Initiated by former Mott Community College President, Richard Shaink, a work-group of community organizations was formed to bring awareness to the basic skills crisis in the Flint area. Dr. Richard Shaink, President of Mott Community College, had become increasingly concerned that many high school graduates were beginning postsecondary education not fully literate. As part of the Achieving the Dream initiative, a national program designed to help community college students pursue their dreams, Dr. Shaink, and his team disaggregated local data and convened community leaders to discuss literacy work in Genesee County, including the libraries, the school system, a local literacy coalition and the foundation. A Literacy summit was convened, which raised the profile of literacy efforts in Flint, and began conversations in earnest with the United Way of Genesee County, the C.S. Mott Foundation, and the Community Foundation of Greater Flint.
The Flint & Genesee Literacy Network is proud of our ongoing partnership with our Fiscal Sponsor, Mott Community College. Mott Community College has experienced first hand, the consequences of low literacy.
Remedial basic skills courses are required for many entering students. Remedial courses prove to be expensive, both for the college and for the students who can exhaust their financial aid resources before they begin regular coursework. The result is low graduation rates for those students entering without strong literacy skills.
“When you invest in the infrastructure it allows you to bring people together to be able to influence not only where existing resources are being directed, but also who can think differently about new resources. It takes longer to build a network as a sustainable entity, but if it does happen and it happens properly, those that are at the provider level should be able to get the resources that they need and be more effective at what they are doing,” says Robert Matthews, Associate Vice President of Workforce, Community and Grant Development.