia in l984 was based on a number of issues. He recognized that the failure to pull off the referendum in Osceola County in 1983 would mean a delay of several years before the new campus could be funded, even if the Legislature

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were to approve it in that spring session. In the interim, costs no doubt would rise from inflation, unmet needs would grow, and the College and the School Board would continue to scramble for short-term solutions.

There was another issue brewing for Valencia that spurred Gollattscheck’s decision to leave. It was an odd reality that Valencia’s national reputation for excellence had grown greater and more powerful than its reputation at home. Place was not the issue; the traditional campuses and Open Campus college locations were highly visible and served the needs of the Central Florida community. Programs were not the issue thanks, for example, to recognition given for the Center for Continuing Education for Women (CCEW), its work with students with disabilities, and its remedial education programs. Nor was it a matter of academics; Valencia’s students did very well after transferring to the State universities. And, by 1984, a quarter of its faculty held earned doctorates. By every available measure, said Joe Shirah, Gollattscheck was “one of the best community college presidents in the country if not the best.”

But among Central Florida’s businesses and industries, the College had not yet acquired its proper and full sense of place. It was not that Gollattscheck had ignored business and industry, but he had structured relationships with corporate partners in a more traditional fashion. Each of Valencia’s vocational and technical programs in those years connected to business and industry through the development of advisory committees. Members of these committees were present to assist Valencia faculty teaching in those programs by helping them keep current on technical, educational, and employment trends in the workplace. While Valencia had developed some training with Martin Marietta, most of the interaction between College and the business/industry community was through the advisory committee structure. Gollattscheck himself con-fessed that he had not met regularly with Central Florida’s business and industry leaders. The “cocktail circuit” was not his way of doing business.

Raymer Maguire, Jr. was chosen to chair the College’s Presidential Search Committee. Again it would be up to Maguire to articulate and carry out the next phase of excellence to be etched into

the Valencia tradition. The Board wanted a change in direction and it meant to select a new President who would accomplish three unmet goals: 1) market more aggressively to minority students, 2) boost the number of industry training partnerships, 3) take over the School Board’s designation as the area vocational technical center. The latter could have spelled political trouble for the Osceola joint use project if not handled well.

Presidential searches in 1984 were radically different than they had been when first Craig and then Gollattscheck had been hired. In the 1970s, there had been no requirement for search committees to hold open meetings. Presidents of community colleges could be tendered contracts by Boards of community colleges, and if they accepted, they started their work. State approval was not required; Trustees had final authority to hire and fire.

Not so by 1984. Florida in the intervening years had passed into law a “Government in the Sunshine” provision that mandated that all public institutions had to conduct business in the open, meaning no private closed door sessions could dictate public actions. The measure was a part of a new era of public accountability in government practice. Its purpose was noble; an effort to eliminate “cracker” politics, the old boy, back room, male-dominated politics that had shaped and controlled public policy at all levels in Florida for generations.

Raymer Maguire, Jr. was less than enchanted by the impact of the Sunshine Law on his Committee. Valencia received 113 applications for the presidency, but Maguire thought that number would have been nearer to 500 if the Sunshine Law had not existed. At the same time that Gollattscheck announced his departure, the University of Florida was also looking for a President. The Board of Regents lamented the lack of a “national academic superstar” candidate among their possible choices. Members blamed the Sunshine Law. Maguire and the Valencia Board of Trustees were voicing the same lament.

Among the 113 who did apply for the presidency, there were many who fully knew the College and, as importantly, had worked in and understood the politics and processes of the Florida community college system. There were presidents, provosts, and vice-presidents applying from several of the State’s other community colleges. In addition,

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Jim Kellerman, who had been one of Valencia’s original administrators and was in 1984 the Executive Director of the California Association of Community Colleges, also had applied to replace Gollattscheck, his longtime friend at Valencia. There were two internal candidates — David Evans, in 1984 the Executive Vice President, and Richard O’Sullivan, the Vice President for Administration. Evans, in particular, had served in a number of academic positions at Valencia, including East Campus Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs.

By mid-March 1984 the Presidential Search Committee under Maguire’s leadership narrowed the list to four finalists. Two were community college presidents from out of state; another finalist was Jerry Odom, an administrator under Craig and Gollattscheck at Valencia who was in 1984 Provost at St. Petersburg Junior College, and Evans. When Dwight Davis, Jr., President of a Wisconsin college, dropped out because of the financial burdens of a move to Florida, Paul Gianini, Jr., President of Spoon River College in Canton, Illinois, remained as the only candidate in the search from outside Florida.

Though from out-of-state, Gianini was not exactly an outsider. Educated at South Dakota’s Yankton College and having worked previously in

Pennsylvania at Northampton Area Community College, he had years earlier been a doctoral graduate in educational administration in the University of Florida’s College of Education program headed by James Wattenbarger. Wattenbarger’s influence in selecting community college presidents had by 1984 stretched over several decades. The designer, implementer, and promoter of the original American community college, Wattenbarger had remained heavily involved in developing the leadership of the 28 community colleges in Florida. Graduates from his program populated many of Florida’s community college positions. Search committees sought his input and many candidates solicited his blessing when applying for administrative positions. Wattenbarger supported Gianini, his former student, for Valencia’s presidency. On April 11, l984, Paul Gianini was selected to be Valencia’s third President. For Valencia, his hiring was a turning point toward creating a new sense of place in Central Florida – in the workplace that the Board felt had been ignored.

In the meantime, Valencia and Osceola school officials pushed forward on their efforts to acquire State funds in the 1984 legislative session. Joe Shirah continued to play an active role in the process as Chair of the Valencia Board of Trustees, leaving the College’s search for the presidency to Maguire. On March 27, Shirah attended a meeting with school officials that dissolved into a shouting match with Superintendent Hobbs. The issue raising Shirah’s ire was the effort, or more precisely the lack of it, that Hobbs had made in pushing for a legislative appropriation. Members of the School Board also were critical of the effort that Hobbs had made. Osceola School Board member Bruce DeBord asked his superintendent to answer questions that become critically important because the requested appropriation had not been included in Governor Graham’s education budget proposal for the 1984-1985 fiscal year. At issue was a $6 million appropriation, roughly half of the $13 million estimated cost. DeBord, Shirah, and others wanted to know from Hobbs why a greater effort had not been put forward in partnership with Valencia. Hobbs’ leadership had come under attack with many in Osceola County fearing the appropriation would be lost for the upcoming session. This would cost him his job; in the next election Hobbs was replaced as superintendent.

Paul C. gianini, jr. became Valencia’s third President in 1984.

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anne m. mcKinnon was a member of Valencia’s board of Trustees in the 1970s and 1980s, serving terms as Chair and Vice Chair. she was also very active in the service and religious life of her west orange County community.

state representative irlo “bud” bronson (pictured above) and other area legislators helped pave the way for a special legislative appropriation that led to a joint-use facility between osceola schools and Valencia in 1986.

Over the two months following that raucous meeting, Valencia officials, especially Shirah, and Osceola school supporters in the Florida Legisla-ture, repaired the political situation. Orlando’s State Senator Fran Carlton and Kissimmee’s State Representative Irlo “Bud” Bronson joined Shirah to pave the way for a $3 million special appropriation being included in the House budget for the project. Since the appropriation was not in the Governor’s budget, nor the Senate’s budget, politics were still to be played before the project could move forward.

Special appropriations were a time-honored tradition in Florida politics, and special interest legislation or “pork” for local areas became known as “turkeys.” The Osceola project was a “turkey” that Senator Curtis Peterson could bring home to his district. Today, by comparison, few local projects proceed to funding at the State level. But in 1984 Senator Peterson’s request for $3 million survived the budget battle between the Florida House and Senate. A branch campus of Valencia in Osceola County at last could get underway.

The special appropriation was no small victory. It had all come down to finances and political power. It was a testimonial to Senator Peterson’s stature. Similar joint projects in four other community college districts failed to receive funding. More than $248 million of special appropriation re-

quests did not receive funds, and no similar request had ever before been passed on its first try through the Legislature. Prior to the final conference on the budget, Peterson had remained coy about the chances for the project to be funded: “I hope we can find a way,” he said, “but I just don’t know how to do it.” Peterson, one of the most powerful legislators of his era or any era in Florida political history, got the job done.

Funding preceded groundbreaking for the joint-use Gateway High School and Valencia Osceola Campus by nearly two years. A ceremony was held on March 27, 1986 on the campus site near Highway 192/441 in Kissimmee. The Valencia side of the project involved constructing two buildings that totaled 10,700 square feet at a combined cost of $1.4 million. The College architects had designed a testing center, a computer laboratory, faculty offices, and administrative space. Technology added to the College’s capacity to serve Osceola students by providing audio and video taped classes from West Campus and studio programs broadcast from the West Campus that were two-way video and two-way audio using Florida’s new Satellite Network Training program. Valencia college students would fill Gateway High School space at night. In January 1987, following a series of construction delays and problems, the long awaited branch campus opened for students. Joe Shirah and the Board of Trustees met on the new

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campus shortly after it opened and praised the décor, the landscaping, and the buildings’ design.

For Shirah, opening the Campus was but “a small beginning for higher education” in Osceola County. A beginning, he said, that was the “most important move in the history of higher education in Osceola County.” Another ten years would pass before Valencia opened its own permanent campus in 1997, and thereby completed the vision of the College’s original Master Plan. The acquisition of the permanent campus resulted from a lengthy planning process, facilitated by Michael Hooks, Vice President for Planning, and involving private sector community representatives, principally Tommy Tompkins, interested in how the property, which was a spray field, might best serve the community.

There were three main architectural features planned for the Osceola Campus. One was the first master planned learning environment that rendered significant upfront attention to technology. The primary architects, Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock Architects, Inc., designed a utility corridor in the original infrastructure to house fiber optic cabling. Fiber optics allowed the Campus to prepare for and use with minimal disruption all the available and anticipated future technologies of the “Information Age.” Voice, data, television, telephone, and computer signals could be distributed to and linked to all the buildings. The Campus was also linked by microwave and satellite transmission signals to the other campuses and to the major databases around the world. With the corridor, two additional assets accrued: 1) new technologies could be added in phases, and 2) the Campus plan provided for redundancy. Thus, it was hoped that the Campus technology needs would be met for the foreseeable future.

The technology infrastructure of the Osceola Campus was the vital backbone for its educational and administrative processes. The second dominant planned feature on the Osceola site is a central campus green, the center point for college interaction and social connection. Just as important to Valencia as the lake on the West Campus or the quadrangle on the East Campus, the Osceola Campus green provides a beautiful and usable space for large assemblies, small groups, and even individual contemplation and reflection.

The third dominant feature is the 45-degree rotation of the Campus from the city street grid. The Osceola Campus is a modern-day testament to classical-age geometry. The architects designed the buildings along two main axes that intersect at the campus green. The north/south axis is in line with the two main vehicular approaches – Denn John Lane and US-192, the main thoroughfare. The east/west axis runs on the northern boundary of the campus quadrangle and extends into the parking areas and athletic fields. From these, a series of minor axes connect at either 45-degree angles or 90-degree angles. Pathways connect the buildings along these various axes. What has been created is a campus that has a special sense of community, both internally and externally.

This visual and planned sense of community reinforced the history of how the Campus was acquired. Rather than originating with opposition and legal proceedings, the Osceola Campus was a true joint venture of the College, Osceola County, the City of Kissimmee, and the private citizenry. The College paid the city $2.75 million for the property, of which $2 million was given to the Valencia Foundation for that purpose by the Osceola County Commission. Thus, the College could use all its legislative appropriation for building and constructing a new educational site

The osceola Campus green provides a beautiful and usable space for large assemblies, small groups, and individual contemplation and reflection.

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rather than acquiring the land. The City deeded the property to the College in two parcels, one for 75 acres and the other for 25 acres, and retained an additional 18 acres for itself. The City’s intent was to expand the Campus into a true community facil-ity as might be needed in the future accommodating complementary services and programs.

Today, the Osceola Campus defines its own sense of place. Majestically imposing itself on its surroundings, its property, landscaping, and architectural design symbolize the cross currents of Osceola County’s rural heritage and modern tourist economic base. At the same time, the Campus upholds the superb tradition of excellence Valencia campuses have always maintained. Southeast of Disney and the tourist areas, near the historic areas of Kissimmee and St. Cloud, convenient to the airport, and connected to Orlando, Valencia’s Osceola Campus beckons to future neighbors, residential and commercial. Someday, that portion of Osceola County is likely to encounter the kind of growth that drove Valencia to locate on Kirkman Road, on the Econlockhatchee Trail, and even in downtown Orlando. Like the East Campus, once derisively called “Gollattscheck’s Folly” because it was ahead of its time, but now is home to Valencia’s largest student enrollment, the Osceola Campus was not designed and built just for the moment. Developed under the initial leadership of Paul Kinser and Laurel Williamson followed by Provost Silvia Zapico, it will meet Osceola County’s community college needs for generations to come. The Valencia vision of meeting the future while preserving the present is what excellence means to Osceola.

winTer ParK CamPus: exPanDing aCCess To all

In 1994, the Florida Legislature amended the community college mission, adding economic development as one of the principal missions of the system. The Legislature specified further that economic development should be developed in each community college district through the provision of special programs and partnerships. This, too, had been a mandate handed to President Gianini by the Board and was a spin-down of change in policy as well as emphasis from the

Federal level, which for nearly 30 years, had been trying to ameliorate urban poverty in America.

Northeast Orange County contained areas that the Federal incentives of the 1970s and 1980s were designed to help. Among them were Eatonville (predominantly African-American in composition and located next to Winter Park, the upscale home of Rollins College) as well the Westside area, a pocket of poverty in west Winter Park abutting the Eatonville community. Valencia had not yet established its own permanent place in the northeastern area of Orange County; its focus since the beginning of the College had been to the south, east, and west. For 10 years the College had operated a Winter Park Center in temporary quarters on Orlando Avenue near Lee Road and Interstate 4. Both credit and non-credit courses were offered, but the difference between the programming that could be made available at local centers as opposed to full campuses was apparent.

The combination of the Board’s mandate to the incoming President, the new Federal economic development initiatives, and the State’s revised and amended master plan all beckoned Paul Gianini to “expand the vision” of Valencia in northeastern Orange County, to build on the success of the local center and establish a campus to better serve the Winter Park and Eatonville communities. The College began planning for a campus in the northeast that could among its purposes, attract, and, therefore, assist minority students and community projects in distressed environments. Part of the pressure Gianini and Valencia experienced that caused an interest in Winter Park as an expansion site arose from a 1988 Federal report issued by then Education Secretary William Bennett. The Secretary criticized Florida and five other southern states for failing to do more for minorities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While Valencia was not specifically mentioned, five other Florida community colleges were, and everyone in Florida’s education system took note of the sweeping critical issues: financial aid programs that needed to attract minority students, promotion of minority employees, recruitment of minority students in health programs, and a still unbalanced funding for repairs at Florida A&M University, the state’s oldest historically African-American institution.

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Also furthering the College’s interest in Winter Park in 1996 was a whole new system-wide emphasis on remedial education. Florida community colleges and universities had continuously been tightening academic standards and improving quality in keeping with former Governor Bob Graham’s “upper quartile” goal. New entrance standards and placement testing, however, brought to light a new and significant flaw: some 60% of Florida’s high school graduates who enrolled in community colleges required at least one remedial course in math, English or reading.

The problem was identified as a lack of college preparation among the State’s graduating seniors. State Education Commissioner Frank Brogan pointed out: “there is no real incentive to the average high school student to take a rigorous course load when inadequate preparation can be remedied at a community college.” The costs were high: Gianini estimated that Valencia was spending between $1 and $1.5 million each year for remedial courses and, “sure, we’d rather put it elsewhere.” Valencia estimated that 77% of its enrollment of new high school graduates required at least one remedial course. Making the situation much worse for Valencia and other community colleges, Florida’s universities had been excused from offering remedial courses by the Florida Legislature. That political decision, too, factored into Valencia’s expansion plans in Winter Park.

In October 1996, Valencia’s Board of Trustees purchased property on Morse Boulevard in Winter Park. The parcel was 2.5 acres; a 26,500 square foot building occupied it, and the price was $3.8

million. Valencia’s long-range plan was to add an additional 15,000 square feet in a new building to house corporate training. Gianini also decided to centralize there the College’s non-credit professional education program management. Valencia had by this time more than 12,000 students enrolled in such classes, usually held in business locations throughout Central Florida. The Winter Park Campus was designated to coordinate the non-credit course curricula and instructors, which were grouped under the umbrella of the Valencia Institute, based at the Campus.

Part of the College’s intentions in Winter Park was to contribute to the economic redevelopment of northeastern Orange County, including areas that fell under the State of Florida’s empowerment zone programming. It was common in such areas for first redevelopment efforts to be in the public sector, government or education. To some, that was a mixed blessing. Public agency properties were not on tax rolls and revenues decreased. On the other hand, before many private enterprises would invest in an empowerment zone location, the prior presence of a college, government office, or a school signified stability and less risky investment. When they did invest, property values and tax revenues increased.

When Valencia purchased the property, the land was zoned for office use. Bill Mullowney, Valencia’s General Counsel, informed Winter Park officials that the College intended to apply for a zoning change and a future land-use change, allowing it to move in. There was some resistance, especially from westside Winter Park residents who feared increases

The winter Park Campus opened on morse boulevard in 1998.

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in traffic congestion. “It’s a big project. I don’t think it will be good for the neighborhood,” said Eileen Matthias, President of the Westside Homeowners and Homesteaders Association.

However, over the next two years, the community became a welcoming place for the Campus, thanks in large measure to the efforts of Ruth Prather, whom Gianini appointed to administer the Winter Park Campus and its development. She understood from the beginning how to connect Valencia to the community. She regularly attended the meetings of neighborhood associations and the Community Redevelopment Agency Advisory Board. Prather met continuously with the westside Winter Park ministers, traditional agents of community change, to generate community support for the new Campus and its programs. She was also able to provide scholarships to deserving neighborhood residents as a part of her community networking. Valencia successfully opened its Morse Avenue Campus in January 1999, having received unanimous approval from the Winter Park City Commission.

Prather was able to deliver to the Winter Park Campus not merely community support but also an academic partnership with Rollins College that directly benefited Valencia’s Winter Park students. Honors students on the Campus were granted permission to use the Rollins College library, and Rollins counseled with Valencia transfer-ready students, hoping to make the Campus a successful feeder to its own programs.

Prather’s role as Chief Executive Officer of the campus included working with architects to design the building’s interior upgrades and renovations, including classrooms, labs, and support services. Prather knew Winter Park was lucky to have Valencia, “It’s a mark of a good community when you have different kinds of higher educational institutions working to make a community better. We really have that here.”

Less than a month after moving in, there was no further opposition voiced to Valencia in Winter Park. In fact, the groundswell of early opposition melted into a groundswell of support. The Winter Park Campus continues delivering the promise made to its community years ago.

The Campus and Valencia Institute grew to the extent that one building could no longer accom-

modate them if there was to be continued expansion of credit course offerings at Winter Park and of the non-credit program. The College added a second building to the Winter Park Campus site and moved the non-credit programs into a leased center on Sand Lake Road in South Orlando, creating Valencia Enterprises, an umbrella encompassing a number of business units including the former Valencia Institute, Center for Global Languages, Inside Learning, and Scenarios Online.

With the growth of its credit enrollment, the provision of a comprehensive support structure for students via the campus Student Affairs programs and the expansion of its facilities, the Winter Park Campus has become firmly fixed as another illustra-tion of success in Valencia’s tradition of excellence.

PlaCes: an ePilogue

Place matters. The goal for Valencia has always been connecting with and embedding in its community. No matter which campus or location, Valencia has earned its place in Central Florida as a community leader and the Trustees have worked to extend educational opportunity throughout the two-county College district. Campus designs, architecture, equipment, and locations all attest that the College has kept faith with its original vision of excellence. Of great import is a lesser known, perhaps less easily observed idea: it is that Valencia in each location did not choose to impose a single style of its own on the community. No campus is a “cookie cutter” version of another. Rather each campus has evolved from the culture, style, and tradition of its more immediate surroundings – the refuge concept of the West Campus on Kirkman Road, the classic rotunda design on the East Campus, the Spanish style of Osceola’s red tile roof and sandstone architecture that reflects a sensitivity to the county’s growing Hispanic population, and Winter Park Campus’ close and heartfelt connections to the town for which it is named. These are the reminders that, as close to their respective communities as each campus has become, Valencia’s campuses all differ from each other, not so much in what they do or the quality of how they do it, but in their individuality and sense of place. No doubt the new Southwest Campus, the land for which was purchased in late 2006, and others to follow will be planned to meet the unique needs of the surrounding community as well.

part two p r o g r a m s a n d pa r t n e r s h i p s

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inTroDuCTion: ValenCia Comes of age

Just as with the story of its places, Valencia’s history of its programs and partnerships is more than a recounting of numbers of students or faculty or dollars budgeted. It continues the story of Valencia’s people — its faculty, staff, students, and community supporters - working and contributing in common to energize classrooms, to promote a robust campus student life, to make connections across disciplines, to bring diverse perspectives and frames of reference to the College environs, and to nurture an ever growing awareness of how Valencia Community College and the Central Florida communities it serves came to be so intertwined, so connected, so inseparable.

Cultural change in institutions comes slowly, if at all. For Valencia, the deeper meaning behind that statement is that its tradition of striving for excellence had been established as cultural practice from day one. No one at Valencia – faculty, administrators, or staff — was going to allow pressures to alter that. And while the external pressures of the 1980s and 1990s indeed forced changes, especially in how the College related to its community, internally the faculty and staff continued doing what they had always done — teaching, supporting, advising, counseling, and caring for students. No amount of external change has altered that established cultural tradition.

For Valencia Community College, the 1980s through the early 1990s was the era when the College matured and grew from adolescence to adulthood in some very important respects. New educational issues surfaced to cause some institutional changes, while Valencia at the same time continued building upon its already established traditions. One challenge was not new: the Central Florida population continued to grow at a rapid pace, and Valencia continued growing with it. More people in Central Florida meant more classes, more faculty, more facilities, and more services. And, as it had been doing since its first days, Valencia remained faithfully committed to meeting community needs.

Growth was a constant as was the need for funds to support it. The Florida Legislature in the 1980s and early 1990s found that providing the revenues

to absorb growth was no less difficult than it always had been. Any Florida politician could advocate spending a greater proportion of tax dollars on education; no one could campaign successfully on increasing tax revenues to pay for it. Eventually, the Florida Legislature would create a state lottery to help education, but it proved to be insufficient to close the gap between costs and revenues for Florida’s educational systems. Community colleges, public schools, and the state universities all continued to lag behind the growing demands for educational services.

New and revolutionary changes occurred in American life that Valencia had to confront. It is hard in our modern era to conceive or remember when computers in everyday life did not exist. Yet, the 1980s marked the advent of the computer revolution. It was a massive change — from a distant technology in the hands of a few who comprehended esoteric computer languages that harnessed a computer’s capacity — to a technology so quickly and deeply integrated into everyone’s life. At the same time, America’s post World War II economy simply had not kept pace with the global emphasis on quality. America’s challenge in the 1980s was to compete with Japan. Technology in the workplace and global commerce had come of age.

Creating a new technical work force and a business climate that could produce quality products and services in an international marketplace domin-ated management and corporate discussions. The answer lay for most industries and businesses in “gearing up” their work forces to acquire and use new and highly technical skills that, in turn, caused the need for corporations to form new and vital partnerships with education. On the local level, this was an even greater challenge to Valencia.

