Tri-C (Cuyahoga Community College) is wasting money collecting student emails, and sending students buckets of threatening certified mailings, when the student tries to get out of a course with a black instructor because the class has crashed-and-burned. If you object in emails - they are forwarded to Cleveland Municipal Court - just because the University doesn't want to hear it - and it isn't 'prejudice.' Withdrawing from a course, or program, at Tri-C is a tsunami nuclear disaster, with unending aftershocks. Mistakes happen in courses - and that has to be accepted. Administrative SAVOIR FAIRE needed.
Black instructors don't work for some students depending on how the professor runs the class - it's not a race thing. And you have to be able to sign out of the class without getting put on probation for 'prejudice.' Some things don't work for some students because we all learn DIFFERENTLY. Learning is supposedly not a race or gender thing - rather an equal-opportunity-thing - where different options should be available and tolerated. One student does not get what another student gets out of an instructor, e.g. different lab RN educators should be allowed. There's money at Tri-C, but not for diversity of instructors, educators, and professors. Defining class problems along racial lines doesn't work Karen Miller; it's not black-white, it's complicated.
RACE should not be brought into most class, or discussions of class dynamics & curriculum problems. Ebonics & slang terms don't belong in most classes - unless it's a linguistics class. Diversity is something that we are all working at, not something to put a student on probation for when she is being 'b***h-slapped' and jacked-up to 'fit in.'
Do you want your son or daughter called names in class for hours? Try Tri-C. And don't email the details, fill out a POLICE REPORT. Karen Miller can't handle setting some rules about what belongs in the classrooms and what doesn't - she blames everyone else but herself.
Everything is just 'prejudice,' for Dean Karen Miller (Student Affairs) - who never sits in on classes (never goes to class to see the 'bad dynamics' in action). Dean Miller never follows up on classes where the professor has been out for surgery & is limping the halls, and never looks at the 'facts' before putting you on probation. Where was she when a student was leaving him a PEPSI so that he would/could stand up? Dean Miller needs some kind of re-booting - a 'chip' is missing somewhere. Dean May's comment: call 911?
If the professor has not been well, ie losing weight and had surgery - the students don't know the DETAILS of this. Yet at Tri-C, the students will be yelled at for HOURS when they don't tell-on, or report, the decent-but-not-well professor. That's Karen Miller's job - check on the courses, the professors, and the curriculums = student affairs. The Tri-C Administration has the medical information - NOT THE CLASS.
Karen Miller is a certified expert in making academic situations worse by sending them to Cleveland Municipal Court - discussions that need class meetings with the professors. She cant try a class meeting first. Tri-C can't do class meeting about 'bad dynamics' situations - with no threats involved. There's no communication, no professionalism, and no anger management for her - just erupt.
Dean Karen Miller doesn't want to hear it and can't work through the levels of problem resolution - she needs management training. Managers in businesses don't send bad dynamics situations to Municipal Court. The delinquency is Karen Miller's problem.
The Program Director(s), especially in the Health Technology fields, will admit that the course(s) need to be modified - and that the INCOMPLETE option - allowed in every other college for courses - was never worked out for health technology courses because no one bothered to THINK. The Program Director(s) can't get back to you with a Yes/No answer about a Finals option before the WITHDRAW period ends - they are walking the Appalachian Trail somewhere and unavailable - no auto-reply on their email account. Is that the problem of Cleveland Municipal Court? And then they can't withdraw a false case from Cleveland Municipal Court - the curriculum wasn't the student's responsibility - but this belongs in city court?
Dean Karen Miller over-reacts to everything, and accuses you until she finds something like the number of emails to blame you for. The problem is that many of the courses were never thought through in a 21st century way, and need updating for 2011.
President Jerry Sue Thornton has tens of millions to dole out for political consulting and marketing contracts for 'friends' - lots of time to pay office assistants to collect, read, and copy emails saying the same things. Meanwhile, courses have handouts, and CD learning videos, belonging to the last century - in the health technologies - where THE BUILDINGS ARE NEWER THAN THE CURRICULUMS.
Most courses require few emails to the instructor/professor if the professor has organized things well. The multiple emails, >10 get out of the class, happen in the handful of courses where nothing on the syllabus is happening because of the Millionaire game that the class has become. That was one class in the Fall Semester 2010 - a game show - down the hall from the Associate Dean of Health Science's Office. This Associate Dean couldn't walk down the hall to audit a class and see what was going on? Not on her schedule?
