Jordan Crandell- Service with "Impact"

Hey fellow VISTAs! I’m Jordan Crandell, and I'm spending my service year at the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN). MCAN is an intermediary organization that provides resources, tools and support to high schools with the goal of helping students attain a college degree. Most of the projects I’m working on this year is focused on high school support and I spend a lot of time working on outreach and engagement to bring schools into our wide array of programming.

I’m really grateful for the opportunity that MCAN has given me to attend conferences, lectures and meetings as needed and I’ve been able to learn about college access in multiple different forums. As someone who is also academic and enjoys seeking out new information, this has really been a great opportunity for me!

Thus far, the work I’m doing on MCAN’s Impact Map has been the most impactful – yes yes, I know – on me. The Impact Map is an online resource that provides Statewide qualitative data about MCAN grantees, higher education institutions and tracks counselors who have been MCAN trained and where AdviseMI Advisers are. On the other side is quantitative data that shows Michigan’s progress towards Governor Whitmer’s Sixty by 30 attainment goal. This includes FAFSA Completion, SAT data, enrollment and completion rates. The map gives a great foundation for people to see what is really going on in the state when it comes to college access.

To accurately map out these metrics and programs, I hand mapped each school to its ISD, school district and State Senate and House district. Does this mean I sat on the floor in my office in front of a giant poster of Michigan and hand drew the districts? I sure did. Does this mean that I now have a very unique skillset to know what county/ISD/district/region a specific school is located? It does! For reference, the framework for this is an Excel spreadsheet with 15 unique tabs, 10-12 columns per tab and some of the tabs have no less than 1000 rows of unique data. This has caused headaches and frustrations for sure, but more importantly, it’s brought a unique awareness of inequities here in Michigan.
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It’s not hard to see that the location of these districts has played a large role in students not have equal opportunity to apply, attend or receive a degree from a college or university. It’s heartbreaking, it’s infuriating and it’s something that either ignorantly, people can’t see or blatantly, don’t want to see. It’s also what makes this work so important. My VISTA service has highlighted these issues for me and has allowed me to show these issues to others to bring awareness to these issues in our society and start having dialogues about the massive cultural shifts that need to happen so every student can reach their potential through postsecondary education.