Spring Break — Should It Stay? Or Should It Go?

Hello CNM!

Hope everybody’s having a good week. And thanks for taking time to stop by the blog… Even though the days are getting longer, I know winter is hanging out with us for a while longer. But I want to talk springtime today! As in spring break. Should it stay? Or should it go?

In 2010, we instituted a spring break for the first time ever at CNM. We scheduled it for mid-March. The idea, which was developed collaboratively between CNM, APS and UNM, was to align all of our spring breaks to provide our community members who have family at each institution with a more family-friendly calendar. The three institutions worked hard to achieve that goal.

Although it was an admirable effort, APS recently concluded that aligning its spring break with colleges isn’t in the best interests of its academic goals. March is bad timing for them, so they’re moving their spring break to mid-April. Unfortunately, that’s bad timing for us and won’t work here. So, we’re kind of back to the drawing board in regards to spring break.

Do we need a spring break? Would it be better for students to have more time before the spring term starts to access registration, financial aid help and advisement? Or does the week off at spring break provide a much-needed break from the classroom?

We will be emailing out surveys to students and employees on the topic soon. But I would really love to get a discussion going on the topic here right now.

What do you think?

Hello CNM!

Thanks for stopping by!

I hope this new blog will provide us another venue to generate more dialogue around topics that are important to CNM – and that’s a lot of topics!

At least once a week, one of the vice presidents or I will post new entries on this page. I really, really encourage you to share your ideas and join in the conversation. We need your thoughts and ideas to make this blog a valuable source of communication for the entire college.

By the way, this blog is meant to supplement CNM’s other communication tools as an interactive way to share ideas and delve deeper into the issues of the day.

Of course, we all need to stick to some basic ground rules, so here are some easy-to-follow guidelines:

• Be respectful
• Be accurate
• Be accountable
• Be willing to disagree
• Be yourself
• Don’t spread rumors or speculation
• Don’t post information that is supposed to be confidential (i.e. personal information about students or employees)
• Don’t engage in personal attacks or insults
• Don’t use obscene language

Other than that, let’s get blogging!

So, what do you think? Blogging idea good? Blogging idea bad? What will it take to make this a successful blog, where there’s lively discussion and a fruitful marketplace of ideas? Don’t be shy! Tell me what YOU think!

And for future posts, what are some topics you think would be good to dive into? Trends in student learning? Developments at the Roundhouse? Retention issues? Let me know…

Thanks, Kathie Winograd