More than for any other community college in Florida, with the possible exception of Brevard Community College, located on the Space Coast, Valencia was expected to produce highly technical training for the space and defense industries. NASA had undertaken a major shift in mission and direction. The United States had begun to design its next generation of space travel—the shuttle. Dormant for a decade following the last Apollo moon mission, NASA in the 1980s shifted from moon exploration to manned orbital flights and manned landings. And as had been true in

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the 1960s, the space industry and its affiliated businesses and industry partners were crucial to Central Florida’s economic well-being. New technical job skills were needed, and Valencia was the natural location for acquiring them.

Competition in the world’s markets also produced an awareness of how little Americans understood global cultures or were prepared to engage in global commerce. Business needed to acquire an international education. Foreign languages, understanding foreign customs and cultures, and learning how to do business with other nations were immediate pressing issues. Few other locations in North America experienced the depth and breadth of internationalism as Central Florida. A decade of Disney not only had wrought growth and massive physical changes to the region, but it also brought international tourism. Orlando had become a world tourist center, filled with a cacophony of sounds, sights, foods, and peoples from everywhere. Where historic Florida once looked only to Latin America or Europe as its most important connectors to the world, by the 1980s, visitors passing through Disney’s gates spoke many languages other than Spanish or English. Central Florida’s tourist business, too, had joined the global economy.

The State of Florida in this same period also was expanding its horizons beyond the western hemisphere. Governor Bob Graham and the Florida Legislature began focusing attention on the Pacific Rim countries as potential trade partners and commercial markets for Florida. Trade missions, educational and cultural exchanges, and investment ventures soon were spreading throughout Florida’s major commercial, technical, and educational sectors.

Today a modern comprehensive community college, Valencia in 2006 served more than 54,000 students. Almost all are enrolled in degree or certificate programs. In the final analysis, enrollments reveal very little about the many programs Valencia has offered since its founding in 1967. What matters more is to understand how those programs affected students, how they met community needs, and how they meshed into the Institution’s mission. The challenge is grouping them in some insightful and reasonable manner.

Program divisions have existed for many centuries in higher education, long before there were community colleges. In the early years of community colleges, programming, including Valencia’s, placed a reliance on four fairly stable and unchanging concepts. First, Associate in Arts programs and degrees were built within a framework of a general education, and were intended to form the first two years of a four-year baccalaureate program. The Associate in Arts transfer degree program is Valencia’s largest, with 80% of degree-seeking students. The program is so strong that the majority of juniors and seniors at the University of Central Florida began their college careers at Valencia or another community college.

Second, community colleges created terminal two-year degree programs to meet local economic conditions. These are the Associate in Science degree and certificate programs that provide a large portion of the community’s workforce. Valencia’s programs that provide skilled professionals in law enforcement, health, hotel or restaurant management, business, and information technology have enabled Central Florida communities to develop local services and economies. Whether the employer required a baccalaureate or higher degree, or a two-year degree aimed at a specific job, the community college assumed a critical role in Florida’s educational pipeline.

The walt Disney world Center for hospitality and Culinary arts opened in january 2001. in 2000, walt Disney world donated $1 million for the College’s hospitality and Tourism institute.

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As a comprehensive community college, Valencia also developed extensive off-campus course offerings, credit and non-credit, meeting specific community needs and extending opportunities to workers, many who already hold degrees, to remain current in their fields and professions. Valencia’s Open Campus was the early delivery mechanism for these off-campus programs.

Valencia has offered hundreds of programs and participated in hundreds of partnerships, and those described in this history are at best a mere representative sample of the programs offered since 1967.

The eVoluTion of aCaDemiC Programs anD ParTnershiPs

degrees conferred

Since the College’s inception, the Associate in Arts (A.A.) degree has been an integral part of Valencia’s academic program and it is this degree to which the majority of students aspire. The A.A. degree is designed primarily for the student who plans to transfer to a Florida public university as a junior to complete a bachelor’s degree. Through the A.A. degree, Valencia offers lower division preparation for almost all of the majors in the Florida University System. The A.A. degree provides the courses of study equivalent to those offered in the freshman and sophomore years (lower division) of Florida’s state universities; a student who earns an A.A. degree from Valencia meets the lower division general education requirements of a Florida state university.

The A.A. degree requirements consist of general education requirements and electives in preparation for a specific bachelor’s degree. Many majors at the universities require that specific courses be taken as part of the A.A. degree, both within general education and within the electives. Florida’s state universities have identified common course prerequisites to be taken during the lower division by all students who plan to enter a particular major with the university system. These requirements may be met by completing an A.A. Pre-Major at Valencia or by careful selection of courses for the Associate in Arts degree: General Studies. The Associate in Arts degree: General Studies is

available for students who want a college degree and have not selected a Pre-Major for transfer to a state university in Florida and for students who plan to transfer to a private and/or out-of-state institution.

Historically, and to the benefit of students, Florida’s universities and community colleges have adopted a generally collegial approach to articulating acceptance of each other’s undergraduate programs and student transfers. Over the past several decades, as Florida educators have refined and worked to articulate the general education program, two other degree programs have emerged as increasing important components of student learning at Valencia – the Associate in Applied Sciences (A.A.S.) degree and the Associate in Science (A.S.) degree. Students who undertake a program of study to earn the A.A.S. degree and the A.S. degree are not necessarily preparing themselves for transfer to a state university. These degree programs are articulated with the local community to prepare graduates for rewarding and challenging work in occupations in demand. Certain A.S. degree programs are designed for students who seek immediate employment in the specified field and who decide to continue to a Florida public university as a junior to complete a four-year bachelor’s degree in that field.

The facilities staff, initially led by robert gilbert, and later by james reinschmidt and helene loiselle, has worked closely with end-users over the years from the development of educational specifications to the selection of furniture to ensure not only well-built, but functionally sound buildings.

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joan Tiller (left) guided the College in the development of a new process of curriculum development (DaCum) and was recognized as a statewide leader in matters related to workforce development; also pictured is bob austin.

Decades of environmental change, driven by both political and educational influences, helped pace the evolution of Valencia’s A.A. (general education) program. Those influences were certainly evident in the dramatic changes in the A.A.S. and A.S. curriculums, as well. While the community-based advisory committees always encouraged these programs to be at the leading edge, change accelerated in the early 1980s.

Growth in the global economy and the need for employees to have new technical skills led to the creation of viable economic development partnerships between Valencia and the Central Florida community. Economic development was an expressed mission and goal handed to Paul Gianini by Valencia’s Board of Trustees when he assumed the presidency in 1984. To accomplish the Trustees’ goal, Valencia’s A.S. degree programs underwent changes internally and at the same time, new programs and partnerships were created. What resulted were programs to support the “era of the technician.”

A.S. degree programs in Florida’s community colleges, especially Valencia, assumed new importance as community colleges responded to an array of changing technical demands and needs. New A.S. technical degree programs in health, science, engineering, construction, and manufacturing were approved and implemented. Additionally, some A.S. degrees were articulated on an individual basis with Florida’s universities.

Working more closely than ever with industry part-ners also changed A.S. degree teaching. In addition to learning course content — the basic outcome of

American education from the beginning — teaching “skills” became equally essential. Under the leadership of Joan Tiller, Assistant Vice President for Workforce Development, Valencia adopted a new process of curriculum development, DACUM (Developing a Curriculum), that invited business and industry to collaborate with the College to change curricula, create advisory committees, and strengthen student learning in technical programs. The DACUM process emphasized skill development in Valencia’s A.S. and certificate programs and reconnected industry and the classroom in a new way.

technical and engineering related programs

An example of the collaborative work with business and industry is the Hybrid Micro-technology Program. This A.S. degree program was begun in 1983 as one of only three in the United States, under the leadership of Project Director Harvey Salz and Department Chair Robert Carmody. The program was the result of downsizing the microchip and the fact that Valencia was an important partner with the aerospace industry in Central Florida. The program was, in that day and time, an example of Valencia’s goal that its A.S. degrees be on technology’s “leading edge.” Older computers were manufactured with discreet or individual component parts. The new microcomputers, smaller, faster, and far more convenient to use, were made up of integrated parts. Hybrid microelectronics combined the concepts of both. The technology was needed by the space industry because of its need for electronic circuitry that was not only more functional but also of less weight and improved reliability.

Right behind this program the Technical and Engineering Related Programs Department was planning to introduce Robotics and Laser curriculums. Besides having no prepared teachers, funding these newer technology curriculums was very expensive: unlike traditional liberal arts courses, students could not be effectively prepared only in lecture-based classrooms. Hands-on experiences working with the new technologies were both a practical necessity and an academic requirement. To answer the first challenge, Valencia asked for help from the very industries who were best served by having available trained graduates. In the case of hybrid microelectronics, both Repco, Inc. and Martin Marietta offered its own engineers to serve as instructors. They also donated equipment.

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Equipment needs in the era of the technician were always greater than community colleges could afford and the Florida Legislature was as unable to alleviate this pressing aspect of the State’s growth and limited revenues as it was others. In the late 1980s, Florida established a statewide High Tech Council, but it was aimed more at supporting Florida’s universities than its community colleges. Grants and equipment donations took over as the primary funding vehicle, and industry and business partners were a critical resource. Valencia received a $250,000 State grant to move forward in advanced computer training. Both the East and West campuses built advanced computer work resource centers. Because it was so difficult to find needed funding for equipment, most community colleges were unable to remain on the “leading edge.” Valencia was fortunate in being able to establish major partnerships as it did with Martin Marietta. The College seized on the opportunities presented in the local community that were not readily available to colleges located in less populous and less technical areas of the State. Major partnerships — with Martin, Disney, and other suppliers and users of technology in Central Florida — became the chief advantage that economic development programming at Valencia would have. And, without doubt, the resulting outcome was that Valencia was one of the strongest colleges in the Nation in serving economic development.

technology business incubation

A technology and business development program tried by many community colleges, but at which few succeeded nearly as well as Valencia, was Technology Business Incubation. In 1994, under the leadership of Department Chair Hugh Rogers and staff member Charles Parrish, the College joined with a number of companies in a not-for-profit organization, The Training and Simulation Technology Consortium, started with a grant from the United States Technology Reinvestment Program. As its name implied, it was essentially an incubator program for business development in Central Florida that was highly successful.

It was this kind of activity that caused then United States Senator Bob Graham to point out following a visit to Valencia, “When history is written, the creation of Florida’s community college system will be heralded as one of the smartest investments Floridians made in the 20th century.”

information technology (it)

As Central Florida continued to experience rapid growth in high technology companies in the 21st century, the need and demands for a qualified high tech workforce caused Valencia, Seminole, and Lake-Sumter community colleges to validate Senator Graham’s observation in the form of the

by summer 2004, the ambitious information Technology initiative partnership had reached its goal of training 15,000 iT workers.

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Information Technology Initiative, a partnership of near staggering proportions. In 2000, it was estimated that Central Florida needed 15,000 additional new IT workers in the next five years.

To train that many people required a large infusion of community resources, grants, and donations as well as the reallocation of existing resources. The Initiative received nearly $8 million from three National Science Foundation grants alone. By 2003 the Initiative had grown to encompass 27 regional A.S. degree programs, 24 of which were housed at Valencia. Nineteen of Valencia’s IT programs were new. Two hundred forty-five adjuncts, 62 full-time faculty and 11,000 students were a part of the regional Initiative. Valencia’s share alone included 34 full-time faculty, 145 part-time faculty, and 6,534 students.

What was impressive beyond the dollars and the numbers of students being trained was the depth and quality of the partnership. Deans Gaby Hawat, Joe Lynn Look, and Dale Husbands represented Valencia in this cooperative regional effort that produced a standard IT curriculum that ensured quality and content. Second, unlike the more traditional degree programs and their advisory committees, industry input into the IT curriculum was sustained and significant. Finally, all the partners committed to success that meant recruiting and employing graduates. In turn, each of the community colleges infused the IT curriculum with large doses of employability skills as well as technical competence. Three years after its inception, Valencia alone was credited with nearly 1,500 full-program completers. The Information Technology Initiative ranks among

Valencia’s best examples of meeting the community’s needs. By Summer 2004, the partnership had reached its goal of training 15,000 IT workers.

criminal justice institute

Valencia’s Criminal Justice Institute is another illustration of the value of community economic development programs and partnerships. In the mid-1990s local leaders in the law enforcement community requested that the program be moved to Valencia from Mid-Florida Technical Institute, and by 1996, Stanley Stone, the Provost of Valencia’s East Campus, had worked with law enforcement and the public schools to complete the move. Via a partnership with all Central Florida criminal justice agencies, the Institute, under the leadership of C. David Smith, conducts a comprehensive program providing basic academy certification in law enforcement, auxiliary law enforcement, and corrections. Additionally advanced and specialized training courses are provided as needed for officers to develop or enhance special skills. Since 2002, it also has housed the entire operations and the facility for the K-9 Corps of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

In 2004, Valencia opened a permanent facility to house the Criminal Justice Institute, on Valencia College Lane, near the East Campus. The Institute has an instructional budget well above $1 million. It also has grown to meet the demands for law enforcement to learn how to respond to and prevent international terrorism. Bomb detection, incident command systems, and weapons of mass destruction are now also a part of the ongoing activity. And, with pass rates above the State average, Valencia’s Criminal Justice Institute has been ranked among the State’s top training programs for many years.

culinary arts

The Culinary Management Program is another illustration of Valencia’s emphasis on partnering with its community. It is the only Associate in Science degree-granting program in culinary arts in Central Florida, yet Valencia’s curriculum moves beyond food preparation (in which the students learn the basics of food elements for classical, international, and American cuisines) to include sanitation, nutritional analysis, and

local law enforcement and College officials gathered in 2006 for the dedication of the Valencia Criminal justice institute (Cji) facility on Valencia College lane.

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in 2000 Valencia partnered with major healthcare providers in Central florida to address the problem of nursing shortages.

cost control methodologies. Professor Pierre Pilloud directs the Executive Chef Program for the Institute, in which the best of Central Florida’s chefs provide instruction, allowing students to work in some of the best restaurants, attractions, and hotels in the world.

In keeping with Valencia’s tradition of excellence, the College’s programs in Culinary Arts and Hospitality are connected integrally with Central Florida industries and businesses. Walt Disney World contributed more than $1 million to the Institute, and in January 2002, the Walt Disney World Center for Hospitality and Culinary Arts opened on the West Campus. The Center is a complete facility with demonstration kitchen, state-of-the-art production kitchen, dual purpose classrooms/banquet rooms, and a high-tech, point-of-sale computer system. The partnership works well for both Central Florida and the College. The Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association provides scholarships and the Florida Restaurant Association has provided an endowed chair.

healthcare

Few issues in any economy outrank healthcare in the collective minds of a community. For many years, there has been on both the national and the local levels a severe shortage of nurses.

In 2000, under the leadership of Dean Ruth Webb, Valencia stepped up to address the problem of nursing shortages by partnering with the major healthcare providers in Central Florida, creating the Healthy Partners Initiative. Valencia, Seminole, and Lake-Sumter community colleges joined with Orlando Regional Healthcare, Florida Hospital, Health Central in Ocoee, Osceola Regional Hospital in Kissimmee, and Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford to direct expanded resources toward increasing enrollment in the nursing programs. The joint effort was named “Partners for a Healthy Community.”

The National League of Nursing, the accrediting body for nursing programs, requires that all nursing students acquire clinical experience on a regular basis, and that each subject matter be covered in a clinical as well as classroom instruction. Enrollments

often were and are restrained by shortages in clinical spaces and supervisors. Enrollments have also been constrained by budgets. Nursing programs are expensive offerings because of the need to provide equipment, supplies, laboratories, and specially trained personnel. Legislative funding, on the other hand, followed Florida’s usual pattern of lagging behind demand and needs.

Due to the Healthy Partners Initiative, Valencia was able to hire additional Nursing faculty and admit new students in greater numbers. Greater flexibility in curricula scheduling also positively impacted the effort to reduce the shortage. Instead of offering only the traditional weekday schedule, Valencia added a night and weekend schedule, thus providing more student learning opportunities. Crossovers from related curricula were implemented in the College’s New Transition Program. Paramedics and licensed allied health professionals with bachelor’s degrees in other disciplines could enter Valencia’s time-shortened Nursing Program. Crossover graduates in Valencia’s Nursing Program score at a consistently high level on national qualifying exams and are employed by the Central Florida healthcare system even before they graduate.

None of this curricular and program expansion has come inexpensively. The four hospital partners have provided funding support for existing and

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future faculty, and donations have helped reduce substantially the cost of laboratories on a per bed unit basis, especially on the Osceola Campus. Nursing has received a number of critical grants that have helped to ramp up enrollments, including grants for faculty development, equipment, scholarships, and technology.

holocaust center and studies

In June 1980, Valencia and the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando agreed to sponsor a community-wide conference on the Holocaust and relevant human rights issues. The focus was on the social, historical, moral, ethical, and economic implications of the Holocaust in modern times. The conference was held and a series of community-supported activities designed to raise awareness of issues related to the Holocaust was initiated in 1981. More than 12,000 persons were reached directly during the pre-conference activities, and an additional 600 attended the two-day conference. Through broadcast and print media, approximately 500,000 persons received educational material related to the Holocaust and its meaning for modern society.

In 1986, as an outgrowth of earlier efforts, the Holocaust Center facility was constructed, a professional museum exhibit was installed, and a library with considerable documentary and archival collections was developed. Holocaust scholars and survivors throughout the world recognize Central Florida’s Holocaust Center

for its array of effective educational and cultural programs. Valencia has provided ongoing institutional support in several forms. For example, professors such as Marlene Spencer and Paula Licata have developed courses to facilitate student learning on the Holocaust and related issues.

staff and program development (spd)

None of these initiatives would have succeeded so well without a substantial faculty and staff development program at Valencia, a program that has proved to be crucial for coping with change. Upgrading skills, furthering education, experimenting with new ideas in teaching and learning, supporting new programs, and sustaining professional relationships cost money that Valencia had to use in order to sustain rapid growth and its learning initiatives. The Legislature made aid available for Florida community colleges in the form of Staff and Program Development (SPD) funding. The Legislature established a rule that allowed community colleges to hold two percent of the previous year’s operating funds for professional development use. No other state possessed a similar commitment to staff and program development in the 1970s and 1980s. Nor in fact did all Florida community colleges allocate the maximum allowed. Some presidents could not afford to withhold monies from critical instructional budgets, and others simply chose

a delegation of educators and business leaders from Costa rica hear a presentation on Valencia from fred hild, west Campus assistant Provost.

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not to. Valencia, however, did, and greatly expanded the program under the leadership of Donna Nickel. For Valencia, SPD use was and is an important resource in initiating and expanding learning initiatives.

international / intercultural education

Valencia was an early educational leader in addressing the issue of globalization. Julia Ribley served as the College’s first Program Coordinator for International/Intercultural Education and led institutional efforts beginning in the late 1970s to respond to local needs generated as Central Florida increasingly became a hub for international business, industry, and entertainment. A major effort undertaken in this area was the Florida-Costa Rica Institute (FLORICA). FLORICA was one of 11 bi-national linkage institute between the State of Florida and foreign countries. Created to forge stronger educational, economic, and cultural ties through exchange, technical assistance, and cooperative research, FLORICA – like other link-age institutes — was run in collaboration with a state university partner. In this case, Valencia partnered with Florida State University in 1986 to collaborate with educational leaders in Costa Rica.

In 2006, Valencia continued its commitment to international/intercultural education in a number of areas. The College offered multiple levels of instruction in French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish, as well as English for Academic Purposes for those whose first language is not English. International students and a diverse local population enriched each campus culture and enhanced learning opportunities with different perspectives and experiences. Student and faculty international exchange opportunities were encouraged. The campuses also regularly hosted speakers and sponsored other events that promoted intercultural understanding and communication skills.

leadership valencia

One very clear example of the College’s accountability in using SPD funds is Leadership Valencia, initiated in 1997 as a College-wide taskforce for professional development under the auspices of the Learning-Centered Initiative. Mary Ann Kinser and the College and Community Relations staff facilitated the design, promotion, and presentation of the first Leadership Valencia programs. It has grown as a “by-us, for-us”

program that creates full-time and adjunct faculty and staff opportunities to develop their professional skills, and in 2006, under the leadership of Fiona Baxter, has expanded to incorporate employee orientation, supervisory training, and leadership training, with a full-time director.

a leadership Valencia informational Poster, 2007.

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The College in The CommuniTy; The CommuniTy in The College

Whether through sponsorship of summer baseball camps for kids, golf tournaments, short courses, evening classes, courses and services to adults, or through faculty and staff volunteering in community projects or serving on community non-profit boards, Valencia’s outreach to the community has been vitally important to Central Florida. Some might say that outreach has been as much a part of the Valencia tradition as raising money from the community was to the College. Outreach has always been one of the visible College ties to community that place, programs, people, and partnerships ultimately represent. One cannot even begin to grasp the number of courses, projects, and programs that Valencia has offered to the community over its lifetime. The following programs are representative, and exemplify the commitments to excellence and service that has marked these community outreach programs.

college night

Since 1971, the College has invited members of the community to come to College Night, where they can talk with representatives from more than 100 colleges and universities from around the country. Catalogs, applications, program brochures, financial aid forms, and counseling are made available.

During the 1980s and 1990s College Night grew rapidly under the leadership of the Director of Admissions and Registrar Charles Drosin. If Valencia were only interested in boosting its enrollments, universities like Yale, MIT, Princeton, and Harvard would never have been invited. But because from day one the College understood its larger mission to participate in furthering the community’s welfare, College Night saved many Central Florida parents time and money in not having to pay for more costly visits to multiple institutions. Each year, on Valencia’s College Night, thousands of Central Florida parents and prospective college students come to Valencia, grateful for the opportunity.

valencia community college foundation

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing on into the early 1990s, Valencia President Paul Gianini and his presidential counterparts in Florida’s community colleges were coping with the

developing impact of a national recession at a time when College growth challenges were considerable (ironically due, in part, to enrollment demand created by the economic recession).

It was inevitable that funding problems would plague the College. Since the community college system began, public funding had never been adequate to match growth in enrollments. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, inflation masked the lack of real growth dollars. Despite yearly increases that seemed substantial, operating strains on budgets grew. Making matters worse, during downward spirals in the economy, student enrollments went up even faster than the norm with unemployed and laid off workers returning for training or retraining. Financial aid was a significant booster of enrollments in slower economic times. But funding and enrollments have never proceeded

since 1971, College night posters have helped encourage thousands of students and parents each year to check out colleges from throughout the country while visiting the Valencia east Campus or west Campus.

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to grow at the same rate for Florida’s community colleges. Gianini feared that enrollment and revenue caps were coming to community colleges unless other measures were introduced. Open access, the birthright of community colleges, would be threatened.

Community colleges were forced to look outward for financial support and new private revenue streams. Grants and private giving were obvious mechanisms to alleviate some of the funding pressure, but they could not, for a variety of reasons, buttress all the unmet educational demands on community colleges. Private giving had become common in American education to not only support private institutions but also supplement those in the public sector. Community colleges established foundations to tap into private philanthropy. Valencia’s Foundation was founded in 1974 and today is the largest community college foundation in the United States.

Originally, Florida’s community college foundations were organized to mimic university philanthropy. Traditional gifting patterns and programs were initiated. Unrestricted giving (in which a donor left to the College’s discretion how a donation may have been used), scholarships for deserving students, support for a particular academic or vocational/technical program (usually aimed at equipment), and special fundraising events were the most common. Occasionally, community colleges were successful in encouraging planned giving. The early Florida community college foundations typically also created alumni associations as a part of their role in assisting their institutions.

