COMensarations
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Pueblo and CSU-P: Some Suggestions
The local university seems to be having problems relating. Here’s some suggestions.
In Thursday’s Chieftain there was an article about Colorado State University-Pueblo and the Hispanic community. A consultant found that CSU-P did not communicate well with the Hispanic community.
On the other hand, I’ve heard faculty and administrators from CSU-P complain that they didn’t feel the school is “embraced” by Pueblo. (This was at a Neighborhood Partnership meeting.) So this problem is seemingly a two-way street. Let’s look at the problem objectively.
At the Pueblo Neighborhood Partnership meeting the CSU-P faculty seemed think that the way to get Pueblo to “embrace” the college was to send students out to “help” in the neighborhoods. I found this attitude rather condescending. So the first thing is for CSU-P, as an institution and as individuals, is to lose the preconceived attitudes that will interfere with open and healthy communications.
Next, if the university wants more acceptance and support from Pueblo then it has to start by offering an excellent education. To Puebloans this means that graduates will obtain a job in their field of study at a median or above salary within two months of graduation. Got that? An excellent education means the student got a good job upon graduation. It does not mean they had an “intellectually stimulating experience” or some other academic smoke for “we had a good time teaching your kids nothing of real world value.”