Dr. Lori Cortez key in visit to Sauk Valley Community College by Dr. Jill Biden & other national and state dignitaries
Hosting a guest in your home is always nerve-wracking – everything needs to be clean and tidy, and everyone needs to be on their best behavior.
It’s nerve-exploding when that home is your professional home (Sauk Valley Community College) and when that guest is the First Lady (plus the secretary of education, a congresswoman, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, local officials, and the Sauk Board of Trustees who hired and can fire you.)
On April 6, Lori Cortez (Sauk’s dean of institutional advancement) and I received an email from the White House asking to discuss a potential visit by Dr. Jill Biden, the First Lady. Having never received an email from the White House, Lori and I thought it was a belated April Fool’s Day prank. Once we decided it was a genuine email, the nerves hit.
Dr. Biden is a rock star in the community college world because she is a community college professor. She is one of us. She understands how community colleges like Sauk improve people’s lives, and she promotes national community college Promise Programs like Sauk’s tuition-earned Impact program.
Lori and I composed ourselves, but had repeated mini-anxiety attacks when more and more national, state, and local leaders were added to our guest list. Our final anxiety attack was when we learned that because of security, the First Lady and the secretary of education would arrive at the college’s entrance next to our loading dock and trash dumpsters, not our beautiful Dillon Mall entrance.
Imagine hosting a famous person at your home and being told she had to enter through your garage and mudroom. Eck!!
Fortunately, our guests were gracious and seemed not to notice. They were warm and caring, especially when talking with our faculty and students.
Dr. Biden showed genuine appreciation for Sauk’s impact on students’ lives. “I met a woman today,” she said, “a single mom. She became a welder, and now she’s providing a really good income for her family.”
Lesson one from this most stressful and important visit: Good things come from good things.
Lesson two: Let good people do their good work. A gazillion details needed to be worked out in a few days for the visit to be successful. Sauk’s faculty, staff, and trustees did everything needed to be ready for the visit. No-one complained. Everyone volunteered. And everyone was trusted to contribute their expertise.
Lesson three: Don’t let yourself and others down because of nerves.
I am proud that Sauk’s students, faculty, and trustees were such wonderful hosts to our notable guests. The college and the community are interwoven with good things from each strengthening and nurturing our collective benefit.
David Hellmich
President
Sauk Valley Community College
Dixon, Illinois