In most institutions, these efforts did not bridge the gap in education funding. The shortfall between runaway growth in educational needs and tax-generated resources remained.

In 1984, the Florida Legislature established the Florida Academic Improvement Trust Fund to assist fundraising efforts by community colleges. The Trust Fund opened an entirely new era for community college fundraising, and none took greater advantage of it than Valencia. Through its Trust Fund, Florida provided state matching dollars for privately raised dollars; for each $6 a community college foundation raised, the Trust Fund provided $4 in match. Trust Fund matching dollars could be spent for instructional equipment, learning resource center materials,

audio-visual materials, and professional development for faculty to meet new certification requirements.

In 1989 the Valencia Community College Foundation implemented a program of endowed chairs to supplement and support teaching excellence, made possible due to the matching opportunities provided by the State.

endowed chairs program

The Endowed Chairs Program highlighted teaching excellence in the Valencia tradition focusing on faculty and their teaching and learning-centered activities. The Program’s mission is clear-cut: to recognize and promote teaching and learning-centered excellence at Valencia, to spotlight outstanding members of Valencia’s faculty, and provide the College with financial resources needed to support teaching and learning excellence.

Valencia’s Endowed Chairs Program captured the imagination and support of Central Florida. The number of Endowed Chairs and the endowment dollars they represent is large.

The Endowed Chairs are awarded via a competitive peer-review process. Unlike self-designed and designated research projects at universities for scholars and researchers, the custom at Valencia, not the exception, is that each Endowed Chair holder designs a project that benefits learning and does not focus solely on the recipient.

executive Vice President/Chief learning officer Kaye walter presented Professor Deepanker (rick) Pal with an endowed Chair award, 2007.

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table i shows the widespread nature of the Central Florida community support for Valencia’s academic efforts.

table i endowed chairs at valencia (as of 2006)

Endowed Chair Endowment Sponsor

Education ABC Liquors, Inc.

Business Bank of America

Business Management Bank of America

Humanities Eminent Scholar Bank of America

Humanities Faculty Scholar Bank of America

Women in Business Bessie Galloway Henkel

Restaurant Management Central Florida Restaurant Association

Hotel Management Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Assoc.

Life and Health Science Chesley G. Magruder Foundation

Nursing Chesley G. Magruder Foundation

Legal Studies Cliff and Daisy Whitehill

Computer Science Collegis

Displaced Homemakers Various Sponsors

Education Dr. P. Phillips Foundation

Enterprise Education Dr. P. Phillips Foundation

English Eugene and Jess Drey

Humanities First Union (Wachovia) Bank

Humanities Foundation for Osceola Education

Family Resource Development Freeda Louise Foreman

Nursing Grace Gillen Hanna

Foreign Languages Howard Palmer

Construction Management Hubbard Construction Company

Hospitality Management Hunton, Brady, Pryor, Maso Architects

Nursing and Allied Health Ira Vinson Henderson

Business John and Florence McLeod

Natural and Physical Science Lester N. Mandell

Mathematics Lockheed Martin

Science Lockheed Martin

Social Sciences Patricia Havill Whalen

Communications Raymer Maquire, Jr.

Mathematics Raymer Maquire, Jr.

Communications Sue Luzzader

Business and Public Services SunTrust

Community Quality Tupperware Corporation

Arts and Entertainment Universal Studios

Computer Science University Club

Humanities University Club

Humanities University Club of Orlando

Film Walt Disney World

Geriatrics Wayne M. Densch

Shoah Abe and Tess Wise

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Valencia alumni association volunteers entertained kids at the 2007 5K run, walk, stroll held on the west Campus.

The College’s success in the establishment and growth of the Endowed Chairs Program illustrates, but does not begin to fully describe, just how successful the Valencia Foundation has become. The Foundation began fund raising in 1974 under the leadership of Edmund Gross and those efforts were expanded during Ken Woodberry’s tenure as its President. By 1989, the Valencia Foundation ranked fourth in the nation among community colleges in fund raising, behind Miami Dade, Dallas County Community College in Texas, and Riverside in California.

The Foundation’s success and stature was based on business and industry relationships with Central Florida through which Valencia provided needed training with solid results, and in turn, Central Florida’s businesses and industries responded to help meet Valencia’s needs. The work of the Valencia Foundation has been and remains central to supporting the College’s learning mission. In 2006, under the leadership of Foundation President Geraldine Gallagher, who assumed her leadership position in 2001, the Foundation’s endowment hit the $50 million mark.

valencia community college alumni association

Community college alumni associations face particular challenges and difficulties precisely because graduates tend to feel more emotionally connected to the universities from which they graduate. Also, community colleges in Florida were and are “commuter schools,” in which students are compared to university students. Distance, the argument went, led to detachment.

As with the College’s Foundation, the Valencia Alumni Association also was more successful than most others in Florida and in the Nation. There were, and indeed are, two main reasons for its special success. First, unlike many other similar groups, Valencia never placed on its Alumni Association the burden of fundraising; that belonged to the Foundation. What Valencia did value in its Alumni Association was its members’ interest in remaining connected to the College. Alumni serve as volunteers for the College’s programs and student support services, and assist with major Valencia functions. The second reason for the Alumni Association’s success was its deep commitment to the learning goals of the College. During the late 1990s, the Alumni Association expanded its influence, supported by Tom Adams and Heather

The Valencia foundation began fund raising in 1974. in 2006, the foundation’s endowment hit the $50 million mark.

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Pharris of the College and Community Relations staff. Today, active student representatives serve as members of the Alumni Association. They provide links to student government and other student organizations, an information source for student concerns and welfare, and, another way in which Valencia listens to the always diverse interests of those it serves.

public school partnershipstech prep

Another of the major paths to excellence in Valencia’s outreach to the community was partnering with public schools. The Tech Prep Program is a stellar example launched under the leadership of Joan Tiller, Assistant Vice President for Workforce Development, and developed further by Beverlee Andrews. The business community again was expressing its belief that too many high school graduates were entering the work place minus the requisite skills in math, science, reading, problem-solving, decision-making, and human relations. There were other disturbing trends. Many American high schools were experiencing increasing dropout rates. Moreover, vocational education was focused on low level, relatively unskilled jobs.

The Valencia Community College/Orange County Public Schools/Osceola District Schools Tech Prep Partnership was launched in 1990. It has been a worthy partnership for students in Central Florida. Tech Prep presented to students, usually in grades 9-12, a specialized curriculum that integrated science, communication, math, and technical coursework. Orange County schools in

cooperation with Valencia implemented computer animation, robotics, and laser optics.

In 1995 the Tech Prep Partnership became nationally recognized. The consortium of which Valencia was a part expanded from four schools to 16 covering both Orange and Osceola counties, thanks to a four-year grant of $2 million from the United States Department of Education. The grant, one of 10 awarded in the Nation, included the two-county area’s five vocational-technical centers as well as Valencia.

Tech Prep was the base on which Valencia’s School-To-Work (STW) Program was built, again in partnership with Orange and Osceola schools. The STW initiative grew from a major education policy decision of President Clinton’s administration – the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994. The Program meant to intertwine academic and vocational experiences for American students and placed emphasis on work experience at earlier ages. The Region 19 School-to-Work Partnership involving Valencia and Orange and Osceola public schools was awarded the Gold Award for Recognition of Extraordinary Efforts and Contributions by the Florida Department of Education in 1998.

college reach-out

Community outreach at Valencia has meant also reaching out to nontraditional student populations. In 1983, the Florida Legislature established the College Reach-Out Program (CROP) designed to motivate and prepare educationally disadvantaged minority students in grades 6-12 to plan and successfully complete a postsecondary education. Launched by Geraldine Thompson and led in 2006 by Falecia Williams and Gerald Jones, Valencia’s CROP program enrolls students in Orange and Osceola counties who otherwise would not be likely to seek admission to a Florida institution of higher education.

CROP is primarily an after-school and weekend Program with a four-week summer component. Students are tutored in basic core subject matters. They attend cultural enrichment activities, visit museums and art galleries in the area, and tour colleges in the hope of instilling and sustaining enthusiasm for college enrollment. Research

Tech Prep presented students a specialized curriculum in science, communication, math, and technical coursework.

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President Paul C. gianini, jr. addressed an honors Program graduation Ceremony.

studies indicate that CROP students are more likely to graduate from area high schools than the average student population, and nearly twice as many CROP students than the general high school population attend post secondary institutions.

dual enrollment

Reaching out to the school age population also has been greatly enhanced through the Dual Enrollment Program. Valencia’s 2004-2005 Dual Enrollment Program included more than 1,200 students in both the Fall and Spring semesters. Dual enrollment was created to save money for parents and the taxpayers. Permitting and encouraging students either to take college classes on high school sites or on Valencia’s campuses substantially lowered the cost of a college education. A Valencia dual enrollee could complete college and high school course work at the same time. As the Program began, Central Florida students in the dual enrollment typically took four Valencia classes, three of which were the basics of general education – biology, math or English – and one elective course, usually a physical education course that could be handled on a high school site. Dual enrollment has proven to be “a win-win” for students, parents, Valencia and the schools. The students and parents could save as much as $10,000 in tuition costs for the two years. Students in dual enrollment were far more prepared for college life.

The pressure on Valencia’s crowded classrooms was eased. And, high school faculty members certified to teach at the community college level could enjoy teaching advanced students. After more than a decade of campus-based administration of dual enrollment, the program expanded rapidly under the successive collegewide leadership of Laura Hebert and Falecia Williams. More and more qualified Central Florida students were enrolling in college at Valencia and finishing their high school work at the same time. Further, all of the dual enrollment credits that students earned while attending their high schools were transferable to Florida’s state universities.

honors program

Valencia’s Honors Program, inaugurated in 1989, offers a holistic approach that has made Valencia a “first choice” institution among high school students who might otherwise continue their education at prestigious, four-year institutions outside of Florida.

The Program has grown markedly under the leadership of Director Ron Brandolini and in 2006 served nearly 1,000 students on four campuses. The program annually attracts dozens of students with SAT scores in excess of 1400 (including perfect 1600 SAT scores) and ACT scores in excess of 32. Over 450 of the 1,000 students were on full tuition scholarships (either Presidential or Honors scholarships) provided by the Valencia Community College Foundation.

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For the past decade, virtually 100% of the Honors Program graduating class has continued their education at upper division institutions, with approximately two-thirds receiving something approaching full tuition scholarships from the transfer institution, including Yale, Columbia, Duke, Tulane, Emory, Georgia Tech, and Georgetown University, as well as a variety of Florida colleges and universities. Former graduates have gone on to become leaders in their chosen fields and many have gone on to receive medical degrees, and Ph.D.’s from some of the Nation’s most prestigious institutions.

The Program sponsors numerous field trips, speakers’ series, social events, leadership training, and trips to state, regional, and national honors conferences all at Program expense. Also, an annual Spring Break trip is provided to a foreign country. While not funded entirely by the Program, this trip is heavily subsidized so that students pay only a fraction of the total cost.

The caliber of students the Program has attracted and transferred to upper division institutions, coupled with the outstanding educational and extracurricular activities provided, has led the University of Florida to designate Valencia’s Honors Program as the “premier two-year honors program in the State.” The National Collegiate Honors Council and the Southern Regional Honors Council view this program as one of the exemplary Honors Programs in the Nation. Valencia has had numerous Academic All American first and second team winners.

interdisciplinary studies (ids)

The Valencia Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) Program emerged from the work of a General Education Committee that prepared materials for the College’s first accreditation process. The Committee, made up entirely of faculty and led by Rosita Martinez, determined that an ideal form of general education would be a core curriculum in which students would remain together as an educational cohort for two years, while experiencing a systematic and unified program of education – including a consistent pedagogy, and in which students would experience knowledge as an integrated whole. In this way, the Committee reasoned, the student would emerge with greater critical thinking, reading, and writing skills, as well as with a sense of the holistic nature of knowledge.

The IDS Program was launched under J. Louis Schlegel III, a humanities faculty member selected as the first director, and later guided by Roberta Vandermast. In the early days of the Program, Schlegel was joined by faculty members Jenna Kirkpatrick, Bill McCord, Ron Nelson, Nancy Thompson, and Don Whelchel in developing the team-teaching approach that continued to be used in IDS in 2006. The four original IDS courses became the first courses offered when the Valencia Honors Program was established.

IDS continues as a strong and successful Program, producing some of Valencia’s most celebrated graduates. While the original Program focused on Western intellectual history, it has been broadened to provide a more global perspective.

math and science enrichment

For many years prior to the opening of Valencia, there had been annual math and science competitions for area high schools. Valencia has helped to strengthen these efforts. By 1992, Valencia was hosting and sponsoring the 41st annual Math Superbowl, a competition in algebra, trigonometry, and geometry. The winning high school team received the Louis M. Edwards trophy from the College, named for a retired Valencia Mathematics Department Chairman. Valencia faculty served as coordinators, judges, and moderators for the annual competition. At the same time, Valencia also hosted and coordinated Florida’s State Science Olympics. The Program drew upon Valencia’s many outstanding science faculty, including Jerry Wright and Bill McCord. Bright and energetic high school students from across Florida created projects and demonstrations in water quality, aerodynamics, bottle rocketry, wheeled vehicle technology, and many other machine and science-based concepts. The annual winner of the Florida state competition then was able to compete each year in the National Science Olympiad.

an observation In reviewing this array of programs, one observation remains to be made. What developed at Valencia in the 1980s and early 1990s was not just a sequence of historical turning points. It was more a matter of shifting emphasis and evolving institutional maturity. Well before

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1993 and the decision to move Valencia further along the continuum of learning-centered colleges, its programs were required by changing conditions to reflect and emphasize new forms of learning. Economic development, new technologies, and an enlarging global culture drove Valencia forward, but so, too, did its tradition of excellence. Successful learning, professional teaching, pride in student and faculty achievements, caring about individual students and their personal successes, joys, and sorrows are all Valencia hallmarks.

embraCing The Value of DiVersiTy

diversity: a deeply held value

Valencia’s economic development programs took center stage externally, becoming a public center-piece for the College both in Central Florida and in the Nation. But along with the highly visible issues of technology, globalization, and economic devel-opment that captured the attention of the Board of Trustees, the President, and the community, Valencia’s academic faculty and staff continued to maintain, sustain, and expand upon its enduring commitment to learning.

How and how well students were learning rightfully preoccupied Valencia from the beginning. But changes made the issue even more significant in

the 1980s. As the broader social, educational, technological, and economic revolutions of America earlier in the 20th century swept through community colleges, women, the disabled, the economically deprived, the socially disadvantaged, and the academically less prepared now looked to Valencia more than ever before to fill their needs. In our modern era, diversity in race, gender, ethnicity, age, socio-economic class, and religious preferences are reflected in all that Valencia does – in its classrooms, its administrative processes, and in its conscious commitment to serve all its community constituents. In all respects, helping diverse students achieve is central to why Valencia exists.

A most special kind of diversity has always challenged Valencia. It is the diversity of needs, personalities, goals, aspirations, and talents present among individual students. Every day there are literally thousands of students wrestling with highly personal questions of their own maturation – the old cliché “What do I want to do when I grow up” applies no matter if they are 18 or 28. At the same time and in the same classrooms, others come who are making their first tentative steps to return to education after a long hiatus, perhaps after raising children, supporting a family, working a job or shifting career goals. These students, often acutely afraid of failing, sometimes need special attention and support. Also in the same time and in the same place are students

american sign language has become an increasingly popular course of study at Valencia.

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who come to Valencia already academically well prepared, possessing clearly defined goals and who have identified their own particular educational needs. Finally, in the same setting are also students for whom a college classroom is almost an alien culture, either because of birth in a foreign land or by lack of college experience in their family’s history. For these students, college often is a struggle first to adapt and survive, then to thrive and succeed. They, too, sometimes need special support and attention.

The commitment Valencia makes to each of these students is massive and genuine. It is to provide each individual, however they enter the Institution and whatever program they pursue, with the tools, the content, and the support help needed to achieve their individual goals. Access to education today is a birthright belonging to all, and Valencia takes seriously its imperative to meet the individual needs of students who have dramatic differences in preparation and experiences. All who enter Valencia have a right to be taught. More crucially, there resides at Valencia an even deeper credo: all who attend Valencia have a right to and the capacity to learn. Respect for the diversity of individual students and their needs and goals always have been at the core of the College and its ultimate bond with its community.

planning for diversity

Diversity in all of its dimensions did not come overnight to Valencia. In 1983, the Board of Trustees approved a newly revised plan for increasing minority student enrollments and the hiring of more minority faculty. Previously, most of Valencia’s diversity-related recruitment effort had been aimed at traditionally African-American high schools and organizations. Now the College would spend more of its time also recruiting from all high school populations. Also, there had been gaps in financial aid assistance that hurt minority enrollments. A concerted effort was made among African-American organizations in the community to offer financial aid and scholarships to Valencia for prospective minority students. Like most other community colleges in the State, Valencia had not up to that point in time offered special scholarship help to minority students. Nor had any Florida community college addressed the need to recruit for African-American teachers, and Valencia began advertising its vacant positions in State and

national African-American publications. Valencia established its own Office of Equal Opportunity, headed by Geraldine Thompson, representing an institutional progression from a position to a program office. The Office was aided by a community Black Advisory Committee, initiated in the early days of the College by Thelma Dudley, one of its first African-American faculty members, and led in 2006 by Vicki Brooks.

A broad-based Equal Access-Equal Opportunity (EA/EO) Committee provided guidance to the College on hiring policies, perceived barriers to equal opportunity, and enhancements to the cultural environment of the Institution. The EA/EO Committee name was changed and charge altered in 2001. The College Diversity Committee, assumed a key leadership role over the next five years in the implementation of the Diversity Works strategic goal, reporting through the College Planning Council.

As community colleges came to better understand the true impact of diversity in classrooms, new educational theories, practices, and ideas came forth. As early as the 1970s, the University of Iowa’s Keller plan of self-paced instruction, based upon a concept called mastery learning, was adopted by many community colleges, including Valencia. Self-paced courses were implemented that no longer tied students to fixed class times, test dates or even traditional semesters. Mastery learning emphasized the diversity in both

geraldine Thompson headed the College’s office of equal opportunity Programs and provided local as well as statewide leadership on equity and diversity issues. following her retirement, she was elected to the florida house of representatives.

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Thelma Dudley, one of Valencia’s first african-american faculty members, initiated the black advisory Committee and was a respected liaison between the College and the african-american community in Valencia’s early years.

content and skills differences among individuals. As the understanding of diversity in learning styles deepened, academic course methodologies expanded. To Valencia’s traditional “chalk talk” classrooms were added videotaped television, correspondence, and interdisciplinary courses.

Early in the 21st century, the Valencia community collaboratively developed a Strategic Learning Plan to inform decision-making and plan for the future. One of the seven strategic goals embraced by the community, administrators, faculty, staff, and students was “Diversity Works,” expressed as “Engage the power of diversity to enhance learning and the College’s impact on the community.”

With that strategic direction charted, the answer to the question “What does diversity have to do with learning?” was readily apparent. A 2002 essay by three Valencia staff members captured the spirit of the diversity goal:

The diversity of our world and community places a claim of cultural competence on our curriculum. The diversity of our students, faculty, and staff provides a rich resource for mastering competence in a diverse world. The engagement of persons, student to student, student to faculty, staff to staff, and so on, creates the laboratory for learning cultural competence. Finally, as a learning college, we will be tenacious in our focus on results: all students mastering high learning expectations and the College helping to build a healthier community.

This focus will enable Valencia to make the transition from the old higher education architecture and tradition of numbers equity to the more learning-centered architecture of valuing and empowering diverse voices, perspectives, and experiences in College governance, campus life, and community vitality. For us, an authentic regard for diversity can be neither a political refrain from either end of the spectrum, nor a compliance activity typical of many bureaucracies. Rather, it has to be a perspective grounded in our belief in the capacities of all learners, the mission of the College to the whole community, and the assurance that diversity is not a problem to be solved, but a strength to be engaged.

Valencia has developed into an increasingly diverse learning community. In Spring 2006, Non-Caucasians comprised more than 51% of the student body, up from 22% in 1990. The Osceola Campus is recognized nationally as an Hispanic Serving Institution and East Campus has a rapidly growing Hispanic population, as well. On West Campus, ethnic minorities comprise 55.7% of the students and international students are particularly prominent in the student community. These same students, of course, are a rich source of learning. The literature on higher education clearly documents significant value to learning where the power of diversity is engaged in the curriculum, classroom, and the larger College community.

Diversity and changing needs are in fact why some Valencia programs have survived and continue while others have come and gone. As Central Florida communities have undergone change, so, too, have Valencia’s programs and partnerships. Providing learning environments that engage the power of diversity is part of what makes Valencia excellent. Like technology, diversity, too, came of age at Valencia.

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a tenacious spokesperson and champion for individuals with disabilities, beverly Chapman (left), was the motivating force for what became Valencia’s Center for high Tech Training for individuals with Disabilities; also pictured is gary hollingsworth.

students with disabilities

Valencia has a long tradition of providing services to ensure that students with disabilities were successful, led by professionals such as Freda Marion Graham, Walter Johnson, Margaret (Peg) Edmonds, and Carolyn Allen. In 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provided new and sweeping changes in public facilities, accommodations, building and construction, telecommunications, transportation, and furthered changes in education.

For Americans with disabilities, the ADA was truly life changing. There had been a Federal law, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, passed in the Nixon era, prohibiting discrimination by public schools. Yet, in post secondary educational institutions, little had been accomplished between 1973 and 1990. Once ADA was passed and regulations were written to govern how the law should be implemented, efforts to increase accessibility to buildings and programs were made. Nine percent of all entering freshmen in colleges across the nation in 1996 were qual-ified with documented disabilities, compared with less than three percent in 1978. Perhaps also part of the explanation for progress is that many more college freshmen succeeded in the public schools with accommodations made under Section 504 that included individualized

educational planning for each disabled student.

Midway between the Nixon era legislation and the ADA, Valencia addressed its responsibilities in a manner that gained the College national attention. But far more importantly, Valencia also brought new employment opportunities and hope for many Central Floridians with disabilities. In February 1983, Beverly Chapman, already a nationally renowned advocate for individuals with disabilities, had a vision she shared with the College and the Central Florida area. It was a vision of independence and professional security for individuals with disabilities — a vision that she believed could be accomplished through the use of computer technology.

Chapman was the motivating force for what became Valencia Community College’s highly acclaimed Center for High Tech Training for Individuals with Disabilities. The Center coordinated two Valencia training programs for serving students with disabilities: Computer Programmer Training (CPT), the first program established by Chapman in 1983, and Computer Assisted Design and Drafting (CADD), established in 1987. In 2001, a PC Support Specialist Program replaced the Computer Programmer Training Program. Valencia established the Center as a demonstration of the College’s commitment to ensure that all

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The members of the business advisory Council (baC) were actively involved in support of the Center for high Tech Training for individuals with Disabilities.

in the mid-1970s, Valencia and the Center for Continuing education for women (CCew) jointly launched a course titled “Teaching wives To be widows,” whose name was later changed to “The woman alone.”

students (including disadvantaged populations) have opportunities to benefit from and contribute to local economic development.

The Center was developed on a business-driven model. Its Business Advisory Council (BAC) was exemplary because of its demonstrated active involvement in Program operations. The BAC was a model for establishing and maintaining effective business and community partnerships for Valencia. It consisted of management-level executives from a unique combination of nationally-recognized businesses such as Walt Disney World, Lockheed Martin, IBM, Westinghouse, Universal Studios, Sprint, and AT&T, in addition to numerous local employers such as the City of Orlando, the Orlando Utilities Commission, financial institutions, medical centers, and engineering firms, plus representatives from community, State, and Federal organizations such as NASA, Vocational Rehabilitation, the Center for Independent Living, the U.S. Department of Labor, Orange County Public Schools, and consumer groups. The Center continuously sought BAC input into the management process and recognized the value of contributed time and resources. Many students who graduated from the Center later returned to join the BAC and involved their own employers with the Center. In June 1999, the U.S. Department of Education Rehabilitation Services Administration summarized the Center’s success: Valencia “has established one of the most active,

involved, and effective business advisory councils evaluated by this Regional Office.”

