The Citizens Campaign and Mercer County Community College (MCCC) have established a Citizen Leadership Center designed to train students and members of the community as “citizen leaders” working to better their communities and our country. MCCC is one of eleven community colleges around the nation where model Citizen Leadership Centers are first being developed in partnership with The Citizens Campaign. These pioneering centers are designed to pave the way for putting our nation’s 1,100 or so community colleges at the center of a new National Citizen Leadership Service that generates principled, pragmatic citizen leaders.
The Mercer County Community College Citizen Leadership Center will have three core components: (1) training in leadership and no-blame problem solving in one or more undergraduate courses; (2) citizen leadership training to the broader community via the college’s continuing education program; and (3) a civic trust on its James Kearney Campus in Trenton, where those who have completed the citizen leadership training work together to better their communities by searching for advancing cost-effective, evidence-based solutions.
“We know our students and the public at large are committed to improving Trenton, the surrounding communities in Mercer County, and the nation as a whole. It is part of our mission to give them the skills and knowledge to do so,” said President of Mercer County Community College Dr. Jianping Wang.
“Partnering with The Citizens Campaign in establishing a Citizen Leadership Center at Mercer County Community College will help us fulfill this critical mission,” Wang continued. It will empower our students and interested members of the public to be effective, active leaders contributing to the betterment of their communities and our country.”
“The work done here at Mercer County Community College will help create a national model for the development of citizen leaders whose example of unselfish service and no-blame problem solving can bridge our divides and heal our nation,” said Harry Pozycki, founder of The Citizens Campaign.
“By training students and residents in leadership and no-blame problem-solving, the Mercer County Community College Citizen Leadership Center will help us expand our problem-solving capacity in one of New Jersey’s most diverse communities,” said Trenton Mayor W. Reed Gusciora. “I look forward to working with Mercer County Community College, the Citizens Campaign and the Trenton Civic Trust to develop the next generation of leaders and build a better Trenton.”
