We continue with our story series with English professor Sylvia Hayes. Sylvia talks to us about beginning a small market farm with her husband: Love and Honey Farms.We hear about aquaponics and raising ducks, turkeys, lots of chickens, and goats. Hear the story of the first time Sylvia midwifed the birth of twin goats!We explore the benefits she sees of helping new students build a supporting community and manage their time, two things that Sylvia herself learned the hard way, through need. She talks about her college struggle with cancer and homelessness, the lessons of which she offers to her students to ease their journeys.Spend some time on a farm and in an English classroom as we hear another story of beginnings.

In the summer of 2024, the college gained a new president: Dr. Gregory Little. At the time of this conversation, Dr. Little was in a moment of great beginnings: beginning his first college presidency and his time at a new institution and being in the process of meeting many new people and work partners. We talk about what drew him to this new part of his career and what his first weeks were like. We also delve into the skills that make him a flexible and effective leader who tackles new issues constantly. We further enrich our skill set of being a practiced beginner. Join us to get to know our president better and get a glimpse of this crucial beginning phase in the life of our college. 

We begin our story series for this season: I Am Beginning. As we shine the spotlight on beginning, this story series showcases some of the beginnings that are happening at the college right under our noses but that might not be visible. This story series features people from all around the college telling the story of something new they’ve recently begun, something at which they were a compete beginner.Our first storyteller is the program director of our Pharmacy Technician program, Channon Watkins. She tells her story of having a weekend to prepare to become a mother to a toddler.Join us to hear how she went from auntie to parent in the blink of an eye, what she learned in that steep curve and what lessons she’s taken into her teaching from this incredible experience.

Sandra Jackson is the Chair of the MTC Commission, the college's highest governing body, whose members are appointed by the governor of South Carolina. She also began her higher education journey here at the college.She joins us to tell her personal origin story when, at 17, she was denied the career she wanted because her widowed mother could not afford to send her out of a state to the program she wanted to join. Crushed, she turned to MTC for an alternate path. It was here that her hurt feelings revived and she became alive to the possibilities that higher education can bring to someone just starting out. She talks about the necessity of change and has words from the wisdom of experience and perspective for our students just starting out who become discouraged and uncertain as they navigate a college education. Join us to hear her words to students, faculty and staff about the courage to begin and begin again and to build the life and communities of our dreams. These beginnings are our mission.

We're so back.Our first episode opens the new season by following the flow from a season on failure and a season on the skills of learning to learn. Failures usually force new beginnings. And being a "good beginner" is definitely a distinct and important set of skills in a learning journey. What if we made these truths more visible in our instruction? This episode begins an extended inquiry into and exploration of these possibilities.In that spirit of linking and flow, we talk with one of our failure storytellers from Season 4: Hameen Shabazz. Hameen will talk about how he sees people beginning their college educations with us and also beginning again in their lives and careers.Hameen also talks about a beginning he is embarking on: he's moving from Advising into the new role of Student Success Coach. This is a completely new position at the college so it's a big beginning for Hameen, the students he serves, and the college ecosystem as we work to incorporate these new services and possibilities.We also introduce the new story series for the season: I Am Beginning. We'll hear stories from people all around the college who have recently begun something entirely new in their lives and talk about how it's going and what it's brought to their lives. Join us as we begin a new semester and a new season and look closely at what it means to be a beginner. You can hear Hameen's full story from Season 4 Here: https://sites.google.com/view/iepod/s4-episode-5

Hello, again! Season 5 is about to begin! Listen in to find our the topic and some of the guests we'll be talking to in our new season. Join us for new voices and stories and explorations into teaching and learning.

Josh Vincent, Art professor and guest in episode 13, asked several of his classes to think about the meaning and experience of failure. He created a dropbox in his classes so that students could anonymously submit their ideas. In this bonus episode, Josh reads his students' thoughts, jokes, and meditations on how they experience failure in Art classes. We consider their ideas, respond, and think about ways forward in facing failure in higher education and life.Join us to hear some student perspective on failure as our season ends.

