Episode 149 Creating Impactful Community Projects: The College Unbound Method Part 1

Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations. I'm your host, Jeff Yan. In this episode, you will hear part one of my conversation with Jose Rodriguez, Assistant Vice President of Community and Belonging at College Unbound. More links and information about today's conversation can be found on Digication's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Full episodes of Digication Scholars Conversations. Can be found on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Welcome to Digication Scholars Conversations.

I'm your host, Jeff Yan.

My guest today is Jose Rodriguez, Assistant Vice President of Community and Belonging at College Unbound. Welcome, Jose. Glad to be here. Um, Jose, I, um, I think I, I met you at a, um, Last fall at College Unbound's inauguration of its second president, uh, Adam Bush, and I got to, um, see you speak in a number of occasions. Um, and I was just deeply inspired by, uh, by you, your work and what you stand for. So I'm very grateful that we got to have this conversation here today.

I think that people are going to really love this, you know, hearing about you, you and your story. I appreciate that.

So, before we get started, for those listeners who don't know anything about College Unbound, again, I already had sort of mentioned it's its second president's inauguration, which implies that it's a fairly new school. Um, why don't you tell us a little bit, you know, about College Unbound and, um, you know, where it is, what it does, and, um, And how is, how, why it's so special. I think it's very special. So go ahead. Yeah, I think I got to lead with the fact that it is my Alma mater, right?

So I, I attended College Unbound.

So everything and anything that I say about the school is primarily from a alumni perspective or, uh, or student perspective or student lens, I should say, so College Unbound was started, uh, by two gentlemen, uh, two Uh, Dennis Littky and Adam Bush, uh, in and around 2009 and really it was meant to be a school within a school at some point where they were partnering with different institutions to provide just a different way of teaching, uh, to a particular population

of students that weren't being successful and quote unquote traditional schooling. Um, that humble beginning, uh, through, uh, In 2011, I believe a call to action was basically put out, uh, via social media where, uh, to both Adam and Dennis's surprise, the response from the community, uh, was, wow, we've been waiting for a school like this our whole lives. And I think that that's really what started the maybe we just can't be a school within a school, uh, conversation.

And, uh, Adam and, and Dennis really started. Laying down the groundwork for what was to come. In 2015, we received state approval to be a standalone college in the state of Rhode Island. A triumph in itself. You know, those books aren't really open that that. That they're rarely opened. They were opened for us and we were allowed it.

Um, that opened us up to be able to apply for a regional accreditor, uh, which is NECHE and in 2020, after a lot of work, uh, we received, uh, full accreditation from NECHE. And now, um, College Unbound offers a bachelor's degree. Am I right? Correct. So a bachelor's degree in organizational leadership and change. Um, and we now just don't operate in Rhode Island. We're actually in Chicago, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, uh, and working on Seattle. And, uh, South, South Carolina.

So, like, yeah, growing the model is growing because it's something that's needed. It's amazing. And I would love to talk more about the model itself as well in a bit. But I think that, um, maybe we should, um, talk a little bit more about you as well, Jose.

Um, I know that you've had a, um, you had talked about College Unbound being set up for people who might not have been successful in traditional schools or traditional sort of, you know, the, the, the, the, the sort of, uh, American dream model of, you know, going to K 12 school and then going to college and then finish a four year degree and then go on to get a job, that kind of model, right? Um, And, um, I think that you can probably speak to that too, because that's your personal experience.

Now you are, you are an alum of College Unbound. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey? Yeah, so I can, it's, it's a somewhat interesting story with a lot of layers. So, so I'll try to unlayer as much of it as possible. Um, I'm what you consider, uh, or what society would have considered a throwaway kid. I'm from a single parent home. Uh, From, uh, quote unquote, the ghetto, the slums of the slums, um, and I dropped out of school in the sixth grade.

Um, so I had the recipe to not be successful or not to be in academia, um, because of those choices that I made early on to drop out of school, um, and to pursue income and in various ways, most of which weren't, uh, legal, uh, that landed me in prison. Um, but while in prison, uh, I was reintroduced to education, I should say. And I was reintroduced to education on a basic level, meaning I got my GED.

Um, and pretty much after you get your GED in prison, um, there really isn't anything for you to do. So I took a couple of the remedial courses that our community college, uh, was offering at the time with the, with the thought or dream of when I am released, I am going to go to the same community college and I'm going to get a degree. And that's how I'm going to create change, not just for me, but for my family, to my surprise.