The Center was a factor in Valencia Community College being recognized by the National Alliance of Business as the 1998 Community College of the Year. Over the years, the Center’s partnerships and achievements have continued to result in Valencia’s receipt of numerous national and local awards.

In 2001, Valencia formed a task force to determine how to best continue model programming for students with disabilities who pursue high-tech programs. Based on an in-depth assessment of programs and services, the College decided to phase down the Center for High Tech Training in 2002 in an effort to place students into existing programs while ensuring the continuation and enhancement of services needed by the students to achieve success.

programs for women

Evolution of the status of women also caused great change at Valencia in this era. Valencia’s Center for Continuing Education for Women (CCEW) was created in the early 1970s in cooperation with the Council for Continuing Education for Women, Inc. Beatrice Ettinger, President of the Council, became Director of the Center and wrote a successful grant application for funding from Title I of the Higher Education Act (HEA). With these

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funds, a small staff was hired and women of the area received counseling, career or volunteer service information, access to courses, and referrals to continue their education academic or vocational.

Programs were developed to fulfill the needs of women in many areas. For the first time Valencia’s Women’s Center provided programs for incarcerated women to improve their chances for employment upon release from jail. Other programs established were management skills for women, assertiveness training, women in citrus, starting a small business, introduction to computer skills, and a job internship program among others.

In 1977, Ettinger started the second Displaced Homemakers Program in the country. A successful program existed in California pointing out the needs of women who had become head of household because of widowhood, divorce, or disability of a spouse. These women needed to learn new skills to manage their lives and provide for their families.

Virginia Stuart coordinated this program which became a model that was replicated nationally. Valencia’s Displaced Homemaker Program served more than 5,000 Central Floridians during its 26-year tenure. Participants not only found careers,

but personal strengths they never knew they had. Valencia’s Displaced Homemaker Program ended on June 30, 2003, with similar services now offered through Workforce Central Florida’s One Stop Career Center.

program for the homeless

For Valencia, diversity has come into being in many forms. One of the more extraordinary examples of diversity in its programs that Valencia offers to its community is the Clemente Project in the Humanities. The Project is a national one, begun by Earl Shorris in the mid-1990s. Shorris, a well-known writer, lecturer, and editor of Harper’s Magazine, had been interviewing a prisoner in a New York female maximum-security prison in preparation for another publication in his chosen area of research: poverty. Shorris asked the inmate why she thought poverty, the seedbed for urban crime, existed in the community in which she grew up. Her answer changed his life’s work and eventually that also of Valencia Professor John Scolaro.Scolaro brought the Project to Valencia’s attention. The Florida Humanities Council in 2001 had issued its annual theme, “Floridians: Finding a Common Path,” for grant funding projects, papers, and conferences around the Clemente Project and Shorris’ work. By August of that year, members of the College faculty and staff met with Scolaro and decided to collaborate with selected individuals from the Central Florida community. The Florida Humanities Council agreed to fund the establishment of the Clemente Project at Valencia; a community advisory committee was formed; and Scolaro was appointed the Project Director. In May 2002, Shorris himself visited Valencia.

The College added its own unique touch to the Clemente Project, subtitling it the Prometheus Project. Symbolically, Prometheus “unlocked” the human potential all of us possess to overcome great challenges and obstacles. In its first years, the Project, a non-credit program, was implanted at various Orlando locations within the pockets of poverty that existed. The Wells’ Built Museum of African-American History on Parramore and the Women’s Residential and Counseling Center on East Colonial Drive hosted the initial Program participants. Professors Elizabeth Eschbach and David Sutton have offered the course throughout Greater Orlando.

beatrice ettinger was the guiding force behind Valencia’s Center for Continuing education for women and Displaced homemaker Program.

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learning ouTsiDe The Classroom

the arts

While the arts have developed a presence on all Valencia campuses, in launching the East Cam-pus in 1975 and locating the performing arts aca-demic programs there, Valencia also resolved that the Campus would be a cultural centerpiece in Central Florida. The subsequent establishment of the Valencia Character Company, the Valencia Dance Company, the Wooten Fine Arts Gal-lery, as well as its own Performing Arts Center and Black Box Theater, illustrates how well the College kept its commitment, inspired and led by Qurentia Throm, a charter faculty member and the first Department Chair for Visual and Per-forming Arts.

visual arts

Valencia’s initial student produced visual art shows were unique. Most higher education student art shows included only works that students selected. Valencia’s student art shows, on the other hand, were juried and aimed at the public. Faculty members in the College’s Art Department selected the works that were displayed. The Valencia student art show of 1985, according to one reviewer in the Orlando Sentinel, “would be impressive in any gallery, possibly

so impressive that they could intimidate rather than inspire less skilled or advanced students.”

Art Department faculty and staff, accomplished artists as well as committed professors, have also produced shows in the East Campus Gallery. The Gallery was renamed the Wooten Fine Arts Gallery in 2003 to honor Anita Wooten. Wooten, an Art Professor at Valencia, lost her courageous 10-year battle against cancer in 2001. Despite her life-threatening condition, she was a vibrant contributor to the Central Florida arts community and the combination of her artistic leadership and personal courage led to the decision to rename the East Campus Gallery in Wooten’s honor. Helen Von Dolteren-Fournier, a friend of Wooten and a Valencia Foundation Board member, was a driving force behind renaming of the Gallery.

To honor their mothers and “women just like them,” Von Dolteren-Fournier, Brenda Cox-Cook, and Jamia Taylor were instrumental in the establishment, in 2000, of The Sculpture Garden in a quiet, reflective space between Buildings 3 and 4 on East Campus. The first piece of artwork to adorn the space was a bronze sculpture by Valencia Art Professor Michael Galletta. By 2006, The Sculpture Garden was also being utilized as an outdoor learning space for professors to use for their classes.

Qurentia Throm, charter faculty member and the first Department Chair for Visual and Performing arts (left), is pictured here with internationally acclaimed film producer robert wise and his wife, millicent.

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a theater student adjusts the lighting for a Valencia Character Company production in the black box Theater.

academy award-winning actor john houseman (center) at a 1983 reception with Trustee andrew serros (left) and President james gollattscheck (right).

madrigal dinners

One early campus tradition established at Valencia through the efforts of Music Professor Larry Graham, occurred each winter holiday season for two decades: Valencia’s Madrigal Dinners. Madrigal dinners were first founded in 15th century Italy. Landed gentry and royalty enjoyed feasts that were accompanied by music and dance performances. Within a century, madrigals dinners were commonly found throughout England as an adopted holiday custom. It was this Renaissance festival complete with dinner theater that became a popular fundraiser for many colleges and universities in the United States, including Valencia.

visiting artists series

As befitted Valencia’s commitment to serve its community, the College established the Visiting Artists Series in the early 1980s. It was designed by Office of Communications and Community Relations members Ruth Salsberry and Bill Castellano to attract community interest by offering some of the most widely known and celebrated performers of that era. Among the performers was James Whitmore who spun himself in magic-like transformations into three of America’s most famed personalities – humorist Will Rogers, and Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman – in front of a packed house on the East Campus in the opening of the Valencia Series.

In its three seasons, the Visiting Artist Series offered a wide variety of performances to its subscribers. Besides Whitmore and Acadamy Award-winning actor John Houseman, other

celebrities included The Amazing Kreskin, the famed jazz vocalist Pearl Bailey, and comedian Mark Russell.

By the end of its third year, it was widely acknowledged that the Series was delivering what Valencia promised – national arts figures and performances to Central Florida. It had provided its subscribers with all manner and styles of the performing arts. However, ticket prices had been kept reasonable by a 50% underwriting of costs by the College. As planning for the fourth season began, President Gollattscheck determined that the College could no longer fund the subsidy. Visiting Artists Series staff members did not believe that abruptly doubling ticket prices was politically or economically viable, and the successful series came to an end.

the valencia character company

Valencia’s first theatre production was at the College’s temporary home on Oak Ridge Road in the late 1960s. Under the guidance of charter faculty member Ruth Salsberry, students edited the Greek play, “Antigone,” into a readers’theatre script, which was performed at speakers’ stands.

When Donald Tighe came to the College as West Campus Communications Department Chairman in 1973, he was told there would be no major Drama Program at Valencia. Despite a lack of any theatre facilities, Speech Professor William Osborne directed a few plays in one of the campus rotundas (enclosed, central gathering areas on campus).

Central Florida’s theater arts community in the

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late 1970s and early 1980s, despite the growth in the area, was still caught in the tradition of small-town civic theater productions. The region was still lacking a professional repertory company. Partly in response to that community need, the College decided to create a Drama Program, after all. Under the initial leadership of Karen Wallace, The Valencia Character Company was formed to produce more artistically challenging work than the standard civic theaters produced. Contemporaneously, Valencia theater tech students were able to gain experience and real world jobs with the Tupperware Auditorium, the beginning of many industry partnerships in this field. In 2006, The Valencia Character Company, guided by Julia Gagne, continued to provide quality theater entertainment in both the College’s Performing Arts Center and Black Box Theater.

theater and entertainment technology programIn 1983, a full-blown Theater and Entertainment Technology Program was designed and implemented. Department Chair Charles Roberts, Professors Julia Gagne and Rick Rietveld, and staff member William Eliot implemented the program for students seeking employment in the areas of stagecraft, lighting, and sound. It is still one of the very few in the Nation and the only one in Florida that prepares students to work in all facets of the entertainment industry. Three years later, the State Board of Community Colleges highlighted the program as one of Florida’s most outstanding. Through the years students in the Program have been placed at Tupperware, Disney World, Sea World, on cruise ships, in costume houses as well as freelance film jobs.

film production technology program

Internationally acclaimed film producer Robert Wise came to Valencia in 1998 under the auspices of the Film Production Technology Program. Wise, that year the recipient of the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award, was the producer of several major motion pictures, including “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” and “The Andromeda Strain.” Wise brought national attention to the Valencia Program. He worked with students in classes and on stage. His presence led to more visits by film directors, actors, and producers. George Romero who directed the “Night of the Living Dead,” “Jonathan Krane,” “Phenomenon” and “Michael,” and David Nutter of the famed television series, “The X-Files,” followed in Wise’s footsteps, working with Valencia film students.

Under the leadership of Ralph Clemente, Director of Valencia’s Film Production Technology Program; Skip Landen, Dean of the Film School at Ithaca College; Kris Malkiewcz, Director of Cinematography at the California Institute of the Arts; and Rick Rietveld, Joan Tiller, and Qurentia Throm of Valencia, with funding from the College’s Endowed Chairs Program, the curriculum and the Program meshed students, faculty and professionals. They worked together on a single student-produced film that was based on a script selected from 70 submissions. Dominic Palmieri supervised the photography. His Hollywood credits included “M*A*S*H*” and the “Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Experts in film from camera work to acting to production also came to share their knowledge with Valencia students. They included Julie Harris, Sally Kellerman, Joe DiMaggio, Ed Begley, Jr., Tyne Daly, Mickey Rooney, and Talia Shire.

Director robert wise (on right with arm extended) and Cinematographer Dominic Palmieri (far right) brought real world experience to students they worked with in the College’s film Production Technology Program.

a dramatic scene from the 1983 Valencia Character Company production of “Terra nova.”

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graphics technology programValencia also created a Graphics Technology Program to add to its very strong emphasis on the arts. Originally offered as Graphics Arts in 1973, the original degree program had two specializations: technical illustration and printing management. It was not until 1990 that the Program’s curriculum in design and in multi-media were put in place. Since then, the Program has grown dramatically under the leadership of Professor Barbara Peterson. It is offered separately on the East, West, and Osceola campuses.

With internships available to 20 Central Florida businesses, including Disney’s MGM Animation Studio, students in the Program have continuously found professional employment, including those who have special needs or are referred from other special programs.

campus lifestudent newspaperFor Valencia in its infancy, student activities were more than an afterthought. Unlike residential

The student newspaper helped promote the development of student activities and reported on rapid student enrollment increases in the College’s early years.

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jerry w. odom was the College’s first basketball Coach and Director of student activities. he would later serve in senior administrative positions at Valencia and st. Petersburg College and be a finalist for Valencia President in 1984.

a late 1960s poster promoting matador week on the outside of a portable classroom building at Valencia’s temporary campus on oak ridge road.

campuses, which are by design intended to support whole life needs for students, Valencia’s first efforts concentrated on its exclusively commuter student population. Its first official news publication was launched in 1968, and was later named La Prensa. Barbara Eyerly, Dalton Howard, and Jerry Odom were the first faculty representatives, joining with student members Yvonne Watson, Susie Worley, and Glenn Allred, and editor-in-chief Bob Barbour to bring from what President Craig called the committee’s “thoughtful planning” to what in the years that followed would become Valencia’s often-recognized newspaper of distinction. The Spanish title La Prensa was chosen as its official name linking the paper to the city in Spain that established the oldest commercial press in 1754. Valencia’s nickname, the Matadors, stemmed from Spanish origins as well.

The first volumes of La Prensa chronicle how campus life at Valencia began. Over the next 38 years, the student newspaper has changed names and even experimented for a time with campus-based publications. In 2006, The Valencia Source, successor to La Prensa, is not only a collegewide publication, but a daily presence on the Internet.

literary magazinesOver the decades, an array of campus publications of literary and art works of students, faculty and staff have been produced. Valencia’s first literary magazine, The Little Review, was published in 1968. Subsequent publications have included: Econoclast and Exempli Gratia (East Campus); Spectator and The Alchemist (Osceola Campus); Phoenix and Arte [IDS]; and The Inward Eye and Phoenix (Winter Park Campus).

For many years the Valencian was a collegewide publication of literary and art works by members of the Valencia learning community.

matador week / matador dayThe creation of Matador Week in Valencia’s second year led to a five-day celebration organized by the Student Government Association, social and service clubs, and fraternities and sororities on campus. Quaint when measured by today’s standards, and conducted in the spirit of a “Homecoming Week,” Matador Week included Dress-Up Day, Color Day, Field Day, Sweatshirt Day, and Victory Dance at the end. As the College grew in student population and expanded to multiple campuses in the 1970s and 1980s, the week-long focus was eventually refocused to a day still celebrated every year, Matador Day.

athletics programAn Athletics Program began in earnest in Valencia’s early days. Basketball Coach Jerry Odom first entered Valencia in the Florida Junior College Conference with a 28-game schedule, 11 freshmen players and two sophomores. And, along with the players, Valen-cia’s first cheerleaders, under the leadership of faculty advisor Marjorie Jackson, had acquired their red-and- gold uniforms. By the late winter and early spring, the first baseball team was ready for intercollegiate com-petition. For the ensuing three decades, with athletic directors Thomas García, Boyd Johnson, Charles Miller, Don Rutledge and David Jones at the helm, men’s and women’s teams represented Valencia in statewide intercollegiate competition. However, wan-ing interest by the student body led the College to eliminate the Athletics Program in the late 1990s.

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Valencia brain bowl teams have a tradition of bringing home championships from state and national competitions.

newly elected student government association leaders (left to right) Pat baggett, bill Castellano, and Pam ott shared congratulations on their 1968 sga election victories.

intramural sportsIn addition to athletics, intramural sports were an important element in Valencia’s early campus life. Tennis, bowling, golf, and softball were the initial Valencia intramural sports. In 2006, intramural sports activities continued on Valencia campuses.

music programsBy 1968, in the College’s second year, Robert Partridge of the original music faculty had assembled a pop band, a concert band, and a stage band. He and the student officers were busy planning musical tours for the new groups even as they were organizing their first practices. In 2006, Valencia’s very active choral and instrumental music programs continued, with both an academic base and community performance component.

student government association (sga)Valencia’s campus life in its early years also stressed the importance of service as much as it concentrated on social events for its students. Eugene Simmons and Ronald Reinighaus were the early advisors for the Student Government Association (SGA). Beginning with the College’s initial student leaders, Presidents Craig and Gollattscheck emphasized the importance of two-way communication and understanding between administration and students. One of the first Valencia students to serve as SGA President was Bill Castellano. After graduation, Castellano went on to serve the College in a number of roles for 35 years, retiring in 2005.

In the 21st century, SGA and other student organizations continue to be valuable incubators for student leadership training. The College’s transition from “student activities” to “student development” over the past three decades has been more than a name change. While traditional student activities programs are still available, increasingly, Valencia students are provided with numerous opportunities designed to develop and enhance leadership skills.

service learning: valencia volunteersSocial, political, and cultural activities and intramural sports still play a strong role on the various campuses, but today’s student activities and campus life have integrated service and learning for students in ways that the early years did not. Along with leadership development among students, academic competition, and volunteerism have moved to the forefront. Service learning creates experiences through which students discover what leadership means in helping a community. Service learning at Valencia most commonly involves the placement of student volunteers into social service agencies that perform diverse services. Through its Valencia Volunteers, the College connects to Central Florida’s elderly, its troubled youth, tutorial services in the public schools, and individuals with disabilities. Civic responsibility, a sense of caring for others, the opportunity to use classroom-acquired skills, and to make a difference in their community are among the major student learning outcomes that the Valencia Volunteers Program inspires.

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brain bowlBrain Bowl is an academic competition pitting teams of four players against each other in a race to answer academic questions. Valencia teams began participating in Brain Bowl competitions staged by the Florida Community College Activities Association (FCCAA) in 1981. The team’s first coach was Political Science Professor Nikki Bennett. Math Professor John Dickerson took over in the late 1980s and coached until 1996. English Professor Chris Borglum joined the team in 1993 and continues as head coach. Humanities Professor Diane Brown assisted in coaching from 1994-1996, and Humanities Professor Lois McNamara (began 1998) and Math Professor Boris Nguyen (began 2000) continue to assist in coaching the players.

Valencia has reached the FCCAA championship match, pitting Florida’s top two teams, 11 times since 1994, winning six State titles and earning four runner-up trophies. The College has won three National Academic Quiz Tournaments (community college national championships), winning in 2002, 2003, and 2004. At these tournaments community colleges compete against undergraduates from four-year institutions, and in those three years Valencia defeated teams from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Michigan, Rice, and Virginia, among others. In addition, Valencia has won numerous invitational tournaments in the last 12 years.

florida association of community colleges (facc)Faculty and staff at Valencia also share campus life with students, and not just as advisors, mentors, support help, or teachers. The diversity among students is matched in many ways by a professional diversity among faculty and staff. Professors from many academic disciplines and administrative units intermingle every day on the comprehensive campuses. Valencia staff members share concerns, problems, and employment-related issues. But over time as the campuses of Valencia have grown and expanded, the numbers of occasions in which faculty and staff from different campuses gather together in professional and or social settings has grown more limited. On the statewide level, the same pattern has proven true. As the Florida system rapidly grew from single small campus schools to 28 colleges, most of which created multiple centers and multiple campuses, contacts and

professional exchanges and discussions with faculty and staff from other community colleges became harder and harder to sustain. And, as a greater number of reasons to sustain professional relationships among all the community colleges beyond the level of the presidents became more apparent, the Florida Association of Community Colleges grew in stature and importance to the community college faculty and staff everywhere.

Valencia’s FACC Chapter shares news of State policy development with all employees, monitors legislation impacting community colleges, and informs the local legislative delegation of Valencia’s needs. The Chapter has also had a long-term commitment to raising funds for student scholarships and provided financial assistance to members of the College community in the aftermath of the three hurricanes that hit Central Florida in 2004.

Transforming sTuDenT serViCes in a Changing worlD

Paying close attention to access, learning, diversity, and professional development are among the chief characteristics of Valencia’s modern student learning support programs. Retention and graduation rates long have been principal measures of a community college’s success, especially for the Florida Legislature and the citizens in the surrounding community. Students, too, typically define their own success as graduating or achieving a final degree or certificate. Valencia offers educational services programs to recruit students, to keep them in school, to help them choose careers and educational planning options wisely, and to see that they graduate.

In the 1980s, it became necessary for Valencia, like other community colleges in the State, to pay more attention and devote more resources to retaining and graduating students. The Florida Legislature changed its funding formula for A.S. and certificate degree programs to measure an institution’s ability to graduate and to place a student in a career. While funding was once only enrollment driven, new accountability indicators included results measures as well. Getting students into college was still important, but keeping students in college and making sure that they were successfully transitioned to future educational institutions or to careers in a timely fashion became equally important.

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h. eugene simmons was a Valencia Charter Counselor and played an important role in the development of early College student activities and traditions.

counseling and advising

Counselors were available to students at Valencia from the beginning. When student enrollments were small, the personal one-on-one communication between counselor and student could be offered. But Valencia grew not only in numbers and physical size, but also in the kinds of students who came and in programs offered, and an evolution from one-to-one counseling to a more specialized and technical program in student development also occurred. Academic advising, tutorial support, financial aid assistance, and career guidance over time brought a changing definition of educational services at Valencia. Much of the change was enhanced through the use of new technologies and was intentionally driven by professional development activities, organizational restructuring, and reallocation of resources. By combining resources and a variety of strategies, Valencia developed a nationally-recognized program in delivering necessary educational services to its burgeoning and increasing diverse student populations.

project more and student success

One of the changes in the evolution of student services was Project MORE (Mentors and Orientation Reinforce Education). Valencia won a Title III grant in 1987 to develop a program to help keep students in college. One of the grant’s innovative elements was the creation of a Student Success class. Recognizing that students who have personal contact with faculty members and advisors are much more likely to stay in college and graduate, Valencia developed Project MORE.

As Valencia’s Title III Directors, Ivan Applebaum and Ronald Nelson helped broaden the personal contact beyond faculty members to include peer mentors, staff, and community resources. The key element established was regular contact; mentors received regular student progress reports on their students early enough to pinpoint problems and provide Institutional solutions

Examining Valencia’s retention efforts in this era illustrates the problems that community colleges faced that many four-year universities did not have to address at that point in time. Unlike the average university student, Valencia’s average student held a job that was usually full time. Students included working mothers with responsibility for full-time childcare as well. Simply stated, community college students faced factors that made attending college more difficult. Project MORE was designed to help students with those distractions as well as a lack of academic preparation. Universities in the 1980s did not see that as part of their role. On the other hand, there was at the same time, a continuing traditional belief, common at universities but present in community colleges, that faculty-student mentoring relationships were supposed to happen naturally and not be “forced.” But community college students, amid all the daily routines of jobs, families, and careers, did not usually seek out faculty for help; Project MORE made it happen. The results were very encouraging. Project MORE participants in the College’s Student Success classes returned to Valencia in the following semester at a rate of 85%. By comparison, the return rate for all Valencia freshmen was 66.5%.

Retention programming was even more effective at Valencia because of its use of the ASSET assessment instrument to learn more about its incoming students. Low scores on ASSET indicated careful consideration needed to be given to proper placement of the student in courses and might suggest the benefits of the student enrolling in the Student Success course. Higher scores allowed students to enter the College’s Honors Program or its Interdisciplinary Studies Program. Valencia personalized its relationship with students immediately by writing letters incorporating their scores and resulting recommendations. But, by design, the letters and scores were never mailed. Rather, counselors and advisors reviewed the information with students personally. By uploading the data from ASSET to the College’s mainframe computer, the information became immediately available to staff at all centers and the campuses.

