2007 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
The 2007 TYCA Fame Award went to William D. Green for his article, "My Turn: We've Overlooked One of Our Greatest Assets," which appeared in the May 1, 2006 issue of Newsweek magazine. The CEO of Accenture, a global consulting company with $17 billion in revenue and 130,000 employees, Green credits Dean College, a two-year residential college outside of Boston for opening the doors of opportunity for people like himself. Son of a plumber, he assumed he would become a plumber too until a visit to the college became a “life-altering experience.” Green notes that:
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“While Americans are waking up to the idea that we need to sharpen our competitive edge in the world, many still overlook our system of community and junior colleges.”
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“An investment in your local junior or community college is a sound investment in the competitiveness of our country and the potential of our citizens.”
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Whenever he gets a chance to talk to young people, he urges them to consider options other than four-year schools because community colleges “can help them become better equipped to continue their education and to face real-world challenges.”
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Green encourages businesses to donate funds, recruit students, offer career counseling and encourage their employees to teach [business] classes at community colleges.
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Today he also sits on Dean College's board of trustees.
Green concludes his article reiterating his support of two-year colleges in the United States, claiming that he knows what he’s talking about; he is a beneficiary such higher education.
FAME FIRST RUNNER UP
The Public Image of Two Year Colleges Committee agreed that “Community Colleges First Stop for More Students,” by Matthew Santori in the April 13, 2006 issue of the Examiner.com was worthy of mention as a First Runner Up in the Fame category. Santori’s article explores many positive reasons for the popularity of two-year colleges among students seeking a higher education. While he acknowledges that the “junior college” moniker still implies the superiority of four-year colleges and universities, he cites Craig Claget, vice-president of planning, marketing, and advising at Carroll Community College who points out, “As more people go to community colleges and experience it, those views are disappearing.”
SHAME WINNER
The shame award went to “Community Colleges Not Making the Grade,” an article on the Opinion/Editorial paged of the Orange County Register, December 4, 2006. The article asserts that California’s community colleges dramatically underperform on their two most fundamental missions: graduating students with associate degrees and transferring students to four-year colleges and universities. The author smugly claims that “A good teacher would give community colleges an ‘F’” because:
The article's narrow view of community colleges sees their multiple missions as weaknesses rather than strengths, alleging that, “Trying to be all things to all students may explain a low success rate.” Referring to community colleges like a business, the author sarcastically states, “Sadly, we don’t expect community college officials to work against their own financial interest to reduce the scope or size of their kingdom.” The author concludes with a call to “reevaluate the curriculum at community colleges because taxpayers deserve education that “serves a public interest.”
NOTE: All major claims in this editorial were refuted in subsequent counterpoint articles. Still, uninformed, irresponsible articles—even on an opinion page—continue to perpetuate negative images of two-year colleges.
2006 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
The 2006 TYCA Fame Award went to Dr. Betty Young, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle riding President of Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio. She embarked on a “unique, innovative tour [September 19-28] designed to raise the profile of all community colleges in Ohio and around the nation as the Economic Engine of the new economy.” She called her tour “Lessons for Leno” in response to frequent and disparaging remarks about community colleges and two-year college students on The Tonight Show (last year's selection for the Shame Award).
SHAME WINNER
This year, the committee did not present a Shame Award. One person on the Public Image of Two-Year Colleges Committee optimistically said that perhaps public opinion has changed with regard to two-year institutions!
2005 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
The 2005 TYCA Fame Award went to Clint Eastwood for his movie Million Dollar Baby because he presents community colleges as places of opportunity and hope, giving a catalog for a community college to the character that needs it. Additionally, the Fame Award committee felt that Million Dollar Baby co-star, Morgan Freeman, earned equal acclaim for his attendance at TYCA SE, for donating his honoraria to a community college fund, and for his high praise of community colleges and the role they played in his higher education.
SHAME WINNER
The 2005 TYCA Shame Award went to Jay Leno for continually making disparaging remarks about community colleges and community college students on NBC's Tonight Show. Specifically, the award went to Leno for his introductory monologue on March 17, 2004; therein, he noted, "Thousands of students gathered in Sacramento to protest the proposed hike in tuition fees -- all these community college kids." He explained that "You could kind of tell they were community college students," and then ran a video clip of young protesters -- presumably community college students -- holding signs bearing slogans such as "Skool is expensive," "Let us lern," and "Don't raise tooishun."