And, you know, I jokingly say this all the time, but it definitely was a pivotal moment, but it was about 2011. Um, January of 2011, when I entered. Our community college as a, as a regular student not being incarcerated and I take, you know, a regular course load. So full, full time student 12, 4 classes, 3 credits each. And one of the classes, which I found was probably going to be the most interesting to me was. Public speaking.

Um, why that was interesting to me is because for the, I had gotten out of prison in 2010. So it had been about a year and I had spent the last year of that time, the last year working, uh, speaking to kids, you know, uh, violence reduction, preventative work on. So at the core of what I was doing for a living now was speaking to public, maybe not, you know, large groups as if, you know, like a national public speaker or anything, but to me, it was an important part of my journey.

And unfortunately, Because I speak multiple languages, sometimes I do mispronounce words. And I always say this because it's important to note that just because I mispronounce a word, it isn't because I don't know the meaning of the word or I don't know how to say the word. But for anyone who speaks multiple languages, sometimes it, that the words just get mixed up and, you know, lost in translation as they say. Needless to say, my oral presentation, uh, midterm, uh, I didn't do so well.

Um, I mispronounced a bunch of words, but it wasn't that, that, that derailed me or that, you know, put me on a, on a, really on a path of negativity was the instructor, quote unquote, and I use instructor, the term instructor very loosely, um, said to me at the end of the class, maybe public speaking isn't a thing that you should pursue because you don't really sound intelligent when you speak, you know, and I, and I, and I say that and, and I wore that You know, as

a, as a, I, I walked with that because it was important for me to remember that if I ever saw that quote unquote instructor again, that I'd be able to tell them how wrong they actually were. Without that incident, I would have never found College Unbound. So, in that, uh, maybe about two weeks after that happened, I had a chance encounter with Adam Bush.

Um, he was, he was, Uh, we had some College Unbound students who were interning at my place of employment, and Adam just came to check in on them. And, um, anybody who knows Adam Bush knows he's a very captivating speaker. Uh, so he could, you know, you, he, he, if he engages you in conversation, you're buying whatever he's selling. Uh, so that, that led to me just being curious about what College Unbound could be because, no, it's a different way of learning. You're going to learn this way.

You know, we're going to give you credit for the things that you've already done. Why take classes for things that you've already mastered. And that really piqued my interest, uh, so, regardless of the experience that I had at our local community college, I said, you know, I'm going to give it. I'm just going to try one more time at this college thing. And if this doesn't work, then, you know, I'm just not college material. And that's just something that I'm going to have to deal with.

Thankfully, I am college material and I've was able to keep going.

Uh, get out the other side, but that is the example as to why this school is so important, whether in, whether for folks who look like me or folks or, or, or kids who are just getting out of high school and are being told by an instructor, those words, like they're being limited by the words of the people who were there or intended to be there to teach them, you know, and being chopped down in such a way opened up the space for a school that like College Unbound to exist.

That's, um, that's, that's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that, Jose. It's um, I remember hearing this, hearing you talk about this and it was, it was just so inspiring because I also know Adam and, and you're right, he can, you know. Whatever he say, I, I, he say jump and I say how high. And, um, and, uh, and, uh, it was, um, it's just incredible to see how many individual lives that College Unbound seems to have touched, but in a, in such an impactful way.

Um, I, I feel like that every alum, Everyone that I've met with at College Unbound that have gone through the program have something similar like that to share, right? Um, that they're, you know, like the traditional college system, whether it be a community college or a K 12 school or whatever, whatever it might be, had failed them. And that's only amplified when you're an adult, right? Um, it's one thing when a system fails you when you're a traditional.

College age student and you're going straight from high school and you got all these things in place, but it's amplified When you're a working adult who's simply just trying to obtain a degree to better one's life And it's a story that we hear over and over and over again to the tune of Folks really start to believe that, and I say folks because I felt that way myself, that, all right, maybe I'm just not smart enough. Uh, college isn't for me. This isn't the time for me.

And you immediately start to beat yourself up. So it's a. I'm glad that this space exists. I'm glad that this school exists. And that's the reason why, um, because whether we were the folks who initiated the wrong or not, we get to right wrongs for a lot of folks through this, through their educational journey. Yeah, that's amazing.