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This and other lifemap posters around the campuses helped encourage students to engage with Valencia’s developmental advising system.

The College’s financial aid specialists also used ASSET data, localized by Valencia to provide socio-economic and demographic information. Student reports from ASSET were used to locate students who were in need and qualified for financial aid.

lifemapProject MORE was the foundation for Valencia’s student development centerpiece program — LifeMap. LifeMap was developed under the leadership of Michael Hooks and Joyce Romano, senior administrators in Planning and Educational Services. It is a comprehensive program of action for utilizing Valencia resources to articulate and help students achieve career and educational goals. Students use it as a planning guide for figuring out where they are going, and easy step-by-step directions are included for getting there. Life Map’s aim is to reduce the anxiety and confusion of starting on a new “journey” and to help students “get on the road” quickly and comfortably.

Through LifeMap, Valencia faculty and staff partner with students. Early in a student’s experience at Valencia, they interact with Advising Center staff through Valencia’s student

orientation. Faculty and advising staff explain the student’s LifeMap partnership by illustrating as follows:

A —> As —> AS —> aS —> S.“A” stands for “Advisor or Faculty” member, “S” stands for “Student.” Valencia’s expectation is that as students gain experience (moving from left to right on the diagram above), they will become increasingly self-sufficient in implementing career and educational goals. Dependence on the advisor lessens as the student grows into more independent decision-making. Ultimately, LifeMap supports students in directing their own learning process and outcomes.

How do students get started? Today, LifeMap begins by students using the Web-based tools and the LifeMap Handbook. They may enroll in the Student Success course, which has been designed to insure that they develop a sound and successful career and educational plan. Each semester the LifeMap framework allows students to perform their own scheduling, registration, degree requirements progress tracking, and career counseling. Traditional student services have been redesigned to enable these new processes. In an institution as large as Valencia has become, the LifeMap process has replaced the traditional individual counseling sessions for the majority of students without losing the ability to guide students or support them.

epilogueFrom its strong foundation, Valencia came to terms with the changing environmental forces in the 1980s and 1990s, a relatively short space of time in terms of institutional cultures. Yet, despite these changes, or perhaps because of them, two somewhat divergent patterns of measuring achievement emerged. The programs and partnerships Valencia Community College produced in this era caused the College to gain its enduring reputation as one of the leading community colleges in the Nation. The internal, daily, and far less visible but equally enduring commitments to individual needs and individual welfare were the other. Both the internal and external were important. Both were crucial building blocks in Valencia’s institutional maturation and development and, finally, both were cornerstones for the next stage in the College’s evolution.

part three p e r s p e c t i v e s

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The College learning Council, pictured here in 2003, was one of the governing Councils that resulted from the transformational change process that emerged in the mid-1990s.

PersPeCTiVes: The ValenCia sTory of TransformaTional Change

Places, Programs, and Partnerships of the College’s first three decades set the stage for Valencia’s transformational change process that emerged in the mid-1990s. That process has led to new vision, values, and mission statements, new core competencies expected of Valencia graduates, a new developmental advising system, and a new process of working, planning, and communicating with each other and improved student results. The culmination of that systemic and revolutionary change in Valencia’s culture and infrastructure has been the collaborative development and ongoing refinement of a Strategic Learning Plan for 2000-2007 with seven learning-centered goals, and related action agenda items.

The Valencia experience has been that, to be successful, the transformational shift from more traditional higher educational practice to creating a more learning-centered environment must be carried out strategically and collaboratively. The transformational path is not a straight line, and the journey requires constant assessment and careful navigation. The early navigators of Valencia’s transformational change process were the members of the Learning-Centered Initiative Leadership Team appointed by President Gianini in 1995:

Linda Anthon, Randall Blankenship, Karen Borglum, Bill Castellano, Michael Hooks, Susan Kelley, Paul Kinser, Gustavo Morales, Della Paul, Ann Puyana, Larry Gay Reagan, David Rogers, Sandra Todd Sarantos, Stan Stone, Roberta Vandermast, Laurel Williamson, and Silvia Zapico.

In “education years,” Valencia has evolved in a relatively short time from a collection of pockets of innovation to a collaborative College community committed to student learning and success. This sea change in institutional culture is evidenced in many ways. In a relatively short time the College has moved from the traditional paradigm associated with most colleges to something new, and in fact is recognized as an international leader in this change effort. This can be described as moving from:

• Valuing uncontrolled enrollment growth to valuing growth controlled for quality.

• Teaching-centered policies and practices to a more learning-centered approach.

• Administrative efficiencies to learning effectiveness.• Hierarchy for management to collaboration

for learning.• Dissemination of budget decisions to collaborative

budget development rooted in learning-centered principles and targeted to achieve specific Strategic Learning Goals.

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• Input measurement to measurement of results through development of a culture of evidence and assessment.

• Satisfaction in meeting numeric diversity goals to recognizing and engaging the power of diversity to enhance the College’s learning mission and impact in the community.

The transformational change summary described above and detailed in the narrative that follows has been the result of a collaborative and intentional strategic planning process that continues to evolve … The Valencia Story of Transformational Change.

the backdrop

Bernie Gifford, the Vice-President of Education at Apple Computer and a respected and popular writer on technology issues for the Chronicle of Higher Education, once said, “There are only two institutions in the last 800 years that haven’t changed. One is the Church and the other is higher education.” In many ways, Gifford was right — at least about higher education and the enduring nature of its institutional culture. Education always has been slow to change. And, when change was forced by external or internal crises, in most changes it engendered resistance or even hostility. Why, then, did Valencia feel it was time to change? And who at the Institution saw it as vital?

One cultural characteristic the presence of the military produces is allegiance to a “chain of command.” In the Florida community colleges’ early years, there was no system headed by a powerful and independent body or staffed by a powerful political figure that could communicate effectively with the Florida Legislature. The Board of Regents served the political needs of the universities, and the Commissioner of Education served the political needs of public schools, but there was only a director for Florida community colleges, and originally the title had little executive authority. Because community colleges were an outgrowth of public schools, the locus of power, if not control, lay elsewhere. Valencia was indeed more than merely fortunate to have Raymer Maguire, Jr. serving its needs as a powerful Chair of its Board of Trustees because he was an effective political communicator in Central Florida and in the State. But ultimately, it fell to the presidents of

the Florida community colleges to communicate mission, needs, and goals to the local political interests who, in turn, could leverage important State resources. Community college presidents, in other words, were in charge of their own institutions’ destiny.

As the colleges grew, boards and legislators expect-ed the same chain of command under presidents to work downward into the institution. Directives to change, in other words, became executive decisions that could create resistance among faculty and staff members who had little to no “bottom-up” input. Tension between faculty and administration was often the result. This historic tension between faculty and administration continued well into the modern era, often the result of the hidebound cultural traditions in higher education that Bernie Gifford had observed.

Cultural folkways and mores varied widely between the two groups. Budgets, institutional effectiveness, accountability, grants, and fundraising occupied administrators. Teaching, research, and/or publications concerned faculty to a far greater degree. The difference in priorities in nearly every instance was frequently less often a matter of direct or personal conflict, although that was common enough, than they were two sides of a cultural chasm. Faculties tend to be highly individualized, not group-oriented when performing their professorial role. Little beyond working conditions can cause faculty to address common problems or even crisis situations. Once classes start, the classroom domain is theirs. Administrators rarely question a faculty member’s power of the grade, their style of preparation or presentation, much less whether actual learning is ongoing. And, as long as students in a classroom seemingly remain satisfied, the bridge between faculties and administrators is seldom crossed.

Neither major trends nor a shifting emphasis in teacher preparation in Colleges of Education, nor new programs generated at the Federal level, or State-imposed legislative mandates and goals have been able to penetrate most academic cultures at the faculty level. Despite the intended and hoped for consequences of faculty development, classrooms have changed little if it all. Lectures can still be given by faculty who have not changed style over decades. Notes can still be taken by students only to pass a

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test; and interaction between teacher and student can still be limited. Even new innovations and new educational technologies have proven usually to be “add-ons” to traditional classes. The concept of alternative teaching or instructional delivery systems has been more a symbolic concession to change rather than a substantial commitment to it. Indeed, in many respects Gifford was right; cultures in education are resistant to change.

Valencia, however, historically had behaved quite differently. Why that is so is what has made the College extraordinary. Change had come to Valencia throughout its history, and it continuously arrived in “top-down” fashion. Going from 500 students in temporary makeshift quarters to one of the largest institutions in Central Florida and one of the best community colleges in Florida and in the Nation could only come about via change. But it was not the kind of change that only time or growth brings. It was also a matter of changing places, changing people, and changing ideas. From the beginning, Valencia coped well with all manner of change.Despite sharing a “top-down” heritage with other Florida community colleges, however, the circumstances of Valencia’s beginnings created a different original culture than most other educational institutions. Sometimes the difference between excellence and mediocrity is a matter of expectations. Valencia expected, from day one, to have to prove its worth to Central Florida. Had Valencia come into being with relative ease, meaning without the nearly concurrent birth of the University of Central Florida or without the controversy and perceived competition from Orlando Junior College, the challenge to prove its worth would have been significantly reduced. The historical traditions of measuring the ties that bind Valencia so strongly to its community begin there. In opening the Institution to all who came regardless of race, religion, gender, or economic condition, when measured against the prevailing Old South sentiments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Valencia had much to prove and to overcome.

It did so by developing excellence. Not just as a goal, but excellence as a survival mechanism. It had to be excellent to survive the opposition and the competition from its birth. To accomplish that, the Institution’s early planners, leaders, faculty, and students established a shared commitment

to excellence in everything. And, of most crucial importance to understanding the history of Valencia, the cultural notion of excellence as chief institutional identifier has never been lost nor changed. Success in enrollment, success in student government, success in site acquisitions for campuses, success in classes, as well as success in innovative partnerships, programs, grants, fundraising, national rankings, and reputation all rest on the same cultural bedrock of excellence. And, underneath the massive changes to Valencia that time and growth wrought, its culture of excellence grew steadily and solidly.

In 1993, the Reaffirmation Committee of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) in reviewing Valencia’s request for reaffirming its accreditation noted the climate of change and positive culture that its traditions had grown. James Hudgins, Chair of the SACS Visiting Committee wrote: “People [at Valencia] seem to regard very highly the privilege of being a change agent in the lives of people. I have sensed a very positive culture here at this College, and that’s something that does not develop overnight. A positive culture that is committed to quality and success is an important one that you ought to value, and I hope you maintain it over time. I wish it was the kind of thing I could bottle.”

To “maintain” its culture of excellence, Valencia understood that it was time to change as the new century approached. Three main dilemmas were at hand. All of higher education faced financial pressures, changing demographics, and a changing world. Despite the number of American institutions that believed they were addressing these problems well, and that they were prepared for new times, most were not. Change resistance was the obvious culprit. In 1995, the American Council on Education (ACE) announced that it had launched a new project, funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, to help colleges and universities respond more effectively. The ACE/Kellogg Project was titled “Leadership and Institutional Transformation.”

ACE intended to select approximately 30 institutions to implement comprehensive internal changes they thought were necessary to meet the external demands and challenges being placed on them. Although by this time, Valencia had already

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demonstrated its own sincere commitment to meeting its changing world needs, there indeed was something new about the ACE Project. It was the ACE goal to cause community colleges and universities to begin rethinking the assumptions and procedures that operated daily. Each successful applicant to join the Project would have to specify its own agenda for change, and that agenda would have to crosscut the institution thematically; e.g. using technology to transform learning and teaching, developing a global campus, restructuring the curriculum, or recreating diversity.

In developing a rethinking process for institutional transformation, however, ACE incorporated a requirement of leadership participation. From the Project’s perspective, how decision-making structures were used, and how to create a climate of civility and trust, were equally important in developing the agenda for change that each applicant institution would have to address. Additionally, ACE provided a launch mechanism for an applicant that was equally new and, at least for Valencia, potent. It was the requirement for On-Campus Roundtables. The purpose of the Roundtables, funded for ACE by the Pew Charitable Trust, was to engage a broad spectrum of faculty and administrators in conversation about the future of the institution and the implications for leadership. In other words, the Project mandated that new bridges be built across the cultural chasm between faculty and administration, and to the community. Finally, the ACE Project established another new wrinkle: cluster groups involving similar institutions or institutions working on similar problems. On March 10, 1995, President Paul Gianini agreed to Valencia submitting its participant request form, and the College was subsequently selected to join the Project.

On the surface, in its grant application to join the ACE/Kellogg Project, Valencia identified three broad issues it wanted to change. First was change to meet industry and business needs. Although the College had already produced a nationally recognized and innovative program of economic development under the direction of Sandra Todd Sarantos, including planning teams that corresponded to Central Florida’s regional economic development, Valencia thought it could benefit from working with other colleges in a

cluster. Her interest and that of the President was in infusing economic development much further and deeper into the College — into its mission, academic culture, faculty and staff roles, instructional processes, and measurements.

Second, Valencia was interested in greater success among its non-traditional students. The application was premised on Valencia’s belief that success for these students did not lie in “watering down” academics but in helping them achieve at higher intellectual levels. Student services needed restructuring to reach these students in new and more effective ways.

Third, Valencia was interested in clustering with other institutions wrestling with the best use of technologies. How to make better technology assessments and investment decisions and how to keep technology current were large problems affecting every institution of higher education, but especially those like Valencia that were located in high technology environments similar to Central Florida.

These three areas were interrelated, required developing a more comprehensive strategic plan, and a four-year commitment. With the application went Paul Gianini’s commitment to provide substantial institutional dollars to support the necessary work, including $12,500 annually for travel by Project participants.

Beyond the grant itself, however, was a learning revolution that Valencia could not imagine happening when it first applied. That revolution acquired a name – Learning-Centered Initiative – and a process would evolve; one that depends on a deep collaboration in the Institution that still defines Valencia today. But none of that was yet apparent to Valencia in early 1995, still a traditional “top-down Institution” when its application was submitted and accepted. Evidence of the revolution did begin to emerge a few months later at Valencia’s Pew Higher Education Roundtable held over two weekends in October and November 1995.

encouraging dialogue and consensus building (1995-1998)

“You are invited to serve on a 30-member team that will participate in the Pew Higher

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Education Roundtable …” began the invitation President Gianini sent to selected faculty, alumni, administration, members of the Board of Trustees, and community leaders. The task of the group was to discuss issues and challenges facing higher education in terms that characterized Valencia’s particular experience. Team members were encouraged to step back from their specific roles and engage in a broader collective vision of the College and its future. An important outcome of the Roundtable was the development of consensus around the idea of moving forward together on a Learning-Centered Initiative (L-CI).

Like many revolutions in history, the un-intended consequences of a turning point sometimes outweigh the intended. That is why history has recorded over and over that some revolutions fade while others, far fewer, endure. What lasts is usually the unintended. Valencia’s rapid evolution as an extraordinary learning community clearly was not anticipated. Only the intended consequences on a short term in 1995 were clear; Gianini believed that Valencia would gain additional national standing as an institution, and the grant effort would also resolve the Institution’s internal need for better strategic planning discussed during its 1993

SACS reaffirmation of accreditation process. Like all presidents in a “top-down” culture, Gianini felt he could control any or all unwanted changes the grant Project might produce in examining his leadership structures. Because the Project called for even more established connections with businesses and industries in Central Florida, and because his own senior administrative leadership, especially Michael Hooks, Susan Kelley, and Sandra Todd Sarantos, thought the Project worthwhile, neither negative consequences nor positive possibilities for the future were uppermost in the President’s thoughts. Gianini established a small institutional leadership team to begin work on the Project.

As a first step after the Pew Higher Education Roundtable, the College scheduled a series of Roundtables on both the East and West Campuses from May through September 2006. Each of the 12 Roundtables structured by the L-CI leadership team facilitators approached the subject the same way. There were five announced goals: 1) to begin defining what being a learning-centered college means at Valencia; 2) to consider what changes will be necessary to accomplish it; 3) to initiate a dialogue on important educational issues in order to improve collegewide communication; 4) to include a greater number of voices in the

The learning-Centered initiative used a series of roundtables over several years to gather feedback and helped to shape institutional consensus for change.

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collegewide decision-making process; and 5) to create a greater sense of common purpose in order to facilitate cooperation and collaboration.

It is impossible to describe the vast array of suggestions that were elicited or all the subjects about which suggestions were made. Everything in Valencia seemed to have been touched on in the various Roundtables: learning, advising, instruction, staff development, communications, computers, workplace skills, curriculum, counseling, facilities, administrative support and practices, general education, tutoring, class sizes, labs, tenure-evaluation procedures, multicultural activities, and continuing education. What is more revealing about the “readiness” of Valencia to undertake such fundamental change, however, were the questions posed by facilitators for discussion:

• What is a learning-centered college?• What brought you to this place in education?• What would we need to do to make Valencia a

learning-centered college?• What are the most exciting possibilities that

could result from this Project?• What are your fears about this Project? • Where do we go from here?

Roundtable participants, as they progressed in the daylong workshops through the summer and fall of 1996, gave mixed signals of both concern and commitment. Two themes emerged. That the Project was capable of massively changing Valencia struck many; that Valencia wanted such changes to occur appears to have been more open-ended and less clear. Clearly, the majority of those who attended expressed their belief in the importance of the Project, their commitments to it, and, at the same time, their concerns about failure.

In articulating both positive and negative risks involved, Valencia employees in the Roundtables consciously were examining the basic patterns of their own “top-down” institutional culture. Like all community colleges and universities, as with all businesses, it was an expression of “we-they” communications. Fears expressed about administrative support, e.g., “the Project will become lost among many others,” or “the College often spends its energy on planning rather than implementing a project,” were indicators of the rightness or the “why” of the learning-centered revolution.

Slowly, thoughtfully, and carefully, through the Roundtable sessions, Valencia built a consensus for change. Mixing community participants, administrators, staff, faculty, and students, the

Collaboration became more than a forced strategy in the 1990s, it became a shared commitment.

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College strengthened its resolve to succeed. The learning-centered goals became clearer as the Roundtables progressed. What was evolving in that time was Valencia’s commitment to becoming a learning-centered Institution. When the last of the 12 Roundtables was held in September, more than 300 faculty (almost all of the full time faculty), staff, and students had joined in moving Valencia forward.

Valencia’s Learning-Centered Initiative Leadership Team was established formally by President Gianini to see that the College moved forward together. Following the Roundtables, the Leadership Team assembled key participants for an Institutional Transformation Workshop in October 1996, only one month after the Roundtable series had ended. Change in all its manifestations was the topic for that meeting, and attendees expressed very divergent concerns and views about how change in the Institution should be managed as the Project progressed.

Change, they were learning, is messy. Revolutionary or evolutionary change is also hard work. One participant pointed out that while 300 Valencia people had attended the Roundtables that also meant that 800 had not. Those folks did not yet know why, much less how or what, Valencia was changing. Others in the workshop focused on other change management elements. To some the key to successful change or institutional transformation lay in organization. To others it rested upon satisfying individuals’ anxiety, stress, resentment, or hostility to change. For others still, change had to be divided into short-term actions and longer term plans to work out in the Institution.

Yet it was also clear to all who attended that Valencia’s transformation had begun in earnest. The most important conclusion from the summer’s Roundtables had been firmly adopted: none of this change was going to happen unless collaboration between the sides of the cultural chasm occurred. “Top down” was going to be left behind at Valencia; collaborative decision-making was coming. At the conclusion of the workshop, Michael Hooks observed: “We are in between two worlds.”

The world that had been Valencia continued on, even as the Learning-Centered Initiative moved toward center stage. As Valencia progressed past

its 25th birthday and approached a new century, one thing was obvious: in many ways, the College was dynamic proof of the age-old truism – “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Growth had been phenomenal. Valencia was by now the fourth largest (32,000 students) community college in Florida. It had become a powerful force in Central Florida, a critical employment and community support Institution. Its academic reputation was equally strong: its honors programs, its transfer programs, and its certificate and degree programs all lent substance to the excellence that a now mature Valencia sustained. It had become a nationally admired community college, the envy of many and the beacon of hope and value which community colleges had aspired to since their 19th century roots first went into the ground in community after community.

Yet, the growth was accompanied by the same con-stant revenue shortfalls plaguing other institut- ions. Year after year, enrollments ran beyond budgets strapped for cash. And, although Valencia had grown very adept at securing grants and managing resources, the same extant problems persisted. Many who came to Valencia did not finish successfully. Class sizes grew larger. More and more adjunct faculty were needed. Facility growth slowed.

Much as the College’s first locations were inte-grated with Central Florida’s own growth patterns — the arrival of Martin and the space industry, tourism and Disney, interstates and travel — Valencia by the mid-1990s was caught in those identical challenges, but potentially in different geographic places as well. The western section of the Greeneway was opened, and both East and West campuses “profited” as a result. Each became even easier to attend for local Central Florida residents. By 1997 a new focus seemed more to center on what was being labeled the “High Tech Corridor,” the intersection of Interstate 75 and Interstate 4, well to the east of Orlando.

Valencia, the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida, and others in the State, including its governors, the Florida Legislature, agencies like Enterprise Florida and the High Tech Council, lobby groups like Associated Industries, the Orlando International Airport, and the Economic Development Commission of Mid-Florida all sought a vision that a new “Silicon Valley”

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would be built there. The economic development program that Valencia had begun was clearly a powerful part of the high-tech world of Central Florida. The future of the entire Central Florida region, it seemed, belonged to high technology and Valencia’s future was inseparable from it. Shortages of skilled technicians, the financing of expensive new programs, and attracting diverse students to them were not new challenges for Valencia. But indeed they comprised the latest and updated issues and achievements in its institutional life. Trying to create a new Silicon Valley was a risk well worth taking for the economic future of Central Florida.

The State of Florida stepped up in 1997 to help. The Legislature passed two significant proposals to assist Central Florida in its quest to attract the microchip industry. First, it provided cash grants up to $15 million to start new factories that make a minimum $100 million investment and produce at least 150 new jobs. Second, it offered the industry sales tax refunds on purchases of related business machinery. The three established universities closest to the region – the University of Central Florida, the University of Florida, and the University of South Florida – claimed the ability to graduate quickly more than 2,000 engineers, and Valencia was obviously the most experienced and successful of the Associate in Science Degree and training institutions. And, Valencia did its part in 1997. The College signed an agreement with Cirent Semiconductor of Orlando, a joint venture created by Lucent Technologies and Cirrus Logic, Inc. to begin a new Associate in Arts degree program specializing in microelectronics technologies.

Little wonder, either, with its extraordinary economic development efforts and accomplish-ments that Valencia would be named the “Community College of the Year” in 1998 by the National Alliance of Business. “Way to Go, Valencia!” was the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial banner headline of August 26, 1998 when the award announcement was made. “What an achievement” was the editorial’s conclusion; Valencia “should take a bow.”

Meanwhile, deep in the organization, underneath the glare of national attention and awards, the learning revolution that the ACE/Kellogg

Project had initiated was quietly but successfully progressing its way through Valencia. Habits of consensus, dialogue, and collaboration were slowly developing, thereby starting to shape a new institutional culture. In February 1997, the College published a mid-point update on the Project, revealing how far the Institution had come.

The October 1996 Institutional Transformation Workshop had led to the creation of collaborative action teams with distinct assignments. When the call for volunteers was sent out across Valencia to join the action teams, more than 180 responded. Four action teams were established:

Short-term Action TeamVision and Organizational Character Action TeamCore Process Action TeamCore Competencies Action Team

The Short-term Action Team was focused on assimilating the ideas for change that had surfaced during the Roundtables. Their main function was to decide which ideas could be implemented with relative ease and speed, evaluate them in terms of the contribution to Valencia each would make, and recommend to the senior leadership of the College which Valencia people should be charged with carrying out the changes identified. Because this was the team with “do-ability” uppermost in terms of visible criteria, the Short-term Action Team was given only the first two months of 1997 to finish its work.

