Chaparral 2019-2020: 28.3 Letter from the Editor

As Thanksgiving is coming up, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude for the hardworking columnists of Chaparral who bring you important information and updates each month. This publication simply wouldn’t exist without the regular contributors who write articles worth reading!

Collaborating with the Chaparral team has been such a great experience for me as editor. With such consistent (and consistently good) work, they make my job easy. Plus, they’re all great people who are fun to work with! I guess I’m lucky in that I’ve had such wonderful collaborative experiences here at GCC.

Collaboration is a hot idea right now in education. Much pedagogy focuses on the importance of students collaborating in the classroom through group activities and projects that foster teamwork and collective problem-solving. Multidisciplinary opportunities are also given increasing attention in higher education, and we can see that here in a myriad of ways, from Writing Across the Curriculum’s writing and numeracy workshops to team-taught courses and projects that bring together different people from across the campus.

We also see collaboration happening in the continued process of the Guided Pathways movement, with teams being created that bring together a variety of faculty and staff, as well as students, to implement the most effective programs and support for GCC students.

I’m sure there are many other examples of collaboration happening, and I could probably spend this whole letter listing them out—but I’ll let our columnists take it from here. In this issue, you’ll find interesting discussions of collaboration here at GCC: what we’re doing, and what we can do, as we work together to support our community and each other.

Thank you for reading,

Joanna Parypinski
Editor-in-Chief