Martha Smith wants her students to have the skills to meet the demands of a global marketplace.
After her first semester as president of Anne Arundel Community College, she has challenged the faculty and staff to teach students to think critically, solve problems, analyze data and communicate effectively.
"Our high school graduates and college graduates are competing with the best in the world," for jobs, Dr. Smith said. "More and more people are going to need post-secondary education."
Her challenge is just part of the plan she is developing to make the community college graduates "the best prepared citizens and workers in the world," according to the school's vision statement.
The plan that Dr. Smith, 46, and the college's staff are developing places students first, she said. It focuses on increasing students' ability to learn.
The plan calls for students to learn to think critically and for students and teachers to "be honest, care about people and use data to make decisions."
She said students, staff members and faculty members will take two years to develop a guidance model for the next five years.
The first step, which has been completed, was to survey more than 600 students and faculty members to determine how the college can better serve the students and community. The surveys have been compiled and sent back to the various departments.
Faculty members are meeting to discuss how they can improve the areas that the surveys indicated needed the most improvement, such as campus parking and student registration.
"I think we've made great strides in working together to continue to expand services to our community," Dr. Smith said, listing telephone registration for noncredit students, a textbook lay away program and a no-interest loan for full-time and part-time students.
Dr. Smith became the college's president Aug. 1. She said she left the presidency of Dundalk Community College in Baltimore County after 12 years because that school's board of trustees limits each of the county's three community college presidents to one-year contract extensions.
Dr. Smith had a plan for the next century called Dundalk Community College-2000, which is nearing completion, but she said she felt that the county's three-college system was blocking her efforts to create a "world-class curriculum" for community colleges.
Dundalk is the smallest of Baltimore county's three community colleges. Each has its own president, but a board of trustees makes decisions for all three.
Dr. Smith said in a January interview when she announced her resignation from Dundalk that she wanted to "build a world-class curriculum" that would significantly change course work to raise academic standards.
"Everything one college does affects the others," she said. "We can't do things that are seen to compete with the other colleges. We can't duplicate programs either."
At Anne Arundel, with 12,000 credit students and 20,000 noncredit students, she has the freedom to implement her program to create better-prepared graduates, Dr. Smith said.