At this year’s Employee Development Day, diversity and inclusion were the main topics of discussion.
A morning panel conversation with educational and business leaders talked about issues that many underprivelege students face before they even attempt higher education. For instance, transportation and lack of financial resources are common issues many West Side students face if they decide to go to college.
Northside Superintendent Dr. Brian T. Woods said a major obstacle his district deals with is finding services or programs to help families who are in a lower socioeconomic status. He said if they can help those families, then students are typically better prepared for school and often do better.
Later on in the day in Huisache Hall, employees and faculty were asked to get in groups and identify what does NVC have to do to attract more underprivelege students and get them college ready.
Some said NVC is often perceived as a “rich” school and many minority students feel more comfortable attending Palo Alto or St. Philip’s College. Others said to reach West Side students, NVC will have to look at ways to engage families because if families are convinced that NVC is a good option, then the children would be more willing to come. Another point brought up is that NVC will have to find ways to collaborate and partner with community groups to spread NVC’s brand in lesser-known neighborhoods.
In addition to tackling the tougher subjects, employees and faculty got to choose from a variety of interactive workshops, such as a brief introduction to Adobe Lightroom, dodgeball, how to survive in a zombie (emergency) apocalypse, to learning about NVC’s strategic plan.
Throughout the day, employees were having fun on social media by using #NVCEDD2018 in Twitter. Below are a variety of pictures from the hashtag.
