S2 E38 Community College Veteran Reflects on Leadership and Amplifying Diverse Voices - Howard Wach

Digication Scholars Conversations

As Howard Wach explains in this three part Digication Scholars Conversation with host Jeff Yan, Guttman Community College is not your typical community college. Opened in 2012 with a unique structure designed to address the high student attrition rate common in community colleges, Guttman only enrolls full-time students and was originally created without academic departments. With an established career in the CUNY system, first as a professor of history, and then as an administrator holding various dean level positions at LaGuardia and Bronx Community College, Howard has brought a wealth of experience and bold honesty to the challenging role of Vice-president of Academic Affairs and Provost at Guttman, from which he recently retired. Over the course of the conversation Jeff and Howard discuss a number of universal issues facing higher education, including decreasing enrollment and the intrusion of partisan politics, as well as challenges specific to Guttman, including the difficulties of catering to a diverse student-body from lower-income backgrounds with a campus located in the affluent borough of Manhattan. Despite the challenges, Howard reflects positively on his career with CUNY. “I had an opportunity to do a lot of different things in these different institutional spaces that I found myself in, and I feel a lot of gratitude. I feel fortunate to have been able to do that and I think made some kind of a difference in the places that I worked.”