The Vision and Organizational Character Action Team had responsibility for a lengthier and much broader assignment. The Roundtables had elicited visionary ideas as well as concrete suggestions for change from their participants. In a published article only months earlier, “Building Your Company’s Vision,” James Collins and Jerry Porras had introduced the concept of BHAGs, “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals.” The participants at the Roundtables generated BHAGs that expressed expectations, goals, and aspirations for Valencia’s future, leading to the direction that they hoped change would take. This Team was also charged with administering a collegewide instrument to help determine the internal perceptions of Valencia that shape the Institution’s culture. This Team was charged with proposing a collaborative, collegewide process that could achieve that elusive notion of consensus on

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change. Finally, the Team was charged with drafting the preliminary vision, mission, and values statements for Valencia, and they were given two and one half months to finish.

The Core Process Action Team was to determine exactly how Valencia operated and how those chief or core operations needed to be aligned with the proposed changes and forthcoming collaborative relationships. This Team had five months to finish its work, assimilate its findings into a plan for achieving consensus, and propose how to re-position Valencia internally to achieve its BHAGs.

The fourth action team was the Core Competencies Action Team. It was charged to examine the lifeblood system of the College, the educational processes that would allow the Learning-Centered Initiative to create even more successful students at Valencia. It, too, was on a short time frame, five months, and at its finish, it, too, was charged to produce a plan for consensus and collaboration on the learning outcomes (core competencies) for Valencia graduates.

In December 1996, Paul Gianini published an article on Valencia’s change efforts in Community College Week. With input from the Learning-Centered Initiative Leadership Team, Gianini provided some very useful insights into “the how of change” for institutional transformation. The lessons Valencia had learned about change, according to its President, had not been achieved easily, but rather by hard work. And, he hoped they were worthwhile examples to other institutions grappling with change for the coming new century and its demands.

First, said Gianini, change serves to preserve and perpetuate a core purpose and values that do not change. What the President, drawing upon the work of William Bridges, meant is that educators (and by extension others in a similar change process) will fear change less by determining first what is worthwhile and should be kept. “We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Gianini wrote, “but we need to make changes to do a better job of serving those values.”

The Orlando Sentinel published an editorial in 1998 praising Valencia for being designated as “Community College of the year” by the national alliance of business.

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”Second, Valencia learned that change and transition are different things, and both are equally uncomfortable.” “Change,” he wrote, “is the situational; it is the new – new boss, new sites, new roles. Transitions are internal in people preparing for change, and if individual employees are not prepared for change institutionally, then the change process itself will fail.” Third, when change involves more than just improvements, but is aimed instead at a whole new way of doing things, risks — or what the literature on change called the “Gulp Factor”— occur when ambitious plans are undertaken. Gianini referred to Stanford University’s vision to become “the Harvard of the West,” Nike’s vision to compete with Adidas, or from a much earlier era, the Ford Motor Company’s goal to make automobiles affordable for everyone.

Perhaps most revealing was the President’s insight about collaboration. Gianini wrote, “If one lesson is more important than any other, it is this: higher education rests on a shared governance model. In order to succeed, agreement on change must be reached collaboratively, and what we agree upon will be conceptually stronger as a result of collaboration. Collaborative decision-making should engage actively all those who want to participate in informed dialogue about the College’s present and future … We have learned that such an organization must make a conscious effort to slow down and take the time to communicate and collaborate, even though this is hard to do.” He concluded by pointing out that collaboration builds trust; trust in turn builds unity; and unity expedites successful change.

Gianini’s last insight on the critical importance of collaboration was even more striking when considered against the backdrop of all that Valencia had been through to that point in time. There had been two sustaining historic themes for all of Florida’s community colleges since Valencia began that made his comments extraordinary. The two themes are: 1) scrambling to keep pace with change wrought by massive growth rates, and 2) the enduring nature of the cultural chasm with “top-down administrators” on one side and individualized faculty on the other. Given those, understanding the need to allow time to communicate and collaborate was indeed a significant and defining turning point of Valencia’s new learning revolution.

Slowing down to communicate and collaborate is a relative measurement. In November 1997, many participants in a Forum on Institutional Change made it clear that they were not yet satisfied with the results. The consensus from that Forum was that Valencia had learned what it meant to become a learning-centered college, but not how to achieve it. Valencia’s L-CI Leadership Team and Initiative participants had been in a hurry: they had wanted to transform their College in three short years and were disappointed they were going to fail to achieve that goal. It was almost as if Valencia’s tradition of excellence mandated transformation must occur in that time frame, and anything short of that was to be construed as failure — foreign to the Institution’s make-up and identity. Narcisa Polonio from ACE who was a consultant assisting the College felt it necessary to remind those in attendance that their three-year time frame was unrealistic. After all, she pointed out, the Project was an experiment. But the Learning-Centered Initiative had become much more than just another project to Valencia. And, over the next three years, long past the original grant framework, Valencia began turning learning-centeredness into a very real and sustaining series of actions and events.

In 1998 and again in 1999, Valencia ranked second in the Nation in the number of Associate in Arts degrees conferred. Nearly 85% of all Valencia students were pursuing transfer degrees. The statistics compiled by Community College Week magazine documented both its growth and its success. Valencia was ranked fourth overall in conferred degrees in the Nation when its 40 Associate in Science degree programs and their graduates were combined with the liberal arts. Diversity also had made its impact. The College was now in the Top 20 in degrees awarded to all minorities, specifically including 13th for Hispanics and 30th for Asian Americans.

At the same time, 117 Valencia students were included in the 1998 edition of Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges Directory. The editors selected students from the Nation’s more than 1,800 community and junior colleges based on their academic achievement, their service to their community, their leadership in college activities, and their potential for future

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success. One of the Valencia honorees that year was Jennifer Howe, a single mother starting back to college. She had started the Valencia Volunteers on the West Campus. It was under her leadership that year that the group won the Walt Disney Community Service Award for Best Support Group in Central Florida.

As 1998 came to a close, Valencia had grown to 48,000 students. But there were problems. Although the College was in better financial shape than most of its counterparts, thanks in large part to its skills in grant acquisitions and the hard work of the College’s Foundation, money was very tight. The Board of Trustees was asked by students to eliminate the College’s intercollegiate athletic programs and to invest the funds in academic support services, such as tutoring. Many of Florida’s community colleges were forced to the same decision for budget reasons. It was not an easy time for the community colleges.

moving from talk to action (1998-2000)

Moving from talk to action was an important step in Valencia’s learning-centered journey. The transition from action to implementation was an important point of convergence for those at the College who had been pushing for immediate re-sults and others lobbying for careful, incremen-tal change. Despite severe distractions because of enormous growth, financial shortages, and con-tinuous pressures to expand from the high tech-nology sector, Valencia’s Learning-Centered Ini-tiative was making extraordinary progress. Beginning in 1998, Valencia entered the Initiative’s “Phase Two: Moving from Talk to Action.” In February, a new Educational Technologies Committee was established. The College hired a new Director of Technologies and expanded the role to include online course instruction. A new student advising system, LifeMap, was inaugurated. The College Academic Achievement Initiative had begun, examining strategies for improving student success and retention rates in college prep and developmental courses. By August, another new position was added: Vice-President for Curriculum Development, Teaching, and Learning. While all Florida community colleges employed chief academic officers at either a dean or vice-presidential level, Valencia was the first to define its academic administrator in official

terms compatible with learning-centeredness.

In February 1999, the college-wide Faculty Association endorsed the work of the Core Competencies Action Team. The new core competencies, which replaced the older skills model version, were profound in their elegant simplicity as they were profound in their impact. The new core competencies were simply titled: Think, Value, Communicate, and Act, and they were approved for inclusion in the 1999-2000 College Catalog. What was revolutionary about the core competencies, however, is that they were more than just defined as words. Each was expanded to challenge Valencia students in two ways: what must a student do to demonstrate thinking, valuing, communicating, or acting, and the second was how and where one must demonstrate it. The focus was on mastery learning by integrating the four core competencies throughout Valencia’s curriculum and on measuring and documenting student performance. Soon afterwards the College’s new Educational Technologies Plan also was completed. The next stage in Valencia’s learning-centered revolution came suddenly. In early January 1999, Paul Gianini, after 16 years at the helm of the College, announced his retirement. He planned to leave the College in March 2000, giving Valencia ample time to search for and find his successor. He had been only the third President in the College’s history, and his tenure was filled with major achievements. Gianini had led Valencia through years of great growth to become a national force in higher education in America. His was a time of a construction boom, adding nearly one-half million square feet in new buildings to the campuses. The College’s operating budget had swelled to $80 million annually, and grants had increased by 400% since he became President.

Contributions to the Valencia Foundation over that same period had increased by 600%, making it the fifth largest community college foundation in the United States. And, of course, Valencia’s economic development efforts had been remark-ably successful. “We will truly regret his leaving,” said Valencia Board of Trustees Chair Jan Lackey. “He’s been a tremendous leader. We are very grateful that Valencia is in such great shape. Not

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only does Paul leave a tremendous legacy, but he also has set the course for a great future.”

Learning-centeredness was at the core of the Presidential Search Committee’s thoughts and actions. There were 105 initial applicants. Jan Lackey, Board of Trustees Chair, headed the Search Committee. “I feel very good about the pool,” she said. “We’ve got some top-notch candidates applying, and I think we met the goal of a diverse pool.”

It was truly a national search befitting one of the Nation’s best community colleges. A dozen sitting college presidents applied, although none of the extant Florida community college presidents sought to move to Valencia. There were 40 hopefuls from higher education. The remainder was people experienced in other fields, including, health, government, and the military.

By October 1999, the list had been winnowed down to four. The Search Committee decided to visit the colleges and campuses of each candidate. The site visits were to be accomplished before the Trustees were to vote on November 2. But, even before the final four were selected, Valencia’s collaborative process had already provided substantial and significant input. All constituencies of Valencia were invited to nominate representatives for the Search

Committee. Writing samples from each candidate on learning centeredness were collected. Candidate “Town Hall” meetings were held at which immediate feedback from the College community was provided to the Search Committee. Faculty, staff, and students responded to a survey, the results of which were published. The survey showed Sanford “Sandy” Shugart the clear leader with those groups – 75% of the respondents said he “fits well” with Valencia. A second candidate, Donna Thigpen, received a 58% rating and emerged as a second strong finalist.

In both the Gollattscheck and Gianini searches, it would have been unlikely that what transpired before the choice was made on November 2, 1999, at the Board of Trustees meeting would have happened. For six hours, the Board members discussed and debated. Apart from agreeably flipping a coin to determine which Trustees would speak first — those who had visited Thigpen’s college in North Dakota or Shugart’s college in Texas – nothing was simple. The Trustees explored every facet of each, right down to Donna Thigpen’s penchant for chocolate as compared to Shugart’s love for peanut butter straight from a jar. After four hours, the trustees remained split evenly between the two. A large contingent of faculty, staff, and students, a vocally pro-Shugart crowd, watched respectfully as the lengthy proceedings slowly unfolded. When the Board took breaks, audience members tensely

in the late 1990s, the College’s athletics program was eliminated due to a realignment of priorities within student services.

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conversed and in some cases subtly, and not so subtly, lobbied Board members. Eventually, Committee Chair Lackey broke the deadlock by switching her support to Sandy Shugart. After she announced her intent to vote for Shugart, the remainder of the Board shifted their support to make it unanimous.

The collaborative input from the College had made itself felt. “People have said consistently he is a great communicator. He really listens,” said English Professor Chris Borglum. When the vote was over, choosing him as Valencia’s fourth President, Shugart by phone from his Houston office commented, “I don’t know that I’ve ever been so thoroughly scrutinized. Valencia is extremely successful. My first obligation is to learn and understand the place. I’ll spend a lot of time listening to faculty and students.” Shugart in his interview and in the site visit to North Harris College, his institution in Texas, had come across to Valencia people as very student-centered. He was quoted as saying: “Students aren’t cattle. They’re not enrollment figures. They are persons and we have to serve them one at a time.”

There was nothing casual or heavy-handed in Valencia’s search for and eventual selection of Sandy Shugart. Nor had the search been hidden from the College culture, a remote function of a small board and senior management group typical of a “top-down” culture. Rather, it was one more very large turning point in the history of Valencia handled with excellence. For the first time, collaboration across the cultural chasm was no longer separated as a yet-to-be born and fully implemented planning initiative. It had worked and worked well in one of the most critical functions of any college – a presidential selection process.

Valencia opened its doors to the new American century with a new President and a simple news release in May 2000. It announced that the College had been chosen as one of 12 to participate in a major national project sponsored by the League for Innovation in the Community College. Valencia had been selected as a Vanguard Learning College in the United States and Canada. In that role, the College would serve as an incubator and a catalyst for change at other educational institutions around the world. Valencia boldly had stepped forth into

the contemporary era, developing a national and international reputation for models, practices, and methods that could transform community colleges into more learning-centered institutions.

Underneath the simplicity of the press announce-ment was a complexity of commitments, planning, expectations, and results that had been years in the making. Far more than just another historical turning point, Valencia had been preparing for a change process that represented a paradigm shift away from “business as usual” — in mission, leadership, goals, outcomes, operations, and strategies. In short, Valencia had committed itself to meeting the demands of the new century with new tools, new ways of communicating, and new directions. While doing so, it intended to carry forward its own already established traditions of excellence, solid relations with its community, and its unique institutional culture. The extraordinary learning community Valencia had always been was about to progress to a new level through a far more formal and embedded process. Learning-centeredness was going to become the core of everything.

sanford C. shugart became Valencia’s fourth President in 2000.

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embraCing The Value of DiVersiTy

making the main thing the main thing (2000-2003)

With President Shugart onboard, the learning-centered transformation proceeded swiftly. In Spring 2000, 10 Roundtables involving more than 200 faculty and staff were conducted. Separate Roundtables were held with students. At issue were the College’s mission, vision, and values statements, and the role of the new core competencies in improving student learning outcomes.

In August 2000, only months after assuming the presidency, Shugart spoke at the College’s Academic Assembly, his inaugural speech to the faculty and staff, welcoming them to fall semester. Shugart encouraged everyone to become motivated and participate “by putting an oar in the water” of moving forward with the Learning-Centered Initiative. The new President immediately challenged the College to move to the next level of its learning-centered journey. In addition to significant structural changes to make governance more collaborative, Shugart insisted that major decisions and budget allocations be based on learning-centered design principles. Shugart told the faculty and staff about a friend who is fond of saying, “The main thing is to keep

the main thing the main thing.” He went on to say, “For Valencia, the main thing is LEARNING. For half a decade, the College has been in the early stages of an important transformation – from an excellent teaching to a great learning College … Now the time has come to move this Learning-Centered Initiative from the pilot stages and thinktank to a central place in the College’s strategy for the future.”

Within the next two months, Shugart began briefing the Board of Trustees on the status of the Initiative – including reports on learning goals, the Roundtables, educational technologies, and the enrollment surveys students had filled out at the beginning of the semester. By January of the following year, 2001, the new mission, vision, and values statements, redefining Valencia and its institutional culture, were adopted and approved by the Board of Trustees. Then, the College began its 10-year reaffirmation of accreditation Self Study and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), Valencia’s accrediting body, was asked to assist by approving the Institution’s request to conduct an Alternative Self Study that focused on evaluating its institutional changes. SACS approved.

There was much to evaluate. By July 2001, new collaborative governing structures were in place.

Valencia’s strategic learning Plan (slP) was adopted in 2001 with enormous input from the entire College community. a unique aspect of the plan was that each of the 726 “architects” of the document was listed by name. in 2006, community conversations continued to help inform the College’s strategic planning.

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Underneath the statutory requirements of the Board of Trustees and the President, the new President took action to move decision-making deeper in the organization by establishing a new governance model with several councils.

The new College Executive Council (CEC) — known in 2006 by a new name, the Operations Council — was responsible for the daily operational issues, facility master planning, corporate partnerships, and technology enhancements.

The new College Learning Council (CLC) took over programs and curriculums, schedules, fundraising for endowed chairs, scholarships and grants, assessment programs, learning support services including the libraries, articulation with universities, and enrollment management.

The new College Planning Council (CPC) was responsible for Valencia’s planning needs, including the budget, strategic planning, accreditation, and diversity. With the advent of the CPC, the L-CI Leadership Team that had managed the Learning-Centered Initiative from the beginning was disbanded. Collaboration had been immersed, alongside the tradition of excellence, into the fabric and culture of Valencia. The new Faculty Council transformed the existing Collegewide Faculty Association into an even more vital part of the College governance and communication structures. The Faculty Council was designated as the official voice of the faculty in matters of College governance and faculty rights and privileges, and the selection of faculty representatives to other councils and collegewide standing committees.

As significant as the councils were to ingraining collaboration into the culture, so, too, was the development of Valencia’s Strategic Learning Plan (SLP) that was approved by the Board of Trustees in November 2001. The seven Strategic Learning Goals identified by the College verified for all — publicly, succinctly, and powerfully — that Valencia’s new culture had indeed replaced the old. Learning-centeredness was no longer only an “initiative” – it had become Valencia’s way of doing business. The “top-down” culture had been changed and the cultural chasm had been bridged.

The SLP had been developed with enormous input from the entire Valencia community and its parts; in all, 726 Valencia members were documented to have participated in the process. A unique aspect of the Plan approved by the Board of Trustees was that each of the 726 “architects” of the document was listed by name.

The Strategic Learning Plan’s seven Goals dedicated Valencia to learning in everything it does and is:

Goal I. Learning First – Shape Valencia’s

culture by making learning the chief value

and design principle in every College

policy, procedure, plan, and initiative.

Goal II. Start Right – Ensure that students

experience extraordinary learning success

in their earliest encounters with the

College and establish a solid foundation

for success in future learning.

Goal III. Learning Leaders – Hire, develop,

support, and empower learning leaders

throughout the organization.

Goal IV. Learning By Design – Create a

culture in which clearly specified learning

outcomes and assessments engage

students as responsible partners in their

learning and in which the College’s

learning leaders can effectively create the

best conditions for learning.

Goal V. Learning Support Systems – Create

systems of learning support to enable

students to achieve extraordinary learning

results in classrooms, laboratories, and

beyond.

Goal VI. Diversity Works – Engage the power

of diversity to enhance learning and the

College’s impact on the community.

Goal VII. Learning Works – Position Valencia

as a powerful and effective community

partner for creating a learning workforce

in a knowledge economy.

To anyone knowledgeable in institutional behaviors, it was obvious that Valencia had come a long way in cultural change. But most would agree that until and unless the College budget reflected the mission, vision, and goals of the Institution, there were going to be practical limits on how much change

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really could be achieved. By 2002, learning-centeredness and collaborative decision-making had transformed Valencia’s traditional budgeting processes. The College Planning Council aligned the budget design process to match the planning goals and strategies outlined in the Strategic Learning Plan. And, despite State-mandated budget reductions, Valencia’s new way of doing things proved very successful.

By making the resources in the College budget coincide with learning strategically as well as financially, Valencia was able to advertise for new faculty positions, develop and fund an internal grants program to support learning, raise the level of tuition reimbursement to facilitate academic work for full-time employees, and provide new dollars to support faculty development for adjunct faculty. All that happened in the face of bottom line budget reductions. This, too, was another cornerstone of Valencia’s new culture in the making.

reflection and direction (2003-2006)

With continued support deep in the organization and passionate leadership by President Shugart, the learning-centered transformation at Valencia accelerated as the College approved its Strategic Learning Goals, implemented a collaborative governance model, and created a learning-centered budgeting process. As if to reinforce that the College was advancing in appropriate directions, the SACS Reaffirmation of Accreditation Visiting Committee reported in April 2003:

Valencia Community College is committed to learning as its core activity. The College has demonstrated that it fulfills its stated purpose by virtue of its collaborative and comprehensive strategic learning process, its student core competencies that incorporate critical thinking, valuing, communicating, as well as action-driven principles. The mission-driven nature of its effective planning-driven budgeting process is key to the fulfillment of its purpose … Valencia is an Institution with the collaboration, data, clarity, and language to move to new breakthrough activity in 2003-2004 and beyond.

The Visiting Committee, chaired by Stephen Mittelstet, President of Richland College (Texas), also offered a very direct caution:

Given the pace and the large number of activities, Valencia may need to narrow its focus to the most important next steps … Valencia has an exceptional opportunity to do what few community colleges can imagine in the realm of becoming a learning college. Focusing on a smaller set of most important desired outcomes can propel Valencia’s achievement in the year ahead.

In June 2003, a representative group of College leaders met with President Shugart to review the status of action items in the Strategic Learning Plan and to recommend priorities for addressing unresolved issues. The review yielded several priority items.

• Learning Outcomes and Assessment (#1 priority) — URGENT ITEM

• Professional Development — URGENT ITEM

• Enrollment Planning — URGENT ITEM• Close Performance Gaps Among Students —

URGENT ITEM• Prep Course Success• Learning Support Services Strategic Plan• Updating College Policies and Procedures

It was agreed that the four items identified as most urgent needed to be substantially completed as soon as possible since the completion of the other priorities within the Strategic Learning Plan depended heavily on those four. In addition, a precedence diagram was introduced to inform the work of the learning leaders in the hope of identifying roadblocks or bottlenecks, and to suggest that the College focus on completing those Strategic Learning Plan action items that serve as precedents for others. The diagram was constructed by listing each of the action items as either preceding another action item or as following substantial completion of another on which it is dependent.

In early Spring 2004, a work team of Governing Council Officers addressed Strategic Learning Plan action items that were still under development. Their review included recommendations from the SACS Reaffirmation of Accreditation Committee, independent Goal Team status reports on each

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goal, as well as the priorities suggested by College leaders in June 2003. An outgrowth of that review was dissemination of the Strategic Learning Plan Precedence Diagram to the Governing Councils and collegewide through numerous “Brown Bag” conversations for discussion. That collaborative process resulted in the Strategic Learning Plan Refresh Report (2004-2006) approved by the College Planning Council in December 2004. A significant conclusion of the report was to recommend acceptance of the Precedence Diagram, to use it as a guide for refreshing the Strategic Learning Plan, and to help focus the work of the College over the next few years.

As learning-centered work and future planning progressed at home, President Shugart shared some of his focus and time at the State level. In addition to advocacy as Valencia’s Chief Executive Officer, he also served stints as Chair of the statewide Council of Community College Presidents and as that Council’s Legislative Committee Chair. Assisted by Bill Mullowney, Valencia’s Vice President for Policy and General Counsel, Shugart developed and led a focused strategy of political advocacy with Florida legislators that contributed significantly to greater local authority and operational flexibility, stronger partnerships with regional two and four-year colleges, favorable legislative decisions involving such issues as student residency and excess hours to degree, significant increases in legislative appropriations to the Florida Community College System, the Florida Community College System funding formula being placed into Florida Statute, and increases for Valencia in funding per full-time equivalent student from roughly 75% to 85% of the State average.

Enrollment growth continued unabated as Valencia approached its 40th anniversary year. The June 19, 2006 issue of Community College Week cited the College “as the leading producer of associate degrees among U.S. community colleges.” According to Valencia’s Office of Institutional Research, the College’s total credit and non-credit headcount for 2005-2006 was just shy of 51,000. College and community leaders envision even faster growth in the future. Not only is the Central Florida population continuing to grow, but improving high school graduation rates are expected to produce an 87% increase in demand for higher education by the time Valencia turns 50 in 2017. It was anticipated that much of the demand would be concentrated in the southern,

southeastern, and central regions of Florida, and much of it will come in so-called non-traditional students. Recognizing that escalating demands on area colleges was almost certain, Sandy Shugart and Valencia’s senior management team began scouting around for land and facilities to house the students of the near future.

