Creating Meaningful Relationships
Mesa Community College takes its name and mission seriously. Since our beginnings, MCC has built its reputation on serving and engaging our communities in unique, collaborative ways. We host schoolchildren each year to teach them water safety. We’ve partnered with the Mesa-East Valley Rose Society to construct the largest rose garden in the Desert Southwest, now a Mesa landmark. Our public planetarium is a lab for students and hosts free public viewings of the heavens. We raise millions of dollars for student scholarships. We engage and serve the local business community with programs and courses for their current and future employees. For more than 20 years, MCC has underscored world hunger with Empty Bowls, an event that supports local efforts to feed the disadvantaged.
All of these efforts have garnered accolades from prestigious institutions like the Carnegie Foundation, among others, but that’s not why we endeavor to do good work. We do all of these things to be good stewards of public resources, to be the best neighbor we can be, and because we care about where we live and the communities and citizens we serve.
President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll
MCC has been recognized with the U.S. President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll since 2006; MCC was one of 766 higher education institutions nationwide, and one of only four in Arizona to receive the recognition in 2014.
Service-learning is offered in every academic area at MCC and is a required component of programs such as Administration of Justice, Education and Social Work.
"We are proud to continue to receive this designation since its inception," said Shouan Pan, President, Mesa Community College. "We are committed to preparing students to be engaged and informed citizens through real life experiences.”
The President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll highlights the role colleges and universities play in solving community challenges. As a result, more students are likely to pursue a lifelong path of civic engagement that achieves meaningful and measurable outcomes in their communities.
The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency for volunteering and service, has administered the award since 2006 in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the American Council on Education, Campus Compact, and the Interfaith Youth Core.
Carnegie Foundation
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching recognized Mesa Community College’s dedication to community outreach by awarding it the 2015 Community Engagement Classification.
MCC is one of 361 U.S. colleges and universities that now hold the designation, and is one of only 16 community colleges nationwide named to the Carnegie Foundation’s honor, which awards the designation to institutions that demonstrate campus mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement.
MCC has long been recognized for exceptional community outreach, collaborating with more than 366 community partners. Since 2002, MCC’s Center for Community & Civic Engagement has formally tracked service-learning students, their hours, courses and partners. More than 17,000 students have served more than 530,000 hours, and more than 200 faculty members have been involved over the years, representing every academic department and a combined 3,586 courses.
Student Learning for Civic Capacity Grant
The Community College National Center for Community Engagement, formerly housed at MCC, received a $270,000 grant in 2014 from the Teagle Foundation to support the development of a three-year project to coordinate service-learning projects at MCC and six other civically engaged community colleges in the U.S.
The project, Student Learning for Civic Capacity: Stimulating Moral, Ethical, and Civic Engagement for Learning that Lasts, is designed to improve and promote model courses and curricular programming that foster personal, civic and moral responsibility. Other community colleges joining MCC in the project are De Anza (CA), Kapi’olani (HI), Delgado (LA), Raritan Valley (NJ), and Kingsborough and Queensborough (NY).
MCC hopes to expand civic learning for students and strengthen linkages with communities, and will participate in local and national dialogues to further integrate civic responsibility into existing courses.
Water Safety Day
More than 17,000 first grade children have attended Water Safety Day since it was established in 1999. The annual event, created through the vision and leadership of MCC dean Carol Achs, honors the memory of her late grandson Weston Letter. The event is now lead by Phoenix Children's Hospital and valley first responders. Community volunteers and other drowning prevention groups and educators engage the children in five different activities that promote drowning prevention and awareness.
Highlighting the importance of prevention, child drowning deaths are depicted by pairs of children's shoes
Local public safety agencies support Water Safety Day
Live rescue demonstrations and swim lessons are provided during Water Safety Day events
Empty Bowls
The collaboration of MCC, local businesses and community partners raised more than $16,000 in 2014, which was used by Paz de Cristo to provide more than 100,000 meals to the disadvantaged in the Phoenix East Valley.
For more than two decades MCC’s Art Department, in collaboration with local businesses, schools and community groups, has offered Empty Bowls as a way to garner support for a national movement to feed the hungry and homeless. All proceeds from MCC Empty Bowls events directly benefit those served by the Paz de Cristo Community Center, the nonprofit providing anti-hunger and empowerment support for the East Valley's homeless, unemployed, working poor and their families. MCC’s Empty Bowls events are hosted on both campuses in observance of World Food Day.
Acclaimed Rose Garden
The collaboration between the Mesa-East Valley Rose Society (MEVRS) and Mesa Community College has resulted in the largest public rose garden in the desert Southwest and is the only significant public rose garden begun since 1974. There are nearly 9,000 rose bushes in MCC’s Rose Garden, which has become a Mesa landmark and centerpiece for community, education, and innovative economic initiatives in the East Valley.
Students, from kindergarten to MCC and universities, use the Rose Garden as botanical laboratories and study areas. The MEVRS holds its meetings at MCC’s Southern & Dobson Campus, which will help host the American Rose Society’s 2015 Pacific Southwest Directory Convention in November 2015.
Since 2010, MCC’s Rose Garden has been featured in Trip Advisor, the Best of Mesa 2015, and the Ultimate Arizona Bucket List, among others.
Planetarium
Nearly 16,000 visitors have enjoyed the free-for-the-public MCC Astronomy Nights program at the MCC Planetarium.
The MCC Planetarium opened as part of the Physical Science Building in the fall of 2008, and uses a Digistar 3 projection and sound system and a 30-foot-diameter dome. The projection system can display full-dome video or simulated views of the stars and planets seen from anywhere on Earth or in space. The planetarium comfortably seats 52 visitors with room for wheelchairs and scooters.
The facility is used primarily as an astronomy classroom, but classes in other disciplines such as anthropology, art history, geography, and mathematics also utilize the Planetarium. The domed theater provides a learning environment unique to the Maricopa Colleges. In addition, the Planetarium is a popular destination for art and science students to complete service learning projects or volunteer at many different public education and outreach events.
Fundraising, Financial Aid & Scholarships
Total cash and pledge commitments to MCC from alumni, employees, retirees, friends and organizations topped $2.3 million in 2014-15, with MCC’s scholarship fund achieving a record $330,000 in total commitments. For the fiscal year concluding in June 2015, MCC received more than $1.9 million in cash donations and another $408,000 in pledges designated for MCC through the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation. More than $56,000 was used to support academic programs, while more than $1.6 million in student scholarships were awarded.
Since 2011, MCC has been involved in the five-year Student Success Campaign, with a goal of raising $5 million in gifts to support scholarships, faculty and academic programs at MCC. It is part of the larger, district-wide Student Success Campaign, which has already crossed the $21 million mark in total donations.