2004 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
Fort Worth Star Telegram is also the 2004 winner of the TYCA Fame Award for a February 2, 2004 article titled, "Don’t Dish up that Pine Tree Yet." In that article Dr. Tahita Fulkerson responds to Jim Lee, who was quoted in the January 25th article "Poems from the Edge": “However, by the time I had read enough of Guinn’s article to find my friend Jim Lee’s remark that in academia ‘any junior college is considered Siberia,’ I knew that I had to present another view of professional life at two-year colleges. If Rattan would ‘eat wood’ to leave his employer of three decades, it may be because he just doesn’t understand the mission of the institution.”
SHAME WINNER
Fort Worth Star Telegram is the 2004 TYCA Shame Award for the article "Poems from the Edge," published on January 25th of 2004, in which the following comment was made in a quote from Dr. Jim Lee: “In our line of work, any junior college is considered Siberia. Most people teaching at them would probably eat wood to get out. But if you stay on junior college faculty too long, unfairly or not, you establish yourself as a sort of junior college type. Typically, you never get out of there.”
2003 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
Tracey Wong Briggs of USA Today
Her April 22, 2002 article, "Two Years Changed Lives: New Arrivals Pursue Dreams" focused on the All-USA Community and Junior College Academic teams and honored 20 students for their academic achievements, leadership, and service.
SHAME WINNER
Heald College
An advertisement for their school included a dishonest and disparaging portrayal of the two-year college classroom and cost of education.
2002 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
Willard Scott of the NBC Today Show
On April 12, 2001 he saluted the 100th anniversary of the community college.
FAME HONORABLE MENTIONS
Mathew Daneman of the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of Rochester, New York for the March 25, 2001 article "Community Colleges Celebrate 100 Years: Growing by Degrees."
Ellen Olmstead, Chronicle of Higher Education for her May 5, 2001 article, "It's the Community-College Life for Me." This classically educated scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, U Mass at Amherst, and Columbia says, "I taught at colleges and universities, urban high schools, TRIO programs, community-based family-learning centers, and prisons. . . . Now I have finally bested my staying-at-the-same-job record: For seven years, I've taught at . . . a community college." She recounts the deep professional pleasure she gets from teaching at Bristol Community College (the college where the editor of TETYC, Howard Tinberg, also teaches).
SHAME WINNER
March 7, 2002 episode of ER
Nurse Abby and four doctors were having a personal conversation, and she said she attended Penn State. One doctor replied, "Really?!" Abby retorted, "Did you think I went to a community college because I'm a nurse?"
SHAME DISHONORABLE MENTIONS
Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston. He attended a community college and then received a B.A. from a special program for adults at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. When questioned about why he did not mention the community college on his resume, he said that he did not think of it as a real college.
Peter Carlson of the Washington Post. His July 31, 2001 article about Gail Sheehy's interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton has these quotes: "One of the pleasures of reading Gail Sheehy is sitting back and watching while she starts babbling pseudo-intellectual gibberish like some junior college professor who's been smoking too much wacky weed." And "Wow! You don't generally get a chance to see writing this kooky unless you happen to be employed grading freshman English essays."
2001 TYCA Fame and Shame Award Winners
FAME WINNER
Black Issues in Higher Education
August 17, 2000 "Special Report: Community Colleges: Storied Success"
This story reports articulation agreements between San Francisco City College and 35 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Illustrated with photos and citations of Blacks of high achievement who came from community college backgrounds, the report is commended for directly addressing the educational function of the two-year college and highlighting a record of student success.
FAME HONORABLE MENTIONS
Sam McManis, Staff Writer, San Francisco Chronicle, for the December 22, 2000 article, "East Bay Writer Hits the Big Time with Saga of a Black Family." This is the story of Richard Dry whose first novel Leaving will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2002. The story treats Dry's employment at Las Positas College and Chabot College, both two-year colleges, with the same respect it affords his graduation from San Francisco State University. This story models journalistic practices in the use of institutional names that TYCA would like to see adopted universally.
Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Education for the January 26, 2001 article, "Community Colleges Want a More Eminent Domain." This story reports on the Department of Commerce regulations that currently prevent two-year colleges from creating web addresses ending in "edu" and explores the consequences for two-year colleges by interviewing personnel at William Rainey Harper College in Illinois, Northwest Arkansas Community College, Cuyahoga Community College, and the past and current presidents of the American Association of Community Colleges and the League for Innovation in the Community College, as well as the author of a relevant article in the Community College Journal. The story shows a breadth of understanding of two-year colleges and the agencies that support them. It's tone and thoroughness provide a commendable model for the covering of two-year college issues.
SHAME WINNER
Hope Reeves, New York Times Magazine
December 17, 2000 "Lives: Evening the Score"
The author describes her strong personal response to SAT scores and in so doing passes on her unexamined prejudice that only students of less than average ability attend "the local community college."
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Fame and Shame Awards
Fame and Shame Award Winners
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