In April 2005, the Orlando Sentinel reported that Valencia was in the process of securing sites for two new campuses. The Southwest Campus site was acquired in late 2006, located just off of County Road 454 at Schofield Road – near the Orange County National Golf Course. Options for a Southeast Campus are under review as this history is completed. President Shugart referred to the new campus sites as “vital to our mission and growth in years to come.”

Valencia also looked to other sources for additional student learning space within the existing campuses. The 2005 Florida Legislative provided accelerated funding for Building 10 on West Campus. That building, the largest building ever constructed at the College not only would provide additional classroom space, but enable the renewal of such programs on campus as the laboratory sciences. In addition, building on earlier partnerships, in the early summer of 2005, Valencia and the University of Central Florida went public with their proposal for a new facility on College’s West Campus to be shared by both institutions and to offer full Baccalaureate and Graduate degree programs. In early 2006 it was announced that Valencia and the three other area community colleges and the University of Central Florida had reached an agreement that guarantees future graduates of the institutions “Direct Connect” admission to the University. By July 2006, President Shugart shared with the College community that the Valencia/UCF joint-use facility was the number one priority at both institutions in light of the anticipated enrollment demand.

The hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 presented daunting challenges to millions of Americans from Texas to Florida. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeanne posed direct physical threats to Valencia operations; Hurricanes Ivan, Katrina, and Rita ravaged communities hundreds of miles to the north and west. All of those forces of nature spotlighted the professional and humane qualities of the Valencia family. As storms threatened Valencia’s campuses, Security officers monitored

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the facilities and equipment around the clock, Facilities personnel helped the College prepare and oversaw repairs in the aftermath, Information Technology staff kept the Institution’s most sensitive technologies free of major service interruptions, Professors adjusted learning plans to make up for lost instructional time, and Counselors and Academic Advisors worked with students to help them balance College life with hurricane damage-related stress. It was clearly professionalism at its finest and resulted in minimal physical damage to the Valencia infrastructure and to the learning mission of the College.

Storms that devastated Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle inspired relief supplies and emergency financial contributions from individuals, campuses, and collegewide groups at Valencia. For example, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the central Gulf Coast in 2005, the Valencia Foundation earmarked $10,000 from the Foundation’s operating budget (derived from lease revenue on Foundation-owned property) to help support the students in the Louisiana Community and Technical College System. In addition, Valencia opened its doors to close to 50 displaced Katrina victims from Mississippi and Louisiana by providing “late-start” seats in College classes. The individual and collective

stories of the Valencia community reaching out in humane and practical ways to aid storm victims are far too numerous to chronicle here.

In 2004, Valencia was invited by the Lumina Foundation to join more than 20 other leading community colleges in the United States in preparing a major Achieving the Dream (AtD): Community Colleges Count grant request ($400,000 spread over four years). Viewing it as an opportunity to extend the College’s best work, to close the gaps in student achievement, and demonstrate that all students can succeed in college under the right conditions, a Valencia proposal was prepared with the involvement of hundreds of College faculty and staff. Susan Kelley, Vice President for Institutional Advancement, with liaisons Ann Puyana, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Joyce Romano, Vice President for Student Affairs, provided early leadership for the process. Other early AtD Core Team leaders were: Nick Bekas, Aida Diaz, Tracy Edwards, Rhonda Glover, Sophia Graff, Rhonney Grant, Morgan Phillips, Louise Pitts, Sandy Shugart, Michael Shugg, Martha Williams, and Silvia Zapico. In Spring 2005, the College was selected as one of four Florida community colleges to participate in the AtD Initiative, and Julie Phelps was tapped as Project Director.

Valencia suffered relatively minor hurricane damage in 2004 and 2005, and reached out to assist educational partners in the state and nation.

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The AtD Initiative is a multiyear national effort and as a participant, Valencia agreed to implement innovations and collect data on the efficacy of those innovations with special emphasis on their impact on under-served and developmental students. Through the AtD Initiative, the College has committed to closing gaps in success rates between under-prepared and college-ready students and for students from different ethnic groups and economic backgrounds. As a result of internal academic discussions, a review of the literature, consideration of related research, and input from recognized authorities in the field, Valencia chose to increase student enrollment in its Student Success courses, develop learning communities, and implement supplementary learning as its primary collegewide innovations. The College also chose to enhance learning centers and laboratories on the campuses and each campus committed to implement complementary strategies designed to further enhance the impact of the Initiative. On April 1, 2006 and November 16, 2006, the first two in a series of Community Conversations were held between College officials and members of the Central Florida community. Close to 100 participants discussed how the College and community could best go about working together to support the success of Valencia students.

As the end of 2006 approached, Hunter R. Boylan, Professor and Director of the National Center for Developmental Education, offered a candid “Evaluation of Valencia Community College’s Achieving the Dream Program.” In that evaluation, Boylan concluded:

It remains to be seen if Valencia will be able to reduce the gaps between under-prepared and college-ready students, ethnic groups, and math course success rates and success rates in other disciplines. However, early evidence suggests that progress is being made toward accomplishing these objectives. Furthermore, if the commitment of institutional admin-istrators, faculty, and staff to the success of their students can make a difference, then the future of the Achieving the Dream Project at Valencia Community College is promising.

In May 2006, the College Planning Council recommended a plan to President Shugart for future strategic planning cycles at Valencia through the year 2025. The cycles were designed to complement the existing accreditation cycles with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

(SACS) and would integrate strategic planning into all College processes.

Work on the first cycle, the Strategic Learning Plan for 2008-2013, began in earnest in the Fall of 2006 under the leadership of Fitzroy Farquharson and Susan Kelley, Co-Chairs of the College Planning Council. President Shugart appointed a 30-member College Planning Committee, which will make recommendations about the content of the Plan based on input from the College and community. In addition to Farquharson and Kelley, members appointed to the College Planning Committee were: Joe Battista, Amy Bosley, Tom Byrnes, Julie Corderman, Suzette Dohany, Geraldine Gallagher, Jared Graber, Thomas Greene, Marisa Guilfoyle, Keith Houck, Sue Maffei, Michele McArdle, Kenneth Moses, Bill Mullowney, John Niss, Ruth Prather, Joyce Romano, Sandy Shugart, Larry Slocum, Stan Stone, Linda Swaine, Chandra Torres, Kaye Walter, Rose Watson, Bill White, Falecia Williams, Renessa Williams, and Silvia Zapico.

As the final pages of this history are written in late 2006, Valencia is well into planning for the second national Learning Conversations Conference to be held under the College’s direction in early April 2007. (The first was held in Fall 2005.) The College designed the Conference for colleagues from around the country to learn about and exchange learning-centered ideas and best practices. Participants are also offered an in-depth, on-site review of model programs and approaches being used by Valencia.

the past is prologue

There is an engraved message, carved into the gray granite walls, over a doorway that serves as an entry to the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., the place that preserves our Nation’s most important documents of its history and heritage. The message reads: “The Past is Prologue.” For Valencia, nothing could be more accurate or truthful than that simple statement. Its historical past is its prologue to its future. Understanding the historical story creates the understanding that Valencia has always been an extraordinary learning community. Well before it institutionalized the idea or even understood how to plan for its development, excellence was its seedbed. Learning-centeredness is the fruit borne of Valencia’s hard work and successful effort. Among the myriad of professional writers, managers, historians, and social

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scientists that have written about change — radical, slow, spontaneous, revolutionary, evolutionary, or planned — lies a common theme. Changing a culture is hard work, but Valencia has done this through planning, involvement, consensus building, and communication.

These have been just the first few chapters of a remarkable unfolding story. In the years to come there will be more “Places” constructed and “Programs and Partnerships” forged between the people of Valencia and the communities they serve. The transformational learning-centered change process will continue ... after more than a decade, it has become an integral part of the institutional culture. Valencia Community College is well positioned by its academic culture and philosophy to continue its evolution as an extraordinary learning community. The Valencia Story chronicled here tells of a College populated by people of commitment, talent, energy, and hope. These, and many other strengths, have made and continue to make Valencia a remarkable place to learn and to work.

The OrlandO Sentinel sToryValencia gratefully acknowledges the support of the Orlando Sentinel as we produce Valencia Community College A HISTORY OF AN EXTRAORDINARY LEARNING COMMUNITY and salutes the Orlando Sentinel for its dynamic presence in the Central Florida community for more than 130 years.

shaping the history of central florida

For more than 130 years, the Orlando Sentinel has been a dynamic presence in the life of Central Florida. From the publication’s earliest days to the present, Sentinel employees have shared in the triumphs and tragedies of their community. Their collective effort has provided readers with a reflection of the people, places, businesses and events that have helped shape the history of Central Florida.

Recognized as the oldest continually operating company in Orange County, the Orlando Sentinel printed its first newspaper on June 6, 1876, under the name Orange County Reporter. The inaugural issue was a small conglomeration of news and patent medicine ads. By 2007, the Orlando Sentinel printed, published and produced local news and information in print and online for more than 1.28 million Central Florida residents. That is quite a contrast, and what transpired in the intervening years is quite a story – the Orlando Sentinel story.

the early years

When publisher Rufus Russell printed Vol. 1, No. 1 of the Orange County Reporter, the population of Orlando was 200. It was a momentous time in local history, as the stirrings of civic pride had prompted the residents of the village of Orlando to incorporate into a town less than one year earlier. Times were rough for pioneer journalist Rufus Russell. There were few subscribers to the Reporter with orders usually received the week before publication and the number of papers printed tallied with the demand. The presses and plant equipment, dragged though the unpaved roads by ox-cart from Mellonville (east of Sanford), were housed in a wooden building in downtown Orlando. In 1880, Mahlon Gore, a Michigan newspaperman, one of the first newcomers to arrive in Orlando following its incorporation, bought the Reporter.

On January 12, 1884, Orlando suffered one of the worst fires in its history. While many local businesses were severely impacted, Gore bore the brunt of the loss with the complete destruction of his uninsured newspaper plant. An old military press was all that was salvaged. Gore went to Cincinnati and made arrangements to have new printing equipment sent to Orlando. Area business leaders came to Gore’s aid by providing $1,200 in cash, $300 in subscriptions, and securing a new downtown Orlando location for the newspaper. After less than a decade of operation, the importance of the Reporter was made clear by that outpouring of financial and infrastructure support. Irene Street was renamed Gore Street in honor of Mahlon Gore in 1910.

As Central Florida entered the 20th century, several newspapers in addition to the Reporter sought to serve the growing population. In 1906, the Orange County Reporter and the Orlando Evening Star were combined and became the Orlando Daily Reporter-Star. During the Great Depression, in 1931, Orlando Newspapers, Inc. bought the Orlando Morning Sentinel and contemporaneously acquired the assets of the Reporter-Star. Martin Andersen was sent to Orlando to manage both.

from small town to major metropolis

Andersen purchased the Morning Sentinel and the Reporter-Star in 1945, and the newspapers moved into a new plant on North Orange Avenue in 1951. Both newspapers did extremely well, and the plant more than doubled in size by 1960. Five years later, Andersen sold the newspapers to the Tribune Company of Chicago and he retired in 1966.

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Martin Andersen’s years at the helm of his Orlando newspapers proved to be a critical transition period in the evolution of Central Florida from a small town to a major metropolis. Under his leadership, the Orlando Sentinel, then the Sentinel Star, led efforts to build roads, airports, schools, churches and parks. His guiding hand could be found in the origins of many of Central Florida’s most vital and visible institutions – Florida’s Turnpike, Interstate 4, Orlando International Airport, the University of Central Florida, and Walt Disney World. In addition, Andersen played an important role in community efforts to lure the Glenn L. Martin Company, now Lockheed Martin Corporation, to Orlando. Local business leader, Jerry Chicone, Jr., once observed, “People think it was Disney that made Orlando grow, but it was the Martin Company that brought 30,000 educated people, substantial people who required the school system to be upgraded, that required cultural events.” Clearly, Martin Andersen and the Orlando Sentinel were critical leaders of Central Florida’s significant transition into a major city and tourist destination.

the modern era

Tribune Company, one of the country’s top media companies, brought significant financial resources into the operation of the newspaper. A massive production center was added to the original plant building in 1981. More recently the company further expanded its production center and acquired properties adjacent to existing facilities to round out the operation. In the modern era, dedicated publishers and editors have guided the Orlando Sentinel. William Conomos served as editor and publisher from 1966-1976. Succeeding publishers include Charles T. Brumback, Harold R. “Tip” Lifvendahl, John P. Puerner and Kathleen M. Waltz. Succeeding editors include James D. Squires, C. David Burgin, L. John Haile, Timothy A. Franklin and Charlotte H. Hall.

The newspaper’s reputation for solid news coverage and investigative reporting has been enhanced in recent years. In 1988, the Sentinel earned its first Pulitzer Prize for an editorial series on mismanaged growth in Central Florida. A second Pulitzer came in 1993 for an investigative news series about property seizures by a local law enforcement agency. In 2000, a third Pulitzer was awarded to the newspaper for a yearlong series of editorials advocating the regulatory reform of cash-advance businesses.

In the 1990s the company moved aggressively from a newspaper publisher into a multimedia company and renamed itself Orlando Sentinel Communications to reflect its broadening mission. The company became the local leader in providing news and information in a variety of ways, to a variety of audiences. It was a pioneer in partnerships with electronic and digital media, and in developing Web sites. Many of its staff members became adept in multiple media. The Sentinel also responded to an increasingly diverse community with the creation of a Spanish language weekly newspaper, El Sentinel, and its companion Web site in 2001.

As more consumers began moving to the Web for news and information, the Sentinel developed more robust and diverse offerings online. The largest, OrlandoSentinel.com, focuses on up-to-the-minute news all day long and enhanced content, including video, photo galleries, blogs, searchable databases and user feedback. The company’s portfolio has grown to include several Web sites, a series of weekly and monthly niche publications, weekly Forum community newspapers and a direct marketing firm, Tribune Direct/Orlando.

The company also strives to address community needs as a philanthropic leader – providing several million dollars in value to community groups each year. Sentinel Charities, which began in 1969, gave $23,000 to the community in its first year. Sentinel Santa started in 1978, raising more than $52,000 for gifts for needy children. In 1990, Sentinel Charities and Sentinel Santa became funds of the McCormick Tribune Foundation. In 1998, they were combined to create the Orlando Sentinel Family Fund, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which raises money for children, families and the elderly and, when needed, for disaster relief. In 2000, the Fund granted $2.5 million, having grown 1,000-fold since the first charitable effort began in 1969. The Orlando Sentinel story makes clear that the history of Central Florida and its daily newspaper are intertwined. It is difficult to imagine what this community would be like today had there not been the constant presence and frequent guidance of the Sentinel and its news and editorial pages.

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index

ABC Liquors, Inc. .................................................. 68Academic Assembly, Valencia ....................................104Achieving the Dream (AtD) Initiative

[also AtD Grant], Valencia ..........................109, 110Adams, Tom ......................................................... 69Adidas ................................................................100Advisory Committee(s), Valencia ................. 24-27, 29, 48Allen, Carolyn ...................................................41, 76Allred, Glenn ........................................................ 83Alumni Association, Valencia ............................... 69-70Amazing Kreskin, The ............................................. 80American Association of Community and

Junior Colleges (AACJC) ................................... 47American Council on Education (ACE) ...... 93-94, 98, 100American Film Institute ............................................81American Registry of Inhalation Therapists ................... 28Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ......................... 76Andersen, Martin .....................17, 20-22, 24-25, 111-112Andrews, Beverlee .................................................. 70Anthon, Linda .......................................................91Antigone, Valencia .................................................. 80Apple Computer .................................................... 92Applebaum, Ivan .................................................... 86Armed Occupation Act of 1842 ..................................14Art Department, Valencia ......................................... 79Arte, Valencia ........................................................ 83Articulation Agreement .......................................30-31ASSET Assessment Instrument, Valencia ...................... 86Associate in Applied Sciences

(A.A.S.) Degree, Valencia ............................. 59-60Associate in Arts (A.A.) Degree [also A.A. Pre-Major

at Valencia] ................................................ 59-60Associate in Arts Degree: General Studies, Valencia ......................................................... 59Associate in Science (A.S.) Degree ........ 58-59, 62, 98, 100Associated Industries ............................................... 97AT&T ...................................................................77Athletics Program, Valencia .................................83, 102

Bailey, Pearl .......................................................... 80Bailey, Thomas ..................................................19, 23Ballas, Peter .......................................................... 29Bank of America .................................................... 68Barbour, Bob ........................................................ 83Battista, Joe .......................................................... 110Baxter, Fiona ......................................................... 65Bekas, Nick ..........................................................109Begley, Ed, Jr. ........................................................81Beninati, Anthony ...................................................41Bennett, Nikki ....................................................... 85Bennett, William .................................................... 52Black Advisory Committee, Valencia ........................74-75Black Box Theater, Valencia .................................. 79-81Blankenship, Randall ...............................................91Blue Key, University of Florida .................................. 24Boca Raton ........................................................... 22Board of Trustees, Valencia ..........26-27, 29, 31, 37, 43, 45 47-50, 53, 60, 73, 74, 92, 95, 101, 102, 104, 105Borglum, Chris ..................................................... 85Borglum, Karen .....................................................91Bosley, Amy ......................................................... 110

Boylan, Hunter R. ................................................. 110Brain Bowl, Valencia .......................................... 84-85Brandolini, Ron ..................................................... 71Brechner, Joseph ..............................................20, 23Brevard Community College ................................. 19, 57Bridges, William .................................................... 99Brogan, Frank ....................................................... 53Bronson, Irlo “Bud” ............................................... 50Brooks, Vicki ......................................................... 74Brown, Diane ........................................................ 85Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas ................19Bryan, Virginia ...................................................... 26Bryant, Farris .............................................. 20, 22-23Bulat, Don ........................................................... 33Burns, Haydon ...................................................... 23 Business Advisory Council (BAC), Valencia ...................77Byrnes, Tom ........................................................ 110

California Association of Community Colleges .............. 49California Institute of the Arts ....................................81Campus Planning [also Master Plan], Valencia .......... 34-39 51-52, 105Cape Canaveral ...................................................14-15Carlton, Fran ........................................................ 50Carmody, Robert ................................................... 60Cary, Freeman ....................................................... 28Castellano, Bill ......................................7-8, 80, 84, 91Center for Continuing Education for Women

(CCEW), Valencia ...................................48, 77-78Center for Global Languages, Valencia ........................ 54Center for High Tech Training for Individuals

with Disabilities, Valencia ...............................76-77Center for Independence, Training, and Education (CITE) ................................................................ 43Center for Independent Living ...................................77Central Florida Community College ........................... 46Central Florida Development Committee .................... 23Central Florida Hotel and Lodging Association ........ 63, 68Central Florida Regional Hospital, Sanford .................. 63Central Florida Restaurant Association ........................ 68Chapin, Mrs. O.W. ................................................ 37Channel 9 .......................................................20, 23Chapman, Beverly .................................................. 76Chesley G. Magruder Foundation ............................... 68Chicago Tribune Syndicate ..............................................21Chick, C.E. “Gene” ................................................ 33Chicone Family ................................................. 42-44Chicone, Jerry, Jr. ........................................42-43, 112Chicone, Jerry, Sr. ............................................ 42-43Chronicle of Higher Education ............................................ 92Cirent Semiconductor ............................................. 98Cirrus Logic, Inc. ................................................... 98Civil Rights [also Race Relations] ........................... 73, 93Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI of ........................18, 52Clemente Project at Valencia [also Prometheus Project] ... 78Clemente Project in the Humanities ........................... 78Clemente, Ralph .................................................... 87Clinton Administration ........................................... 70College Academic Achievement Initiative, Valencia ........ 101College Catalog, Valencia ........................................ 101College Learning Council (CLC), Valencia ......91, 105, 108

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College Night, Valencia ............................................ 66College Planning Council (CPC), Valencia ..74, 105-107, 110College Planning Committee, Valencia ....................... 110College Reach-Out Program (CROP), Valencia ......... 70-71Collegis ............................................................... 68Collins, James ....................................................... 98Collins, LeRoy .......................................................19Colonial Plaza Shopping Center ................................40Columbia University ............................................... 72Common Course Numbering [also Common

Course Prerequisites] ...............................30-31, 59Community College Council (CCC) ......................19, 23Community College of the Year, Valencia ............77, 98-99Community College Week ........................... 99-100, 107Community Conversations, Valencia .......................... 110Computer Assisted Design and Drafting

(CADD), Valencia ............................................ 76Computer Programmer Training (CPT)

[also PC Support Specialist Program], Valencia ....... 76Corderman, Julie .................................................. 110Core Competencies Action Team [also Core

Competencies], Valencia ....... 91, 98-99, 101, 104, 106Core Process Action Team, Valencia ....................... 98-99Costa Rica ....................................................... 64-65Council of Community College Presidents .................. 107Counseling and Advising, Valencia ............................. 86Cox-Cook, Brenda ................................................. 79Craig, Albert T. “Al” .............16, 26-33, 45, 47-49, 83-84Craig, Ruth ........................................................... 29Criminal Justice Institute (CJI), Valencia ..................... 62Culinary Management Program [also Culinary

Arts Program], Valencia ..................................... 62

DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) .......................... 60Dallas County Community College ............................. 69Dallas Morning News ...............................................21Dallas Citizens Council ............................................ 22Daly, Tyne .............................................................81Davis, Dwight, Jr. ................................................... 49Davis, Orville ....................................................27-28Daytona Beach Community College ........................19, 46Dealey, George ..................................................21-22DeBord, Bruce ...................................................... 49Densch, Wayne M. .................................................. 68Dial, William “Billy” ...........................................21, 23Diaz, Aida ...........................................................109Dickerson, John ..................................................... 85DiMaggio, Joe ........................................................81“Direct Connect” University Admission ...................... 107Disney Corporation .................................................15Disney, Walt [also Disney World] ........15, 21, 44, 47, 52, 58 61, 63, 68, 77, 81-82, 97, 101, 112Displaced Homemaker Program, Valencia .................... 78Disston, Hamilton ...................................................14Diversity [also Diversity Works Strategic Goal] ..... 74-75, 105Dohany, Suzette .................................................... 110Dolly, Robert ......................................................... 17Downtown Center [also Chicone Building and

National Office Building], Valencia ................. 43-44Downtown Development Board, Orlando .................... 44Dr. P. Phillips Foundation ........................................ 68

Drey, Eugene and Jess .............................................. 68Drosin, Charles ..................................................... 66Dual Enrollment Program, Valencia ............................. 71Dudley, Thelma .................................................74-75Duke University ..................................................... 72

Eatonville ............................................................. 52East Campus, Valencia ..................... 37-41, 47, 49, 51-52

54, 62, 66, 75, 79-80, 83Econlockhatchee Forest Preserve ................................40Econoclast, Valencia ................................................ 83Economic Development, Valencia .................... 52, 60-62

73, 77, 94, 98, 101Economic Development Commission of Mid-Florida ..... 97Edmonds, Margaret “Peg” ........................................ 76Educational Technologies Committee, Valencia ............ 101Educational Technologies Plan, Valencia ..................... 101Edwards, Louis M. .................................................. 72Edwards, Tracy ......................................................109Eliot, William ........................................................ 84Emory University ................................................... 72Endowed Chairs Program, Valencia ...................67, 69, 81Enterprise Florida .................................................. 97English for Academic Purposes, Valencia ...................... 65Engstrom, Dean ..................................................... 26Equal Access-Equal Opportunity (EA/EO) Committee

