Message from the President - March 2017
SBCC Vision Statement
"Santa Barbara City College strives to build a socially conscious community where
knowledge and respect empower individuals to transform our world."
I’m thrilled to report a significant College waypoint: Our new vision statement! While our “mission statement” describes current College functions, the vision statement is about our future. It is a public declaration of our achievable aspirations, our journey ahead, our future state, our goals, and our ambitions based on our environment and our shared values. The vision statement is a bold, meaningful, and provocative assertion of our intentions.
Given what a vision statement represents, it is easy to see why its development is taken very seriously at the College. In fact, development of our 21-word vision statement represents a tremendous College-wide effort, spanning nearly seven months. Some 1,300 people, including 900 students and 400 faculty, staff, administrators, and trustees, provided input in development of the SBCC vision statement. Surveys, forums, writing committees, etc., were all part of the process. In the end, we now have a shared College vision statement that can guide, motivate, and inspire us going forward.
Finally, I want to offer some general thoughts about the vision statement and its use. First, any engagement with the vision statement should be strictly voluntary. We very much hope that interested faculty will, in their judgment, highlight and connect the class content with the social and civics aspects that may arise. I understand that many faculty already do. This can relate to countless aspects across the curriculum such as environmental justice related to poverty, the mathematics of homelessness, the biology of hunger, art around border issues, the psychology of human trafficking, the economics of heath care, and so on. Certainly, this aspect of the vision is rich for learning communities! Lastly, an intricate aspect of the vision statement is knowledge and respect. These are the missing elements in the national dialog, prompting folks to take the route of simply becoming more deeply entrenched in partisan politics without fully hearing or understanding the other side. A last thought related to the vision statement is the important aspiration that all students will be able to understand and articulate all sides of an argument and do so with excellence. If a student can argue all sides of a controversial matter in an informed way that a panel of content experts could not determine what views, values, or politics the student may hold, we have accomplished a significant student learning outcome of which we can all be very proud.
I want to personally thank you for your continued support of our Community’s College! Please share this Bridge newsletter with your friends and neighbors. If you received this from a friend, you can sign up to receive it directly by
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Dr. Anthony E. Beebe, Superintendent/President
