Bachelor's Degree at Snow College?

This is fun. Yesterday the Board of Regents amended the definition of Snow College to include language from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions which includes the following: “Comprehensive Community Colleges (Associate’s Colleges) generally include institutions where all degrees are at the associate’s level, or where bachelor’s degrees account for less than 10 percent of all undergraduate degrees.” This language is consistent with the emerging trend generally referred to as Community College Baccalaureates.

This amendment makes possible a limited number of baccalaureate programs at Snow College while maintaining its primary mission as a two-year college. Approval of baccalaureate programs for Snow College will still take considerable effort. But it is now possible. We will bring forward a proposal within the next 12 months to begin our first bachelor’s degree—most likely a music education degree.

Mount Everest

53 years ago yesterday Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first to summit Mount Everest. Last week one of my old climbing partners, Bruce Parker, summated Mount Everest completing his goal to climb the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. We did two of them together--Mount McKinley and Kilimanjaro. This photo is of us on McKinley--he is in red, I am in yellow. Congratulations Bruce!!!

Washington D.C.

Here are a few shots I took in Washington during our two days in D.C.

The first picture is of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial at night with the Washington Monument in the background.

The second shot is of our group in front of the Capitol Building. We toured the building but sadly enough our tour started at the same time 5 million or so 8th graders from Michigan arrived. I don’t think I need say anything more (nothing against Michigan or 8th graders).

The third picture is a night shot of the Jefferson Memorial. It had been stormy and as we were leaving the memorial I turned, looked back and caught this incredible, colored sky which really lit up the scene.

The fourth image is of the Supreme Court Library. Because I am a member of the Supreme Court Bar I was able to take our group into the Justice’s Library. (If we had an additional 10 million dollars we could make the new Snow College library look like this.)

Gettysburg

Several members of my American Government class and I went on a 6-day tour of significant sites from New York to Washington D.C. last week. Here are two pictures from our visit to Gettysburg. We arranged for a Gettysburg historian to take us around the battlefield and had a great experience. The top shot is a picture of our group standing on Vincent's Spur on Little Round Top. This is the exact spot where Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain stood while he and the 20th Maine held the extreme left position of the Army of the Potomac on day two of the battle. The second shot is a random image I took of the battlefield. The three day battle at Gettysburg is generally regarded as the turning point in the Civil War—which was a turning point in civil rights and due process in America.