Now, do you want, would you like to tell us a little bit about, so how, how does College Unbound, in fact, recognize you for who you are and let you be successful? What was that, what is that, like, what's that actually look like? What does week one actually look like? Like, what is the thing that they have you do that make you feel like, Hold on a minute, I am inside college material. So it's this, it's the sense of community, right?

So you're, you're brought into a space where everybody is just loving and caring. Um, so as an institution, we're asking students to bring their all, the good, the bad, and the ugly, um, and that, To me, it's what community means. Um, you know, the word community is in my title. So everything about community has to be, has to be right. And knowing that also means that community members aren't perfect, right? No one in the community is perfect. So we have to take folks how they are.

And I think that that was the first thing that I recognized doing are my first CU gathering and being in that space, having a communal meal. With some peers that I would learn to love in a few, just in just a few weeks and, um, just being around those folks and their ability or their willingness to just open up and just be free. It wasn't easy for me, uh, because of my experience from the community college to actually be as open, as honest as I could be with folks, right?

I was afraid that I would be judged and that, uh, People would put me in a box as to how I got to where I was and my experiences thus far. Um, however, um, CU taught me and just like they've taught others to embrace one story. I embraced my story. I just felt a million times more powerful. And as a result of me feeling that power, I believe at least that I've been able to open the door for other people to come in, uh, behind me and have similar success. That's, that's amazing.

Do you remember what was your, what was your project at CU? What was your first project? So, uh, And I, and I always state this, right? Because although, uh, I've been referred to as a colorful, uh, extrovert, I'm an introvert by heart, right? And the first time that I had an extroverted moment, uh, was during, uh, And, uh, my, my cohort decided that I would be the voice for my cohort in a debate we were having a debate, um, particularly on gun control.

Um, and I just made a really, I wish I could remember exactly what I said, but it was so much in the moment, right? I said what I said, and I got people clapped and agreed with me. And I think that that was a very empowering moment. And that's when you realize that, Hey, I can't do public speaking. Yes. Yes, that was the moment. But overall, what, uh, as, as far as like my project or things that I have taken on while being at CU, I started a nonprofit barbershop, right?

Um, and in a very crowded market, uh, and CU actually gave me the tools to be able to, to, to do that. And the reason why I say it's a crowded market, um, I was giving quality haircuts to kids for free in a neighborhood that probably had 40 barbershops. Uh, so there, there were a few. Folks who might have thought I was cutting into their profits by giving away a free haircut, but the reality was, is that I was doing intervention work.

These kids, um, were what the school district would consider troublesome. I wouldn't consider them troublesome, uh, but what the school district would consider troublesome, you know, broken homes, no, no, no real, Finances or anything like that. So I wasn't taking money from them. These were kids that weren't going into their barbershops to begin with, because they couldn't afford it.

So I think that we need to break that down even a little bit further for folks because For many of our listeners who might have been, you know, expecting a typical college experience where you take a course, you take, you read a book on, I don't know, you know, um, community, um, community policies, or, or, or, or, um, Acts of community services, making social changes, etc. And then you debate and you might write a paper and all of that.

But, but, but what you, what you are describing of creating a nonprofit to go in and service people in the real world, to work with real kids, like what you just described is in fact. The project that you did at CU, is that right? Yeah. So every, that's not, that's not common for all these folks. I think we need to, I think we need to like, make sure that they understand that it wasn't just one of those, like, hypothetically, that would be a cool project to do. You actually went and did it.

And so did everyone else did their projects. So all, all students at College and Bowner asked, uh, to come up with a passion-based project, uh, passion-based, meaning anything that's going to move their particular community. And you know, understanding that community has a different definition for everybody, right? So community could be the neighborhood in which you grew up in, your religious community, your home community. I mean, community as you see it.

So come up with a project that's gonna better your community. And at the time I was doing violence interruption work at a place in Providence called the Nonviolence Institute. Well, at the time it was called the Nonviolence Institute. The Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence. Um, they changed the name and I think for the better because it's a lot shorter.

Um, needless to say, I was working with kids who, I quote unquote, were troublesome, but I would notice small things about them.

Meaning, you know, hygiene, personal hygiene wasn't good, and those are things that are taught, you know, so I figured that if I could basically kill two birds with one stone, I can teach them about hygiene, give them a quality haircut, and also, uh, talk to them about violence reduction strategies so that they don't, they didn't overreact or snap on a teacher whenever things got rough, and Some of the things that I learned, one, is that just the feeling of being properly groomed

allows you to feel better about yourself. And if you feel better about yourself, your reaction to things are a little bit different. And then second, which was something that hit really close to home while working with that population, was that a lot of these kids get labeled as being bad.

