My friends and I always used to joke that we didn't believe UDC really existed anywhere but on the metro map. You never meet anyone that goes there, or is an alumnus. You really never hear anything about the school. And unless you know exactly where you're going in Van Ness, it's possible to completely miss the school. How the heck did it get it's own metro stop?

I'm happy UDC might be adding a Medical School. It'll provide a nice learning environment for students rejected by Hollywood Upstairs Medical College.

"How the heck did it get it's own metro stop?"

The area around it has a fair amount of commercial development, and there is a high concentration of residences within a few blocks of the station, so it's not exactly accurate to say that it got its own Metro stop. It's like saying the Waterfront stop was designed specifically for Southeastern University.

"it's a waste of $$$ from private donors and not the taxpayers."

Adjusting UDCs mission to fill more of a community college role makes a lot of sense, actually. Set up as a four year degree granting institution, UDS is pretty much an abject failure. But set up as a community college, UDC could actually thrive. There are scores of younger people in the District who don't have the financial ability to attend UMD or other local public and private universities, or who don't have designs on pursuing a four year degree, who could certainly be enticed by a UDC that is taking a community college approach. It's a much better way to serve the residents of DC than in its current incarnation, and its to UDCs credit that they have installed a president who seems to understand that.

Yeah, but "community college" lacks the sexy donor cachet of "university" and conjures up images of Sally Struthers offering courses in Gun Repair and buying properties no-money-down.

Actually, that would be a step up for UDC curricula.

I know a woman who went to UDC. She said it was a cake walk, no challenge in any of her classes, and the facilities were bad. Granted this was about 20 years ago but something tells me that not much has changed. Also she's a little on the insane side so I sometimes wonder whether her DC education caused her to go nuts or if she was that way already....

Sessoms is a good fundraiser, but I don't know who would be willing to support UDC. Also, I know from personal experience that he's an arrogant asshole who doesn't play well with others, which ought to be interesting as he tries to work with the city leadership.

An independent search party trying to fill a provost postion at DSU concluded that no one would take the job due to a "toxic" working environment. UDC's administration is already broken, I don't see how Sessoms is going to repair that given his obnoxious personality and heavy-handed management style.

My suggestions:
1. Focus on 2-year associate degrees, drop most of the 4-year bachelor degree programs;
2. Lay off professors who are dead weight and haven't done any academic publishing in the recent past;
3. Sell off some of the Van Ness land and move buildings to where most students actually come from - the eastern portion of the city;
4. Forget about adding a medical school, unless it's located in the Caribbean for students who can't get into any other med school;
5. Rethink whether it makes sense to keep the law school since it has very little credibility;
6. Focus on setting up more remedial classes since many incoming students (proud DCPS grads) have serious deficiencies;
7. Offer more vocational programs; they may be non-glamorous, but it's the good mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc. that make good wages;
8. Forget about being a university; focus on being a competitor to MoCo Community College;
9. Increase the number of younger professors;
10. Increase number of evening/weekend courses for non-traditional students.

Also, Cranky, it won't be long before Sessoms tries to fire a lot of the faculty and administration (not necessarily a bad thing). I predict we'll be seeing his name here on DCist quite a bit in the next few months.

As a fourth generation Washingtonian, I know quite a few people with UDC degrees. One of whom is my aunt who actually got into a number of excellent schools. But as my grandparents refused to pay for any of them, all she could afford was UDC. And she's dead smart, but I do think that's a result of genetics rather than any DC schooling.

I completely disagree with sending the Community College into Wards 8 and 7. For mmany of the students who attend there, getting over to Van Ness is a BIG freakin' deal - many have vary rarely if ever left East of the River. How does only increasing the isolation of a segment of our city enhance us? Putting the new CC east of hte river smacks of offering the uneducated masses a noble solution that just happens to keep them out of NW for a while longer. We gotta mix it up more folks. (I actually think Walter Reed would be a fun location, excepting the lack of Metro, but that's just me being romantic.)

More networking, outreach to the latino community, offering classes to the former USDA cadre (Amharic and Italian evening classes, anyone?), offering more certifications for professionals... it's lame that DC has so little continuing ed. In Fairfax, NOVA CC offers excellent opportunities to take a few classes in different things and a lot of folks go and sharpen on different topics. Small business management, accounting, desktop publishing. If you live and work in DC, you can't get these things (cheaply) at GWU, AU or anywhere.

There are some real possibilites here - but it would help if the hyper-educated folks bothered to think of how this could BENEFIT them instead of writing it off as a social service.

In other words, ask for it to be more instead of dismissing it out of hand!

Great, now I can finally get the Assoicate's degree in brain surgery that I've always wanted.

"Great idea, but when Anthony Williams suggested it UDC faculty, administration, and students all practically revolted. The current location of UDC, they said, proves that a UDC education can get students out of places like Anacostia. Really."

And as far as keeping UDC out of a neighborhood that has been "ravaged by crime and drugs," I have to wonder if any of those folks had ever been to the Howard University campus. The most elite and prestigious historically-black university in this country is smack dab in the middle of a badly crime and drug-infested neighborhood, and it had to have been about a hundred times worse back in 1999, when that article was written.

By saying that I think Van Ness is an odd location for the school, I was talking more about the lack of a real campus than the fact that it's in NW. It's great that it's accessible by Metro, but the place looks like a bunch of crumbling office buildings with no green space and lacks a real campus feel. Hey - maybe Gallaudet can give up some of their space now that their enrollment has tanked after their recent governance fiasco.

UDC is a land grant university (Morrill Act) so that might come into play. But didn't they used to hold the land the new mega-Chinese embassy is now on? I'm not up on the details there...