This is perhaps an interesting thing I find myself doing in a time that seems to be marked with never ending problems and few answers in sight.
My name is Ryan Desmond for those who have been in the community for quite some time, My grandparents owned the Desmond Motel In Green River. I grew up in Green River and after my enlistment with the Marines ended, I came back home. I enrolled at Western Wyoming Community College in 2018, setting out to start my education on the right foot.
The truth is I struggled in school as a kid (I graduated in 2005). And when it came time to decide if I would go straight to the university or our own local community college knowing that I was going to be going to school pursuing a PhD in psychology, I had some decisions to make. Going to WWCC was largely one of the best decisions I ever made concerning my academic future and progress. I was taken in by smaller class sizes, in-person classes and instructors and professors that were willing to take the time to work with me when I wasn’t getting something or had a question I wasn’t understanding the answer to.
I had the department head of psychology take me in and help set me on the path of research something that is required ultimately for master’s and PhD school. But I came to the school telling myself I was just there to get my degree get caught up and move onto the next school to do the same.
By the end of my first year, I had won an award for the poster presentations at the WWCC research convention and I had gone to my first conference to present my research.
I was a radio show host and had started the Psychology Club and was involved in the Veterans Club on campus as well. The second year I became president of the Radio Club and eventually Veterans Club also. I continued to do research and present and grow, often offering advice to fellow classmates and participate in my coursework. This year I became the student government president after being asked to run by a few fellow students and a faculty member or two.
And I found myself in the middle of a storm financial crisis at the college. A pandemic and students trying to get a quality education. Teachers desperately trying to adapt the needs of their students in difficult times. And I found myself asking ‘what is happening, how did I get here when I set out to just graduate?’
The answer is I was taught that I should always leave a place in a better condition than when I found it, and when I looked around I didn’t see many students working to do the same thing so I stepped up to do something if not anything to improve the state and condition of the college.
To improve the student learning at WWCC and to make the school which has done largely a great service to me provide the same service if not perhaps better to those to come.
If I were asking the version of me from 2018 if I should go to WWCC in fall 2021, I don’t think He would have enrolled. With such positions disappearing from the faculty. How can they expect an adjunct to offer meaningful instruction to many of these courses? Do course discussion with an online post and a textbook?
These courses require conversation and dialogue to understand and truly learn the material in the course just doing some arbitrary task only hurts the students overall learning experience.
The overall picture I’m trying to paint here is that when you start removing your ability to teach nuanced classes in person you are directly hurting the students.
You are hampering their ability to gain life experiences early in their higher education that could in the long run make them more successful. Life is not a perfect 500-word post and two replies it is having dialogue with another person in real time.
So today its removing nine faculty positions, it is removing the school’s current ability to teach at least three fields.
And that does not make sense to me in the long run fields might I add that tie into every other field of education in one way or another.
And rather than pull from larger departments they chose to eliminate departments in a manner that will only cripple its student base. I beg of anyone reading this letter.
If you have time, write a letter to the board of trustee’s secretary and let them know how this decision will impact not only the staff, but the students and the community surrounding the school.
I think its important to point out it is not important to stand up here because it affects us, Its important to do because it is the right thing to do. To not let the college, inflict wounds on itself that will only hurt it in the longer run to fix an immediate problem.
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