Dean Karen Miller needs to learn to LISTEN - no one wants to send more than ONE email about a problem, do a GRADE DISPUTE, or find out that the instructor should have retired about 10 years ago or at least passed on some of the class duties to her BLACK co-director. No one wants 20 certified mailings per semester = >$1000 that should have gone to hiring the additional RN educator in that class. EARTH TO KAREN MILLER: CERTIFIED MAIL IS NOT COST-EFFECTIVE.
At Tri-C, 'A' students spend more time getting put on probation for prejudice, and writing emails than they do in class. Again, A GOOD CLASS REQUIRES NO EMAILS - it's all on BLACKBOARD or passed out in class = the INSTRUCTOR IS PREPARED. Not everyone has minute-by-minute access to email even in 2011. If no email is allowed, then the list of phone numbers & faxes to contact needs to be supplied.
It is NOT PREJUDICE if the instructor doesn't work for a student, or if the rest of the class is making things difficult because the student is older and has been working in the field. If a student decides that she/he can't do the course as offered, and the money is gone/paid anyways, the administration needs to help the student to WITHDRAW on time or INCOMPLETE. Part of an education is making the decision to WITHDRAW; learning what you can do, and what you cant. If US Armed Forces had learned that lesson - there would be no Afghanistan & Syria interventions. The Tri-C ADMINISTRATION NEEDS TO JUST ACCEPT WHAT THE STUDENT DECIDES - without racial commentary. That things don't work out is a lesson that everyone has to learn.
We all make MISTAKES in the courses that we chose, and we all find out later than add-drop period that the BAD DYNAMICS are just too much to handle - especially with parents that are not well. But Karen Miller will blame you as the 'disruptor' until she collects enough emails for court - which is not why anyone takes a course.
Further, no one student is responsible for student disruptions - no one student is a 'disruptor' suddenly at 40-some after 2 graduate degrees at other universities. Karen Miller will not blame the DIVERSITY STUDENTS for anything - they can say ANYTHING in class, threaten anything, behave as in a bar or on a GM assembly line, etc. Like an American Idol 'shocker,' the person being labeled by Karen Miller as being 'disruptive' turns out to be the oldest student, the one tutoring black classmates, the one who just can't take the psychotic chaos.
The Health Technology courses, where the students are the most immature, are the worst scenes; night-and-day from some of the higher-level mathematics & statistics courses. There are two kinds of student behaviors at Tri-C: responsible and anything goes. Diversity students are allowed no boundaries, causing problems for more mature students coming from jobs or other lives. Karen Miller doesn't have maturity of judgement herself; she can't tell truth from lies even though liespotting is part of being a Dean. And 'threats' are not saying that you'd try to get 'help' if you were beaten up in a Tri-C class.
Students, especially in the health technology fields, should go elsewhere. The class materials & textbook in one course had the wrong formulas for Centigrade-to-Fahrenheit conversions & no Instructor/Program Director/Associate Dean noticed. No one proofreads the cloned handouts. The Program Directors are far too busy putting the best students on perpetual probations for every email that things were not as billed.
NO STUDENT WANTS TO WRITE EMAILS THAT THE CLASS IS A DISASTER, the handouts & textbooks full of errors, and that the instructor doesnt care. Reading is part of getting an education - for instructors as well as students. Instructors should proofread the materials that they handout, like they read emails.
Donald T. Misheff, Chairperson of the Tri-C Foundation is allowing what is going on. Money donated to the Tri-C Foundation is not going to improving/updating the courses - just for Jerry Sue's personal agendas. Dean Karen Miller is running a 'witch hunt,' with trial-by-fire probations, rather than an academically challenging community college - where the brightest students can go to class, not her office, and attend class without ending up in court for emails. Emails saying that there's no fairness, or discipline, in classes, and that the professor is making the excuse that she has a 'touch of Alzheimers,' shouldn't have to be written ANYWHERE. Message: Get out of Tri-C, and don't give Donald Misheff a Foundation $2 bill until he starts checking on things. Parents get your kids out before they end in court, and adults register somewhere else for continuing education.