Defiant, Troublesome, but in reality, some of these kids were just hungry, uh, they would act up on a Friday because they knew that once I eat this lunch on Friday, I don't know if I'm going to have food till Monday morning when I get to class for breakfast. Um, so it actually, through this program and just being able.

Through the barbershop and being able to have just simple conversations with them, I was able to take those conversations and then go back to the schools, like, these are the issues that your kids are facing, and this is the reason why they're acting the way that they're acting, um, and in essence, making the community better, right? I think that, you know, I think that that's one of the things that makes me so excited and so drawn to what College Unbound is doing.

You know, you never for a moment, underestimate Your students themselves, and you know, they come in and you believe that they can do the work and they can do the work. They go and actually do the work and they all prove that they can do it. College Unbound has an incredible retention and graduation rates. Um, and. And that every student is required to do these projects. And they're not just school projects. These are real projects that has real impact on people's lives. And some live on, right?

And depending on, you know, what the person does, I guess, but, but these are, these are not insignificant things. They have real, um, they have real customers. They have real people they serve. They have real, you know, impact. And those kids that you worked with. That you gave haircuts to, I'm sure had you had possibly changed their lives in ways that you probably couldn't even track. And yes.

And the only reason why I say yes to that is because, uh, Recently, uh, we, you know, this past, uh, spring we enrolled, uh, quite a few folks and I'm just sitting at the start of the cohort, you know, just giving our spiel, welcoming everyone and one of the women that was in, uh, one of our new students who was in the audience, uh, walked up to me and she said, Hey, you don't remember me. And of course I smiled and was like, of course I remember you.

You're, uh, so she tells me her name and she's like, you used to give my son haircuts. And okay. Like, you know, I, at, at that point I was like, okay, you got me. I really don't know who you are. And I used to cut a lot of kids hairs. So like, give me a little bit more. She's like, well, he's so and so. And, uh, you know, he was always getting, uh, kicked out of, uh, Kicked out of school, et cetera, et cetera.

But something around the time that you were giving them a haircut, something in his mind shifted. And, uh, he decided that that's the avenue that he wanted to take. So he became a barber. I didn't know. So he became a barber. And, you know, after the conversation with her, I did look him up and he's a very successful barber. I mean, like a hundred dollars a haircut type barber, which is. Remarkable.

Uh, and I'm actually feeling kind of old right now cause he was a little kid and he's already an adult. But yeah, uh, he also, uh, for back to school does all kids free at his barbershop. Kids free. So that one gesture of giving him a free haircut has had the trickle effect of one, him finding a career for himself. But also him wanting to pay it forward in that kids for school will get a free haircut at the beginning of the year from him.

See, I think that this is one of the, one of those things that, and I, I also want to talk, I mean, I want to talk a little bit about the timeline in which these things happen in the, in comparison to, um, a regular, let's say a college experience.

I can tell you, like, this is, you know, obviously a very much of a, a, a, a summary or, you know, sort of a, a, a, a lot of approximation here, but students in many colleges are now introduced to things like service learning, where they go out to the community and do something.

Okay, but they are typically not doing that until they have been deemed that they have the basic writing skills and the basic reading skills and, and, you know, they have to go through a number of gen ed courses, etc. So, maybe it's two, three years into it that now you're a sophomore, you are a junior, you're a senior, you have the opportunity to go and do it for one semester. At College Unbound, that's not what it's like.

Can you tell us a little bit about that, sort of that, you know, like, the equivalent of that in College Unbound? At what point do you, you know, like, you get in there first, first, first, first day, right? And what, at what point are you doing this kind of project? Are you welcome? Are you trusted to do this kind of project?

Uh, from day one, uh, you come in, uh, from the recruitment process, you're being taught, uh, through what a project can look like. So you start to think about what the possibilities are. Um, but we're a regionally accredited college, so we have all the same rigor than any other institution has.

However, um, because we are working With adult populations who have had tremendous success, whether in community, in work, or what have you, they come with a lot of lived experience and that lived experience through our learning in public, uh, department gets translated into college credit. So we've had students who.

have come in with zero credits and graduated in 18 months with a bachelor's degree because they were able to put portfolios together for all the, all the experience, all the lived experiences that they had. I think that the anomaly, uh, or the expectation for colleges to have folks take courses on things that they've already mastered is redundant. And we don't do that here.

