Sheng 'Texä' Sun: 2021 candidate for College of DuPage board

Bio

Village: Lisle

Age: 52

Occupation: Social entrepreneur

Employer: Elêmount Orgañization

Civic involvement: I have worked as a vote-by-mail verification judge and canvassed for candidates during 2020 general election.

Q&A

Q. Why are you running for this office, whether for reelection or election the first time? Is there a particular issue that motivates you, and if so, what is it?

A. This is a good way to give back to the community while fostering personal growth. Also it provides a synergistic opportunity between COD and Elêmount Orgañization since both focus on talent development.

My platform is to produce higher caliber graduates with better employment outcome while simultaneously reducing actual costs to the attending families as well as the community at large. I would like to explore the following areas of potential improvement:

• Reintroduce the manual labor college concept, an American tradition with contemporary relevance:

The relevant work experiences are the means of true education. This exposes the students to the business needs of the real world, while supporting their education with income. The key is to solve the employability issue early on during the college curriculum. I submit that the general education portion, which is a life long endeavor anyway, should be arranged along with subject-matter training, not before.

• The majority of teaching at COD is done by adjunct faculty yet their pay is controversially low. This needs to be investigated.

• Tenure was invented to protect academic freedom in research universities, which COD is not. Is tenure necessary at COD?

Q. How would you grade the current school board on its response to the pandemic? Why?

A. The Board is doing a good job. I was on campus several times recently and saw the operation there was orderly with proper pandemic precautions. I have spoken to dozens of students, families, and faculties. Nobody has complained to me regarding this aspect of COD.

Q. Did your district continue to adequately serve students during the disruptions caused by the pandemic? If so, please cite an example of how it successfully adjusted to continue providing services. If not, please cite a specific example of what could have been done better.

A. Yes. I had to go on campus for the election process. I saw that while the campus in general is closed, some in-person classes were still being held. This demonstrated COD's flexibility in meeting the challenges of the pandemic while continuing to providing services to its students.

Q. Do you have a plan on how to safely and effectively conduct classes in the spring? What have you learned from the fall semester that you would change in the spring?

A. The plan is to follow IDPH guidelines. If the pandemic situation improves to a satisfactory level, we should bring back in-person learning as soon as medically feasible.

Q. In tough economic times, many students (and working professionals) turn to a community college for its educational value. How do you ensure that a person's financial sacrifice results in an educational benefit?

A. My platform above aims squarely at this issue. Please refer back for details.

Q. From the college's point of view, what budget issues will your district have to confront and what measures do you support to address them? If you believe cuts are necessary, what programs and expenses should be reduced or eliminated? On the income side, do you support any tax or fee increases?

A. I believe pay for adjunct faculty is a budget issue. Once verified, the approach is to introduce merit-based evaluation system and pay for performance. Potential removal of tenure is a symbolic and fiscal gesture of this approach. My attitude is not to start with cuts. The key is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of COD in general by introducing measurement and feedback mechanism. “A rising tide lifts all boats.” I do not support any tax or fee increases because in a pandemic everyone is under stress. We need to improve COD without first resorting to asking for more money.