Member Spotlight: Adam Linden

Adam Linden

Marketing Specialist for Victoria College for 3 years

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

Getting to work creatively with creative people.

What’s the most rewarding project you’ve tackled in the past year?

A marketing video for the grand opening of our Emerging Technology Complex.

Last book you read that you just couldn’t put down?

“The Wisdom of Insecurity” by Alan Watts

If you could choose anyone, who would you pick as your mentor, and why?

John Lennon – Because his music always spoke a sort of truth to me and that kind of insight deserves more digging.

You hit shuffle on your music collection. What song pops up?

Paint it Black -Rolling Stones

What’s something other TACCM members probably don’t know about you?

Previous to this job, I climbed cellular towers for a living.

What’s your superpower?

I have none, but if I could wish for one, it would be to save my life at any point in the same way one would save in a video game. Then I could try things and see how they work out for me, if I don’t like the outcome, I could just reload and try again or change everything entirely!

Texas community colleges named as eligible for 2017 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence

The Texas Association of Community College Marketers (TACCM) was pleased to learn that 16 Texas colleges were recently named as eligible for the 2017 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The Aspen Institute chose only 150 colleges nationwide for the honor. Those colleges include on the list were as follows:

• Brazosport College Lake Jackson, TX
• Cedar Valley College Lancaster, TX
• Del Mar College Corpus Christi, TX
• El Paso Community College El Paso, TX
• Kilgore College Kilgore, TX
• Lamar State College-Port Arthur Port Arthur, TX
• Lee College Baytown, TX
• North Lake College Irving, TX
• Odessa College Odessa, TX
• San Jacinto College Pasadena, TX
• South Texas College McAllen, TX
• Trinity Valley Community College Athens, TX
• Tyler Junior College Tyler, TX
• Vernon College Vernon, TX
• Western Texas College Snyder, TX
• Wharton County Junior College Wharton, TX

The Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence honors those institutions that strive for and achieve exceptional levels of success for all students, while they are in college and after they graduate. Ten finalists and, ultimately, one winner will be announced in 2017. 

“We are very pleased to see so many of our Texas community colleges included on the list. Texas colleges do an excellent job of serving our very large and diverse state and it is always nice to see their efforts recognized on a national level,” Darin Kazmir, TACCM President, said. 

The bar for the Aspen Prize is intentionally set high in order to identify those institutions that have demonstrated exceptional levels of student success. In a comprehensive review of the publicly available data, the 150 selected two-year institutions—from 35 states—have demonstrated strong outcomes considering three areas of student success: student success in persistence, completion, and transfer; consistent improvement in outcomes over time; and equity in outcomes for students of all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to foster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue for dealing with critical issues.

TACCM is a statewide consortium of marketing and public relations professionals for public community and technical colleges in Texas. The organization serves as a clearinghouse for information, promotes public community and technical colleges in Texas, and serves in an advisory capacity to other statewide organizations.