Our, the, our person who runs the learning from experience, uh, department, uh, Elizabeth Colon is also a person who the program was kind of developed around because she was the first person to benefit from, I think Lizz did it in like 14 months, came in with about 12 credits and in about 14 months had a bachelor's degree and was on to getting her master's. Um, only because she was able to get through her bachelors as such a, uh, fast paced.

And I don't mean that to say, uh, to say it lightly that she made it through in a fast, fast pace, because she had put in the work and all the other things she had done in her life, right? Uh, we just gave her, uh, credit for it. And I think that for a lot of our students, once they realize that all their lived experience actually has a value, Um, that it's not a thing they just did.

It was something actually that they learned with learning outcomes, whether they saw it as such or not in the moment, we make sure that we teach them how to, how to, how to get that out of any experience. And I think that's a, that's, it's just really remarkable. I know that the, the audience, the typical student in coming to College Unbound, like you said, have a rich lived experience already, so they can translate that.

And I think that, however, You know, I mean, literally going back to even, I know Dennis Littky, you know, his, his high school projects, you know, called the, the, the med school, um, and the big picture by the, I think it's called the Big Picture Company that makes the "Big Picture Learning" that makes the med school. Draws from a very similar set of, you know, ideas too, right? The, the, the high school kids are not, and they were never too young to go in and start a project.

They were never too inexperienced to say you're not allowed to do something. And in fact, I think one of the things that's most, most exciting about it is that it's almost like you, You start your project because that's something you are so passionate about. In your case, you, you see that the world needs a solution for these unnecessary violence because kids just did not know how to act otherwise. So you, you know it. And it's something that's, it's hard to read about from a book.

It's hard to read about from a book because a book could have mentioned it, but it would have been a paragraph in, you know, a bigger book somewhere. Right. And you don't, you know, there's, it doesn't point you to go and say, I'm now going to spend the next couple of years to go on and make a difference in this area of society. Right. So, I think that that's, it's a really stark difference in my mind. But then once you have found your passion, once you found some meaning in that.

It makes the idea of the way I look at it is you might have not done well in public speaking in that one course back in a community college. But you certainly have had to do a lot of public speaking, right? In with, with either the kids or with, you know, groups of people thereafter. But because now you're doing it with that passion, with that drive, you just do it. You just have to do it and you, you get it done and you learn it.

And you, I, I believe that people learn things when the drive comes from a place of passion, a place of purpose and meaning. They overcome so much more. They work so much harder. They do things much faster. They learn deeper. I think there is something about that, that makes it possible for College Unbound graduates to finish to program quicker than a typical four year program. They are not, they're running, they're not, they're running the whole time.

They're not sitting around waiting for someone to feed them. Hey, this is what you might want to take. But, but it's a matter of. The word drive, right, sticks out to me in, in, in your comments only because, uh, for a lot of our students, they come with drive because they're, you know, we were working with a particular population, like they only know work, work, work, and I'm going to get it done because this is what I got to do to, uh, provide for my family.

They never see themselves as academics because no one ever told them that they were. So the second that they get acknowledged as such, you can, It's like an almost instant aha moment where they're like, oh, I can do this. And once that I can do this attitude begins. It's only, no, no one's stopping them. And I think that for myself and for others, I think that's the reason that we go through CU. We go through College Unbound and all of ourselves all of a sudden find ourselves in.

Graduate programs. Um, because now we have been empowered to learn. We have been empowered to understand that we can learn. Um, it was just the institution that wasn't right for us. It wasn't that we weren't right. Um, and it's, it's always a good conversation when I'm having folks who are about to graduate. Uh, come to my office to ask me about, Hey, what, what program do you think I should go to next? Um, and you know, the, the, uh, bright eyed, uh, and just like eager to just keep learning.

Here's a preview of what's coming up next in part two of my conversation with Jose Rodriguez. Assistant Vice President of Community and Belonging at College Unbound. CU's motto lends itself to being able to teach wherever there is a need. If you have a conference room, we can come in and, you know, that then becomes College Unbound. We don't have a building, uh, and I don't think that we're ever intended to have buildings. I think that the motto is that we will always teach in communities.