President's Column: Neighbors (March 2025)

Chanute, Kan. — March 25, 2025

I’ve always been very fortunate when it comes to neighbors. Jen and I only owned three houses in our lifetime, but in all three cases the neighbors have been very nice or at least not an issue for us. Our first neighbor on Bay Street in Miami, Okla., was a very kind woman who worked at Lavern’s Love Chapel. She was responsible for the blood test (for you younger readers, a blood test used to be required in that state before you could tie the knot). My neighbor would tell me stories of some of the more interesting weddings she helped with.

She also introduced me to the term, “Reverse-Shotgun Wedding.” You may know about shotgun weddings where the father of the bride insists that the young man go through with the wedding for…reasons, so much so that he brings a shotgun to the wedding to make sure the groom fulfills his duty. I’m reminded of this old-timer bit of wisdom, “For the young married couple, the first child can come along at any time. The second child takes nine months.” A Reverse-Shotgun Wedding is where the happy couple asks the wedding personnel to move the nuptials along as fast as they can as family is on the way to stop the ceremony by whatever means necessary. My neighbor conducted a lot of abbreviated weddings.

Here in Chanute, we have had some great neighbors on 8th and Evergreen over the years. And neighbors help each other out. Our kids played with the neighbor’s kids all summer and they swam in my pool. A neighbor built me a fence in exchange for me allowing him to park his boat on my property. A neighbor helped me with what turned out to be a false fire alarm in my house. We took one neighbor’s son to school every day (he was a middle-schooler and that’s where Jen works). I borrowed a neighbor’s power washer and long ladder as I didn’t have one and only needed it for the day. My dog got out of the fence and a neighbor took care of the dog and let me know she was out. Just this week, another neighbor texted me to let me know my back door was open all night (the wind pushed it open).

We look out for our neighbors. Like the time Jen was worried about the boy who lived next door. It was an early December morning and Jen saw him standing out in the cold rain. She waved to him, but he didn’t wave back. Jen didn’t have her contacts in yet, so she could not make out what he was doing. Becoming concerned, she asked our daughter, Abrielle, what the boy was up to in the cold rain. Abrielle said, “You mean the plastic snowman in the neighbor’s yard, Mom?” “Oh. Yeah, sorry,” she replied. Maybe the advice is to put in your contacts before helping your neighbors.

I have also been very fortunate professionally as President of Neosho County Community College when it comes to neighbors. We do have quite a cluster of community colleges in Southeast Kansas that happened over the years, starting in 1919 with Fort Scott. Unlike neighbors, the colleges are competitors in many ways, both for students in the area, and symbolically in athletics. However, while this spirit of competition drives us to be better colleges, over the years we have learned to coexist and partner to advance our service areas.

Good fences make for good neighbors. You may have heard that statement, meaning that there does need to be rules and barriers where it makes sense between the properties and the owners to keep the peace and allow for better relations. Community colleges are no different. We have fences in the form of service areas that keep one college from offering classes in another’s territory without permission. It just stops the “Wild West” from happening and people constantly invading another’s area, then having to fend off counterattacks on their own. It would be wasteful and ultimately the student would suffer.

However, these service area rules allow for another college to come into another’s territory with permission. That allows a college to invite a college with a program they don’t have into their area to offer to the students there. Currently we are teaching several career and technical education programs in Allen Community College’s service area in LaHarpe, KS. Allen does not have welding and construction, so we offer those programs for them at their invitation. I’m excited to report that Allen has signed another agreement to further this partnership for an additional five years!

For instance, for many years NCCC had a nursing program in Independence, KS to help bring that badly needed program to that area. Currently we teach classes in Lawrence, Kan., as the service area rules are not just about community colleges but include universities too. We have been invited into KU’s area to teach Certified Nurses Aid. For years we taught developmental math at Pittsburg State University at their request. We know a lot about achieving success in developmental education as recent data from the Community College Benchmarking Study illustrates, often putting NCCC in the top 15% or better of the country in developmental student success.

NCCC has granted other colleges the ability to come into our service area over the years to offer classes in electrical lineman, paramedic, and university programs from public and private institutions including business from PSU and education and teaching programs from Newman University. We often let those partners use our classrooms and occasionally our instructors taught the courses for the university too!

NCCC also works with our neighbors throughout Southeast Kansas and beyond with grant programs like Upward Bound and Talent Search. Those programs help students throughout the region set educational and career goals in fun and exciting ways.

We also run one of the biggest Adult Basic Education (ABE) programs in the State of Kansas. ABE helps people with everything from basic literacy to achieving their GED- State of Kansas high school diploma. We administer ABE in Chanute, Ottawa, Fort Scott, Independence, Pittsburg, Labette, and the Oswego Correctional Facility, with help from all of those community colleges in those areas. Having one college administer this for the rest saves money and allows for more capabilities. We greatly appreciate our neighbors who help us with this important mission. Currently, we have over 600 learners in this program through the expanded area!

I’m sure many of you have nightmare stories of neighbors not getting along. I know how lucky I have been both at home and at work getting great neighbors. However, I have found that the secret to having a great neighbor is to be neighborly yourself. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a step in the right direction! NCCC will continue to look for ways to partner with our neighbors too, to provide better opportunities for our students and ways to be more efficient.

If you have any questions about this column or anything else, email me at binbody@neosho.edu.