You’re about to get to know this woman’s face better — as well as her vision of who fits into the New Haven of the future. She runs New Haven’s fast-growing community college, which is poised to become an anchor of a newly rebuilt downtown.
Her name is Dorsey Kendrick. She has served as president of Gateway Community College since 1999. In that time, enrollment has leaped from below 3,000 students to 5,785. The college has developed programs with the two major hospitals, among others, to steer people toward jobs in nursing and health care.
And the college, which currently has campuses on Long Wharf and in North Haven, is poised for a major expansion in the heart of the reviving heart of the city. It’s building a new $140 million, 360,000 square-foot central campus a block from the New Haven Green, on the graves of the old Macy’s and Malley’s department stores. (Scheduled completion: 2010.) The new campus will make working-class students (the average Gateway student is a single mom around 29 or 30 years old) a central part of an otherwise gentrified landscape, a fact that caused controversy when the plan was put together.
At the helm of this transformation is Kendrick. As public hearings are about to resume on the environmental impact of the new campus, Kendrick spoke with the Independent in her Long Wharf office about where she sees Gateway going — and why it should matter to everybody.
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The New Campus
In the public debate over the school’s move, few people have talked about what the new location will mean for the students. All the talk has been about the tax base and retail — ¬¶
It’s going to mean a lot. It means the students will be able to walk around to the Green. They’ll be able to go to restaurants. They’ll be able to spread out and see other people they don’t see now because of the location. They’ll want to spend more time on campus. They’ll be able to shop while they’re down there. They’ll be able to get to their internships. It will make it easier for students.
Why do you think people haven’t talked about it in that sense? When they talk about Yale, they talk about the Yale students — ¬¶
Yale students are right out of high school going to a college experience. Our students are working adults, juggling many things. [Some people] don’t see them as individuals who still are getting a student experience.
Some critics [of the plan to move Gateway downtown] worry that the students won’t spend much time in the center of the city because they’re rushing to other jobs or to kids at home.
Well, we’re getting more and more younger students directly out of high school. We also have students who don’t have cars. Their classes give them two or three hours between. Students who work and wait for a 5 o’clock class. Right now [at the Long Wharf campus] these students don’t have an opportunity to do anything. You’ll see them in the back of the building, hanging out. They have to do something with their time.
When we move downtown, these students will be able to go to the museum, to the art gallery. They’ll be able to hang out in Starbucks if they want to, do some shopping.
Just because these students are not rich students, it doesn’t mean that they don’t want what everybody else wants. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have dreams and hopes that everyone else has. They just haven’t had the opportunity to be exposed to a lot of the things that others have. This will be an opportunity for more exposure. And that’s learning. Exposure is learning.
Is there going to be first-floor retail? That has been brought up a lot.
We plan to have a cafeteria that’s open to the public. We plan to have a snack area. We plan to have a comprehensive bookstore, with a Starbucks [or something similar] inside the bookstore — We will have Hill Health Center, a small health center open to the public. That will probably be on the first floor. We plan to have a bakery where people can buy things. We will probably have a computer lab that’s open to the community on the first floor. The library will probably be on the first or second floor, for people to go in and read, with computer technology.
Midnight Classes?
Gateway gets overshadowed by Yale and Southern. Do you think that’s going to change?
I don’t think we get overshadowed. I think our mission, the students we serve are totally different. The people who go to Gateway Community College are part of the community, who are going to stay in the community, who are going to work in jobs as a result of their education and add to the economic vitality of the state. Students who go to Yale and some of the other schools really come here because of the reputation of the institution, wanting to graduate from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world, and then go on off wherever they are living and add to the vitality of that community. So I don’t see Yale as being a competitor of ours in that sense.
What I do hope, however, is that as our relationship gets strong with Yale, particularly our 4.0 students, who want to be on the track for lifelong learning and go on to a four-year institution, more opportunities become available to them to go to Yale if that becomes their school of choice.
You’ve talked about people who have criminal convictions on their record needing a chance at a college degree. I know that’s not your typical student — ¬¶
But we do work with those students. From my perspective, I think if a person has served the time for the crime that they committed, then we as a society have an opportunity to at least get them back on the pathway on which they can contribute. I would rather see them have hope, get an education, and contribute to the economic vitality of the state, rather than rip people off and become what I call ongoing permanent residents of the judicial system. I’ve seen it too many times with young people. This morning there was an article in Time magazine about 30 percent of young people starting off in ninth grade and never graduating high school. This ties in with a study done several weeks ago by the Gates Foundation. For African-Americans and Hispanics, it’s 50 percent.
If you look at New Haven, you look at the large numbers of African-Americans and Hispanics who live here, you look at the number of people dropping out of high school, then you look at the general population — what an opportunity to create hope for these people who otherwise will be locked out of the mainstream of society.
How do we get them engaged, interested and motivated to learn? For us, we have to make sure we have stronger tutoring opportunities. We have to make sure we have faculty in the classroom who are sensitive and caring in the classroom. My philosophy is: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It’s important that students know when they walk through the door: We want you here. We want to see you succeed.
The other thing is, we have to create and organize our curriculum to make it flexible. We can no longer continue to have traditional education in a non-traditional society. We really do have to look at more online courses, more independent study, classes offered even in the evening. I told my staff, “You know the day will come when we will have second- and third-shift classes.” We have evening classes. But that’s pretty much second shift. Some people get off work at 11 o’clock [at night].
You’re thinking of starting classes then?
I think the day will come. We’ll have to start offering classes at 12 o’clock at night, 1. Getting faculty to buy into that is a different situation. I think it will be a great opportunity. Whether I want to be here 12:30 at night, I don’t know. I’m just thinking that we are going to have to deal with the 24-hour education opportunity. You don’t have just first- and second-shift employees anymore. You have third-shift people. If these individuals want to participate in upper mobility, we have to work with these employees to make that flexibility available to them.
You talked about how society has an obligation to offer opportunities to people who haven’t succeeded. Do we do well with that?
Of course not. We are a very judgmental society, you know that. I think people want to do good by everyone. People want to be respectful of people who are different. But the reality is that those of us who have accomplished something, most of us do not want to think of having to associate or be engaged with individuals who are less fortunate. It takes a certain kind of person to work with the students we work with.
Because they’re very diverse. I can’t choose to work with a 3.4 student only. We have open doors, open access.
A More Perfect “Union”
What do we lose a society when we choose not to associate with or think about people who haven’t succeeded?
Understanding that everyone’s life has not been our life. With that understanding comes empathy. And being able to recognize that when things in our life are not that pleasant, we can face them. So whether you’re educated or not, that doesn’t mean everyone in your family is going to turn out to be great.
I came from a poor family. My mother was a maid, and my father was a factory worker in Jackson, Tennessee. It was inculcated in us all our lives that education is what you needed to get you acceptability, respectability and upward mobility. I was always a very good student. That in itself helped. But it was the people around me. It was the people who encouraged me. It was the people who looked out for me. They would not let me fail. They would let me give up. They would not let me say, “I’m not going on.” They understood if I succeeded, that would open doors for other members of my family, as well. Because I was the oldest. There were three girls. All of us are college graduates.
I went to Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. I was one of three students to integrate Union University. This was in 1967. I’ve always been a little rebel. Looking back on that experience, did I want to continue there? After my freshman year, I realized there were not a lot of people like me. They were not all that enamored of me being there. Of course there were days I wanted to stop and go somewhere else, be more like everyone else. It was the encouragement: “If you do this, then others will be able to do this.” And of course they have.
Note: Gateway Community College contributes money to the not-for-profit Online Journalism Project, which publishes this web site.