Knowledge is power: Sitting down with the Cuyahoga Community College president

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – Throughout a sermon in 1959, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned, “Science offers man data, which is energy,” and that’s the theme of the 19 Information commemorative MLK particular.

The objective of many educators throughout Northeast Ohio, is to verify future generations notice the which means behind Dr. King’s phrases.

19 Information anchor Shannon Smith sat down for a Q&A with Dr. Michael Baston, the president of Cuyahoga Neighborhood School, about why data is energy.

Some sentences within the under Q&A have been edited for brevity.

Shannon: “If you hear data is energy, what does that imply to you?”

Dr. Michael Baston: “The concept that if you understand higher you are able to do higher, that’s what it means to have data as a strong supply of inspiration motivation and finally perspiration.”

Shannon: “How does that theme play into your daily position because the president at Tri-C?”

Dr. Baston: “As president of Cuyahoga Neighborhood School, for me, ensuring that each scholar has the knowledge and the chance to suppose and develop and be taught and alter and develop. It’s helpful not just for them as people, however for the vitality of our neighborhood.”

Shannon: “If you hear Dr. Martin Luther King and yearly we have fun him, we attempt to all all year long — what does it imply to you, his legacy?”

Dr. Baston: “Effectively, I’m his legacy. I’m the embodiment of his imaginative and prescient his dream his hope that in the future we’d have people that get that broad schooling that they might truly construct good relationships throughout racial traces, that we might even have a beloved neighborhood the place people are valued and appreciated and cared for. So, I’m the beneficiary of the hard-fought struggles. I used to be in a position to go to legislation faculty partly due to the work of Martin Luther King and different civil rights people who mentioned we need to make it possible for there’s schooling for all. We need to just be sure you don’t simply get an schooling to make a dwelling, however that you just get an schooling to vary the world and to make a life. So I’m that dream, I’m that imaginative and prescient and I consider that and attempt to share that with succeeding generations as properly.”

Dr. Baston: “I don’t discover it arduous to consider within the energy of the potential. I discover it arduous generally to assist others have that very same feeling that very same sense, however I’m dedicated and every thing that I do to make sure that individuals can see that brighter tomorrow for themselves and that they will discover inside themselves the enjoyment, the resilience, the flexibility to solid a imaginative and prescient of their future and to passionately pursue it.”

Shannon: “Yeah, we all know Dr. King was tremendous passionate. He considered every thing himself he knew that it was not about him. It wasn’t about these combating alongside him, it was in regards to the future. For you, what carries you thru every single day, yearly to have the ability to make it possible for individuals see the identical imaginative and prescient or such as you mentioned have that very same thought? Do you discover that difficult to instill that in individuals these days?”

Dr. Baston: “Oh, I feel what the actual problem at the moment is to assist individuals perceive the facility of ideas, the facility of concepts. I feel at the moment we’re frequently turning into a neighborhood that so polarized and not likely partaking in that civil discourse that means that you can truly broaden your ideas to develop and to develop and to mature. So I don’t attempt to educate our college students what to suppose, we need to interact them within the means of how one can suppose, how one can interact, how one can inquire. If we problem each other to be higher to reside higher to function in a more practical solution to transfer our humanity ahead, if we try this, we truly create a stronger extra vibrant world. That’s actually the center of the mission of Dr. King — that fierce urgency of now says that we can’t look ahead to another person to rescue humanity that we ourselves need to be engaged within the battle to construct bridges of hope collectively.”

Dr. Baston has served as president of Cuyahoga Neighborhood School since July 2022.

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