[also College Diversity Committee], Valencia .......... 74Eschbach, Elizabeth ................................................ 78Ettinger, Beatrice ...............................................77-78Evans, David ............................................... 39, 41, 49Exempli Gratia, Valencia .......................................... 83Eyerly, Barbara ...................................................... 83

Faculty Council [also Collegewide Faculty Association], Valencia ........................................................ 105Fallon, Ed ........................................................20, 26Farquharson, Fitzroy .............................................. 110Film Production Technology Program, Valencia ..............81First Union (Wachovia) Bank ..................................... 68Fischer, Dick ......................................................... 44Florida Academic Improvement Trust Fund .................. 67Florida Association of Community Colleges (FACC) ....... 85Florida Board of Education ..................................17, 45Florida Board of Regents ..................................... 48, 92Florida Community College System ...............13, 18-19, 30

46, 48, 107Florida-Costa Rica Institute (FLORICA) ..................... 65Florida Department of Education ...........................33,70Florida Division of Community Colleges [also State

Board of Community Colleges] ........................... 87Florida Hospital ..................................................... 63Florida Humanities Council ..................................... 78Florida Community College Activities Association

[also Florida Junior College Conference] .............. 85Florida Keys Community College ............................... 46Florida Legislature [also Florida Senate and

Florida House] .................. 15, 19, 30, 46, 50, 52, 53 57-58, 61, 67, 70, 85, 92, 97

Florida State University (FSU) ......................... 27, 59, 65Florida University System ......................................... 59Florida’s State Science Olympics ................................ 72

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Ford Motor Company ............................................100Foreman, Freeda Louise ........................................... 68Fort Gatlin ............................................................14Forum on Institutional Change, Valencia ....................100Foster, Bert ........................................................... 35Foundation for Osceola Education ............................. 68

Gagne, Julia ...........................................................81Gallagher, Geraldine ......................................8, 69, 110Galletta, Michael .................................................... 79Garcia, Thomas ..................................................... 28Gastenveld, Paula ....................................................37Gateway High School ............................................... 50General Education Committee, Valencia ...................... 72Georgetown University ............................................ 72Georgia Tech University ........................................... 72Gianini, Paul C., Jr. ...................... 7, 49, 52-54, 60, 66,

67, 71, 91, 94-97, 99-105Gifford, Bernie ................................................ 92-93Glover, Rhonda ....................................................109Gollattscheck, James F. “Jim” .................... 26-32, 37-44,

46-49, 52, 80, 84, 102Governing Councils, Valencia ............................. 91, 107Government in the Sunshine Law, Florida ................... 48Graber, Jared ....................................................... 110Graff, Sophia .......................................................109Graham, Bob .................................... 45, 49, 53, 58, 61Graham, Freda Marion ............................................ 76Graham, Larry ....................................................... 80Grant, Rhonne .....................................................109Graphics Technology Program [also Graphic Arts],

Valencia ......................................................... 82Greene, Thomas ................................................... 110Gross, Edmund ........................................... 37, 44, 69Guilfoyle, Marisa ................................................... 110Guthrie-Morse, Barbara ...........................................37

Hale, Morris, Jr. .......................................... 20, 22-23Hale, Morris, Sr. ................................................17-18Hanna, Grace Gillen ............................................... 68Harper’s Magazine ....................................................... 78Harris, Julie ...........................................................81Harrow, Anita ........................................................37Harvard University ...................................... 66, 85, 100Hawat, Gaby .......................................................... 62Health Central, Ocoee ............................................ 63Healthy Partners Initiative ........................................ 63Hebert, Laura ........................................................ 71Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock Architects, Inc. .............51Helmuth, Obata and Kaasabaum ................................ 34Henderson, Ira Vinson ............................................ 68Henderson, Lee ........................................... 24, 26, 33Henkel, Bessie Galloway ........................................... 68Herndon Airfield ...................................................40Higginbotham, Mr. and Mrs. James ............................ 29“High Tech Corridor” ............................................. 97High Tech Council ................................................. 97Hillsborough County .............................................. 20Hillsborough Community College .............................. 36Hobbs, Leon ....................................................46, 49Holland, Bob .........................................................37

Holocaust Center [also Holocaust] ............................. 64Honors Program, Valencia .......................... 71-72, 86, 97Hooks, Michael 44, ............................. 51, 87, 91, 95, 97Hospitality Program, Valencia .......................... 58, 63, 68Houck, Keith ....................................................... 110Houseman, John .................................................... 80Howard, Dalton ..................................................... 83Howe, Jennifer ..................................................... 101Hubbard Construction Company ............................... 68Hudgins, James ...................................................... 93Hunton Brady [also Hunton, Brady, Pryor,

Masso Architects] ..............................37, 39-40, 68Husbands, Dale ..................................................... 62Hybrid Microtechnology Program, Valencia .................. 60

Information Technology (IT) [also Information Technology (IT) Initiative] ...................... 61-62, 109

Inside Learning ..................................................... 54Institutional Transformation Workshop, Valencia .......97-99Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) Program, Valencia ..... 72, 86International Business Machines (IBM) ........................77International/Intercultural Education, Valencia ............. 65Intramural Sports, Valencia ...................................... 84Ithaca College Film School ........................................81

Jackson, Marjorie ................................................... 83Jacksonville .......................................................18, 22Jefferson, Thomas ..................................................40Jennings, Jack ................................................... 24-25Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando ......................... 64Johnson, Boyd ....................................................... 83Johnson, Walter ..................................................... 76Jones, David .......................................................... 83Jones, Gerald ........................................................ 70“Jonathan Krane” ...................................................81

Kellerman, Jim ....................................... 27-28, 37, 49Kellerman, Sally .....................................................81Kelley, Susan ..................................7-8, 91, 95, 109, 110Kellogg Foundation, W.K. ............................. 93-94, 98Kinnick, Roy .................................................... 26-29Kinser, Mary Ann .................................................. 65Kinser, Paul ............................................37, 44, 52, 91Kirk, Claude R., Jr. ................................................ 27Kirkpatrick, Jenna .................................................. 72Kissimmee .........................................14, 44-45, 50-52Ku Klux Klan [also KKK] ....................................21, 22

Lackey, Jan .................................................... 101-103Lake Highland Preparatory School ...............................18Lake County ..........................................................13Lake Eola ........................................................40, 42Lake Okeechobee ................................................... 44Lake Pamela .................................................34-35, 37Lake-Sumter Community College ..........................61, 63Landen, Skip ..........................................................81Langford Hotel ...................................................... 29Laser Curriculum, Valencia ...................................... 60Leadership Valencia ................................................ 65Learning Conversations Conference, Valencia .............. 110League for Innovation in the Community College .........103

116

index

Learning-Centered Initiative (L-CI) [also ACE/Kellogg Project], Valencia .........65, 94-106

Learning-Centered Initiative (L-CI) Leadership Team, Valencia ................. 65, 91, 95-106

Lenfesty, Fred ........................................................ 33Leu Gardens ......................................................... 20Leu, Harry ............................................................ 20Lewis, John L. ....................................................... 25Licata, Paul ........................................................... 64LifeMap [also Developmental Advising], Valencia ......81, 101Literary Magazines, Valencia ...................................... 83Look, Joe Lynn ...................................................... 62Louisiana Community and Technical College System .....109Love, Ray 42, ........................................................ 44Lucent Technologies ............................................... 98Lumina Foundation ...............................................109Luzzader, Sue ........................................................ 68

M*A*S*H* .............................................................81Madison ................................................................19Madrigal Dinners, Valencia ....................................... 80Maffei, Sue ............................................................10Magnolia School ............................................ 15, 17-18Maguire, Charlotte ................................................. 24Maguire, Raymer F., Jr. [also Maguire, Mr. and Mrs.

Raymer F., Jr.] ................... 15, 20, 24-27, 29, 31-34 36, 30, 48-49, 92Maguire, Raymer F., Sr. ...................................... 24-25Maguire, Voorhis & Wells ......................................... 24Maitland ...............................................................14Malkiewcz, Kris .......................................................81Manatee Junior College ........................................... 33Mandell, Lester N. ................................................. 68Mary Tyler Moore Show ............................................81Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ........21, 66, 85Mastery Learning ............................................. 74, 101Matthias, Eileen ..................................................... 54Martin Company [also Martin Marietta and

Lockheed Martin] ............ 14, 20, 22, 26, 34, 42, 48, 60, 61, 68, 77, 97, 112

Martin, John W. .....................................................18Martinez, Rosita ..................................................... 72Mason, Blakely ....................................................... 29Matador Day [also Matador Week], Valencia .................. 83Math Superbowl, Valencia ........................................ 72McArdle, Michele .................................................. 110McCord, Bill ......................................................... 72MGM Animation School .......................................... 82McKellar, Catherine ................................................37McLeod, John and Florence ...................................... 68McCleod, L.B. Jr. .................................................. 34McNamara, Lois .................................................... 85Miami-Dade Junior College .................................33, 41Mid-Florida Technical Institute

[also Mid-Florida Tech] ................28, 29, 32, 33, 62Miller, Charles ...................................................... 83Millican, Charles .................................................... 23Mittelstet, Stephen .................................................106Morales, Gustavo .....................................................91Moses, Kenneth .................................................... 110Mullowney, Bill ......................................... 53, 107, 110Murphy and Hunton, Inc. ........................................ 34

Music Programs, Valencia ......................................... 84

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ................................57, 77

National Academic Quiz Tournaments ........................ 85National Alliance of Business .......................... 77, 98, 99National Center for Developmental Education ............. 110National Collegiate Honors Council ........................... 72National League of Nursing ...................................... 63National Science Foundation .................................... 62National Science Olympiad ....................................... 72Neal, Sam ............................................................. 33Nelson, N.B. “Pop” ................................................. 17Nelson, Ronald ................................................. 72, 86New Transition Program, Valencia .............................. 63Nguyen, Boris ....................................................... 85Nickel, Donna ....................................................... 65Night of the Living Dead ...........................................81Nike ...................................................................100Niss, John ........................................................... 110Nixon Administration [also Nixon Era] .................. 24, 76North Florida Junior College .....................................19North Harris College .............................................103Northampton Area Community College ...................... 49Nursing Program, Valencia ....................................... 63Nutter, David .........................................................81

Ocala .............................................................. 15, 18Odom, Jerry ......................................................... 83Office of Equal Opportunity, Valencia ........................ 74Office of Institutional Research, Valencia .................... 107One Stop Career Center .......................................... 78Open Campus [also Central Campus],

Valencia ..................................... 43-45, 47-48, 59Open University .....................................................41Operations Council [also College Executive

Council (CEC)] ............................................. 105Orange County ....................13-17, 19, 26, 27, 28, 33-34,

37-38, 40-46, 52-53, 70Orange County Defense School .................................. 17Orange County National Golf Course ........................ 107Orange County School Board ......16, 22-26, 27-29, 33, 46Orange County Sheriff’s Department .......................... 62Orange County Vocational School ............................... 17Orlando [also Greater Orlando and

City of Orlando] ...........................13-16, 18, 32-42Orlando International Airport (OIA) ......................... 97Orlando Junior College (OJC) ............... 15-18, 20-28, 93Orlando Regional Healthcare [also Orange Memorial

Hospital and Orlando Regional Medical Center] ..... 63Orlando Sentinel [also Orlando Star-Reporter and

Morning Sentinel] .......................................17, 20-22, 31, 79, 98-99, 107, 11-112Orlando Utilities Commission ...................................77Osborne, William ................................................... 80Osceola Campus [also Osceola Center],

Valencia ................................ 44-47, 50-52, 64, 75Osceola County ....13, 28, 33-34, 38, 41, 44-47, 49, 50-52Osceola County Commission .....................................51Osceola County School Board ..............................46, 49Osceola County Sheriff’s Department ......................... 46Osceola Regional Hospital ........................................ 63

117

index

O’Sullivan, Richard ................................................ 49Palmer, Howard ..................................................... 68Palmieri, Dominic ...................................................81Parent Education Project, Valencia ............................. 43Parrish, Charles ......................................................61“Partners for a Healthy Community” ........................... 63Partridge, Robert ................................................... 84Pasco-Hernando Counties ....................................... 20Paul, Della .............................................................91Peck, S.M. ............................................................ 26Pensacola .............................................................. 22Performing Arts Center (PAC), Valencia .............39, 79, 81Peterson, Barbara ................................................... 82Peterson, Curtis ................................................ 47, 50Pew Charitable Trust ............................................... 94Pew Higher Education Roundtable, Valencia ............ 94-95Pharris, Heather .................................................... 69Phelps, Julie .........................................................109Phoenix, Valencia ................................................... 83“Phenomenon” and “Michael” ...................................81Phillips, Morgan ...................................................109Pilloud, Pierre ....................................................... 63Pine Castle ............................................................14Pine Hills ..............................................................14Pinellas County ..................................................16, 27Pitts, Louise .........................................................109Planning and Educational Services, Valencia ................. 87Polk Junior College ................................................ 33Polonio, Narcisa ...................................................100Porras, Jerry .......................................................... 98Potter, Mr. and Mrs. Charles .................................... 29Pounds, Russell ...................................................... 28Prather, Ruth ..............................................41, 54, 110Presidential Search Committee, Valencia ...........48-49, 102Princeton University ............................................... 66Project MORE (Mentors and Orientation Reinforce Education), Valencia .......................86-87Public School Partnerships ...................................70-73Puyana, Ann ................................................... 91, 109

Reagan, Larry Gay ...................................................91Reedy Creek Elementary School ................................. 47Region 19 School-to-Work Partnership ....................... 70Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Section 504 of ................... 76Reinighaus, Ronald ................................................ 84Repco, Inc. ........................................................... 60Reynolds, Smith and Hills ................................... 38-39Ribley, Julia .......................................................... 65Ribley, Thomas ...................................................... 39Rice University ...................................................... 85Rietveld, Rick .........................................................81Rio Pinar ..............................................................14Richland College ...................................................106Riverside Community College ................................... 69Roberts, Charles .....................................................81Robotics Curriculum, Valencia .............................60, 70“Rocket City” ........................................................ 38Rogers, David .........................................................91Rogers, Hugh .........................................................61Rogers, Will .......................................................... 80Rollins College ............................................ 22, 52, 54

Romano, Joyce .......................................... 87, 109-110Romero, George .....................................................81Rooney, Mickey ......................................................81Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy” .................................... 80Roundtables, L-CI Related ............................94-98, 104Russell, Mark ........................................................ 80Russell, Rufus ........................................................ 111Rutledge, Don ....................................................... 83

Salsberry, Ruth ...................................................... 80Salz, Harvey .......................................................... 60Sample, Charles ..................................................... 44Sarantos, Sandra Todd ...............................44, 91, 94-95Scenarios Online, Valencia ....................................... 54Schlegel, J. Louis, III ............................................... 72 School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 .................. 70School-to-Work (STW) Program, Valencia ................... 70Scolaro, John ........................................................ 78Scott, Robert L. ..................................................... 25Sculpture Garden, Valencia ....................................... 79Sea World ..............................................................81Seminole Community College .................... 22, 32, 61, 63Seminole County ...............................................13, 38Shirah, Joseph P. ................................................ 47-51Shire, Talia ............................................................81Shorris, Earl ......................................................... 78Short-term Action Team, Valencia ............................. 98Shugart, Sanford C. “Sandy” .... 102-104, 106-107, 109-110Shugg, Michael .....................................................109Simmons, Eugene ............................................. 84, 86Slaughter, Brantley ................................................. 34Slocum, Larry ...................................................... 110Smith, C. David ..................................................... 62Smith, Kathy ......................................................... 46Smith, Easton ........................................................ 28Sorosis Club of Orlando .......................................... 43Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) [also Accreditation and Self Study], Valencia ........................................29, 93, 104, 110Southern Regional Honors Council ............................ 72Southeast Campus, Valencia ..................................... 107Southwest Campus, Valencia .................................... 107Spectator, Valencia ..............................................54, 107Spencer, Marlene ................................................... 64Spoon River College ............................................... 49Sprint ...................................................................77Stanford University ...........................................85, 100St. Cloud ..............................................44, 46, 47, 52St. Petersburg Junior College ......................16, 27, 49, 83Staff and Program Development (SPD), Valencia ........... 64State Board of Trustees Committee, Florida .................. 20Stevens and Walton, Inc. .......................................... 34Stone, Stanley .........................................41, 62, 91, 110Strategic Learning Plan (SLP) [also Strategic

Learning Goals], Valencia ...........75, 91, 104-106, 110Strategic Learning Plan Precedence Diagram,

Valencia ..................................................107-108Strategic Learning Plan Refresh Report, Valencia .......... 107Strawbridge, James ................................................. 33Stuart, Virginia ...................................................... 78Student Government Association (SGA), Valencia ..... 83, 84

118

index

Student Newspapers, Valencia ............................... 82-83Student Success Class, Valencia .................................. 86SunTrust Bank [also Sun Bank] .............................21, 68Sutton, David ........................................................ 78Swaine, Linda ....................................................... 110

Tallahassee ............................................................ 20Tampa .............................................................14, 22Taylor, Jamia ......................................................... 79Tech Prep Program [also Tech Prep Partnership],

Valencia ......................................................... 70Technical and Engineering Related Programs, Valencia ......................................................... 60Technology Business Incubation, Valencia .....................61The Alchemist, Valencia ................................................ 83The Andromeda Strain .............................................81The Inward Eye, Valencia .............................................. 83The Little Review, Valencia ............................................. 83The Sound of Music .................................................81Theater and Entertainment Technology Program,

Valencia ..........................................................81Thigpen, Donna ...................................................102Thompson, Gene .............................................. 46-47Thompson, Geraldine ........................................ 70, 74Thompson, Nancy .................................................. 72Throm, Qurentia ...............................................79, 81Tighe, Donald ....................................................... 80Tiller, Joan ................................................. 60, 70, 81Title III Grant ....................................................... 86Titusville .............................................................. 38Tompkins, Tommy ..................................................51Torres, Chandra ................................................... 110Training and Simulation Consortium ..........................61Truman, Harry ...................................................... 80Tulane University ................................................... 72Tupperware Corporation

[also Tupperware Auditorium] ........................68, 81

Uhl, Ed ................................................................ 20United States Department of Labor .............................77United States Department of Education

Rehabilitation Services Administration ...................77United States Missile Test Range ..................................14United States Technology Reinvestment Program ............61Universal Studios ......................................... 32, 68, 77University Club of Orlando ...................................... 68University of Central Florida [also Florida

Technological University] ................... 21, 29-30, 46, 58, 93, 97, 98, 107, 112

University of Florida (UF) ...............24, 29, 47-49, 72, 98University of Florida College of Education ................... 49University of Florida Law School ................................ 24University of Iowa Keller Plan of Self-Paced Instruction .. 74University of Michigan ............................................. 85University of South Florida ............................. 22, 97-98University of Virginia ..............................................40

Valencia Character Company [also Drama Program] ... 79-81Valencia Community College Foundation ........... 66-67, 71Valencia Dance Company ......................................... 79

Valencia Enterprises ................................................ 54Valencia Institute ................................................53-54Valencia Source [also La Prensa] ................................. 83Valencia, Spain ...................................................... 83Valencia Volunteers [also Service Learning] ............ 84, 101Valencian ............................................................. 83Vandermast, Roberta ...........................................72, 91Vanguard Learning College ......................................103Vision and Organizational Character

Action Team, Valencia ....................................... 98Vision, Values, and Mission Statements, Valencia ............91Visiting Artists Series, Valencia .................................. 80Von Dolteren-Fournier, Helen ................................. 79

Walker, Judson ...................................................15-18Wallace, Karen ........................................................81Walt Disney World Center for Hospitality and

Culinary Arts, Valencia ................................. 58, 63Walter, Kaye .................................................... 67, 110Watson, Rose ........................................................ 110Watson, Yvonne ......................................................73Wattenbarger, James ..................................18-19, 30, 49Webb, Ruth ........................................................... 63Wells’ Built Museum ............................................... 78West Campus, Valencia ................29, 31-38, 40-43, 45-46 50-51, 54, 61,63-64, 66, 69, 75, 80, 95, 97, 101, 107West Side Story .......................................................81Westinghouse .........................................................77Whalen, Patricia Havill ............................................ 68Whelchel, Don ...................................................... 72White, Bill ........................................................... 110Whitehill, Cliff and Daisy ......................................... 68Whitmore, James .................................................... 80Who’s Who Among Students in American Junior Colleges .................100Williams, Falecia ........................................... 70-71, 110Williams, Martha ...................................................109Williams, Renessa .................................................. 110Williamson, Laurel .............................................52, 91Winter Park [also Westside] ................... 22, 29, 52-54, 83Winter Park Campus [also Winter Park Center],

Valencia ............................................... 52-54, 83Winter Park City Commission ................................... 54Wise, Abe and Tess .................................................. 68Wise, Robert .....................................................79, 81Women’s Residential and Counseling Center ................ 78Woodberry, Ken .................................................... 69Wooten, Anita ....................................................... 79Wooten Fine Arts Gallery [also East Campus Gallery],

Valencia ......................................................... 79Workforce Development, Valencia .........................60, 70Worley, Susie ......................................................... 83Wright, Jerry ......................................................... 72

X-Files ..................................................................81

Yale University .................................................. 66, 72Yankton College ..................................................... 49

Zapico, Silvia ........................................ 52, 91, 109-110

a history of an extraordinary learning Communityby peter d. klingman

edited by bill castellanoand susan kelley

A week before Christmas in 1966, a simple resolution was passed by the School Board of Orange County. It called for the establishment of a community junior college “as soon as practicable with the hope it will be officially opening September 1967.” Within days, a lease for space had been signed, and within the month, an advisory committee was searching for a new president. Unnamed, unstaffed, and unwanted by many in the community, Valencia had finally begun.

A new college in six months. That was Albert T. Craig’s daunting challenge in early 1967. Local controversies, political inaction and national turmoil. That was what complicated his job.

The news from outside conservative Central Florida was both disturbing and chaotic – race riots in American cities, tens of thousands demonstrated against the Vietnam War and war in the Middle East, all while 300,000 “flower children” experienced a counter-culture Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Despite local and international turmoil, Al Craig refused to be distracted. He assembled an entire institutional infrastructure from scratch; hired an administrative team, faculty, and staff; determined a name for the college; secured a temporary campus location; created a course schedule, registration process, college catalog, student handbook, library, bookstore; and the myriad of other basic services and processes that are critical for college operations.

Valencia Community College A History of an Extraordinary Learning Community tells the story of how Al Craig, a small group of educators and the help of community giants, led by Raymer F. Maguire, Jr., met that six-month challenge. However, the Valencia story didn’t begin or end there.

Earlier in this History is the story of how powerful political and educational interests fought against the creation of the school. Some wanted to preserve Orlando Junior College, a private institution with admissions policies excluding certain minority groups. Others wanted to protect the newly created Florida Technological University (now the University of Central Florida) from having to share public higher education dollars. The author recounts an intense multi-year battle between supporters and opponents of the public junior college with candor and clarity.

Later, readers explore four decades in the Valencia timeline on three paths:

“Places” – the unique and fascinating circumstances that led to the development of each campus as a learning hub for Valencia.

“Programs and Partnerships” – a showcase of the rich and enduring connection between community needs and College responses.

“Perspectives” – the enduring work of furthering Valencia’s evolution into an authentic learning-centered institution by inspiring and facilitating extraordinary educational results from students. Above all else, Valencia Community College A History of an Extraordinary Learning Community is a remarkable story of teaching, learning, and serving Central Florida … one student, one business partner and one industry at a time.