In our season finale for Season 4: Facing Failure, we have a conversation with Art professor Josh Vincent about the inevitability of failure in ceramics classes and the joy the intertwining of success and failure can bring.We’re at the stage of a journey through the underworld where we have returned to hearth and home. We sit back among our family and friends and tell our stories of suffering and adventure. We tell stories to give our lives meaning and Josh talks about his experience teaching in a number of higher education institutions and what he’s learned about the importance of creating a learning environment and tearing down barriers students experience.We also add up some of what we’ve learned this season about failure in higher education as we look back on our journey. And also tease a bonus episode with student perspective on failure that will follow in two weeks’ time! Join us for our final conversation of the season. 

We begin to think about return from the underworld. In myths of journeys to the underworld, the protagonists must always figure out how to return alive. So, what’s the trick to allow you return safely and bring whatever treasure or knowledge back with you to use in life on the surface, in the sunlight? Today, we spend time with a part of the college that depends on constantly engaging attempt and failure and revision and new heights: our college writing classes.Our guest is Michael Kennedy, new hire in the English Department, and an instructor who is deeply invested in teaching students where they are. Michael talks about writing as a chance for learners to "fall in love with their own mind" because through writing (and writing again and again) we come to better understand our own ideas and thoughts about complex subjects. If students are willing to explore the darkness of uncertainty through writing without fear that they’ll be judged or given a failing grade for trying, what might become possible? We also explore another guide for our season in the underworld: the scholar bell hooks. Her ideas about ethical relationship to one another could be another way to face failure in the classroom and turn it into resilience. 

Instead of a story of failure, today’s episode is a story of grief. It is a literal story, a work of fiction, based on an actual event.I’m in conversation with English professor Andrea West because when I was asking anyone who came within earshot of me about whether there was a place for loss and grief in higher education, she said something unusual. She said, well, I think there’s a story we could ask about that.Andrea and I talk about a very short story by the Indian American novelist Bharahti Mukherjee called, The Management of Grief. begins in the aftermath of the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985. The flight was traveling from Montreal to Delhi and Bombay by way of London. It exploded off of the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people on board. This podcast will not go into the further details of the incident but there are some resources on the web page that you can explore if you’d like to know more. This story is many things but relevant to our concerns, it asks questions that we ask at the college: if we have official processes to follow, what happens when a person’s emotions and life circumstances don’t fit inside of what we expect?This episode was tricky to make and perhaps it fails to convey what we hoped. Your host meditates on the constant risk of failure and the worth of completing a project even if it is an imperfect thing. 

Hello, my community. Your host will be out on medical leave for a few weeks, so the Failure season will experience a short delay. Listen in for details.

This episode is another chance for us to consider the emotion around failure, which most of our instructional community acknowledges is something that higher education would really rather avoid dealing with. The guiding question is: what is the place for loss and grief in higher education? We return to three voices about failure: Professor Elena Martinez-Vidal, counselor Cyntrell Legette and, from our first Failure episode last season, Professor TK Kimel. With our guests, we'll explore in more detail what students lose when they leave an institution of higher education because it's much more than just a career option. We also examine the connections between loss and grief and get much further into our thinking about what educational grief could be. Finally, we begin some early thinking on how better understanding of student loss and grief might change the ways in which we respond to failure. In keeping with our season of new conversations and ideas, we make a beginning of new possibilities when we look at student failure through the lens of loss and grief. 

This is our final stand-alone failure story of the season. We added this story series to this particular season because we found that a number of faculty and staff are quietly telling students their own stories of failure. We want to amplify and encourage this thoughtful practice. With this episode, we’re going straight to the top of our college to our current college president, Dr. Ronald Rhames. We hear the story of a college freshman, here at MTC, who is taking the required English writing course, as many of our students do. And when he received his first marked essay back, the grade was absolutely not what he expected or hoped for. In today’s story, we’ll hear about how the young Dr. Rhames, faced with a failing grade, was at a decision point right at the start of his college career. We’ll hear him narrate his choices and the choices of those teaching him. Dr. Rhames announced this past Fall that he will be retiring in the Summer of 2024 so we’re again speaking to someone looking back at an almost-complete career. The end of the episode also features information about support the CTE offers our community to tell our failure stories to better support our students. 

The next FSL Common Read Zoom is January 26th and we'll be talking about Chapter 4: Expectations Matter! Here, the authors define what they mean by establishing and effectively communicating high expectations and we look at a few of the questions our community can take up from the book. These questions may guide our conversation on the 26th so this is a jump start! Text from pages 47, 48 and 58.

Happy new year, my community.Today’s episode is the first of a pair that brings our questions of this podcast season to administrative leadership. I wondered – what does failure look like from that vantage point? Instead of looking at student success on an individual level, on a class level or even a program level? What if we looked at it from a holistic, institution-wide context from the administrative purview? Our guest today is Diane Carr, former Vice Provost and Chief Academic Officer who retired in 2023. We spoke just as she was about to leave her position for retirement so we’re getting a very deep perspective from a lifetime of work in higher education and years in administration here at the college. By understanding the kind of perspective one gains when one moves up in a hierarchy, and by asking questions of someone with that bird’s eye view, we gain new vistas into how failure is accounted for in the overall work of our mission as a college.  Join us, as Diane Carr, former Vice Provost and Chief Academic Officer, talks about failure from an institutional viewpoint. Episode page: https://sites.google.com/view/iepod/s4-episode-8?authuser=0

In our third story of failure for the season, on the shortest day of the year, we spend the core of the year with someone who is at the core of this season. William Golston is an advisor for the School of STEM and has been thinking about our questions since last season when he and Professor TJ Kimel shared with us how they talk about their own failures with students. In this story episode, we hear more detail about William's failure story and how he shares it with students. We consider the weight of expectation in student's experience of failure. Also, we think about what it means when students fail in a path that they aren't committed to. Is that different from failing at a cherished dream? And we also talk about shame in higher education and its pervasive presence. William is ready to talk about creating a literal "place for failure" and we start having a conversation that we hope might bring some very new and interesting ideas to support our students and our teaching community. 

As we enter Persephone Days here in Columbia, when we drop below 10 hours of daylight in 24, we again try to sit in that pause when things have gone wrong and we're unsure what to do next. We talk with Tinesha Croom who is both an advisor and a faculty member at the college. Her perspective in both of these positions offers important perspective on student response to failure and how we as faculty and staff can change our responses in kind. We talk together about having hard conversations when students and faculty can both be uncertain what should happen next.What can these conversations look like? What has she found is important when they happen? How could we find new ways of having these conversations? Join us to get a little farther into our explorations and to pay tribute to another season guide whose influence helped inform this podcast project.

Welcome to the second in our series of failure storytelling this season. And it’s got some incredible scope to it. Today’s storyteller not only tells his failure stories as needed, he has a published a short autobiography that unflinchingly describes the very difficult first half of his life.Hameen Shabazz, in our Academic and Career Advising unit, endured a turbulent and violent childhood. The public school system taught him little in the way of reading, writing and arithmetic and his failures in school gave way to great success selling illegal drugs. But that success was finite, when he was arrested, convicted and served thirteen years in the South Carolina correctional system. After that time, in the hard years of trying to make a fresh start, he found his way to MTC and those early academic failures began to change thanks to all that he learned in prison. Not just basic literacy but also the skills of resilience, dignity and patience.So instead of a capsule failure story, today we’re going to talk about the academic failures of a lifetime. And you’ll understand that to hear these stories is never to dwell in failure but to always return a deep well of determination and self-reflection and recovery. For our guest today, there is no final failure, only delay. There is no loss that cannot be answered in time, with patience and the support of others and the willingness to try again and to try another way. Today, we talk with a failure practitioner who has clearly transformed those failures into a meaningful and successful life. 

We're back in Chapter 2: Learning Matters of our FSL Common Read book! Here we connect the text to a very cool project happening at MTC: this semester's rollout of a series of seven video PSAs about learning principles in our MTC community! Listen in to hear about Theater professor Ilene Fins' creative way to get learning best practices to our community in new ways. Don't learn alone!Watch the videos at: https://sites.google.com/view/iepod/sustainable-connections?authuser=0

In this episode, we engage one of the issues that higher education has never solved: what to do when students' academic failure is rooted in their life circumstances outside of the classroom. As an open enrollment college with neither dorms nor on-campus food service, we don't provide a baseline of basic needs support that residential colleges do. Also, we serve a broad sampling of the community so our students have a broad range of financial and social stability.Here, we talk with Muffy Allison, a licensed social worker and member of Counseling Services here at the college. Muffy serves on the Strategic Planning Committee for Students' Basic Needs. Her committee looked into the actual data about students' basic needs at the college in order to better serve that need. Muffy and I talk about what that data and her experience in Counseling Services tells us about our students' needs and how those needs are connected to failure at the college.