After pursing other career paths in health care, Devona Williams decided that becoming a dental hygienist was the right fit for her. But when looking at programs around her hometown of Pittsburgh, she found that they didn’t match her needs.

“My options were limited there. The University of Pittsburgh was too expensive, and the community college was outside of the city, and I’m a city girl,” she said.

Devona looked to Philadelphia, where she has family, and found the College’s Dental Hygiene program. She worked for one year as a dental assistant, where she received on-the-job training, while waiting to get into the program.

“As a dental assistant, I didn’t receive a lot of background. I didn’t feel comfortable with that,” she said.

Devona enrolled at the College in fall 2021, taking her first two classes online, before moving and attending classes in person.

“When I was working as a dental assistant, my back hurt because I didn’t know that there is a proper posture for working around a patient. There is a science behind it for your well-being, and what’s best for the patient,” she said.

For Devona, the highlight of the program was the outreach to residents, a part of their student training.

“It’s all about the community clinic. I love working in the clinic because all we see is patients who need dental treatment. They don’t have the option to rely upon insurance. They go years without treatment,” she said.

Preparing to take her written and clinical certification exams in June, Devona may return to Pittsburgh in the future, but plans to work in Philadelphia for a few years.

“I’ve met some amazing people here, I’ve made some good friends, and I’ve enjoyed my time here. The city is beautiful,” said Devona.

Her in-demand degree and certification will allow her to work throughout Pennsylvania and has given her the knowledge and confidence to care for others.

“I think the program prepared me really well. It helped shape me into a better clinician. You see people from different walks of life, and you understand why you’re doing what you do. The Dental Hygiene faculty are excellent at helping you grasp concepts and apply them in real life. The program may seem like a lot initially, but it is very rewarding.

If you’re invested and your heart is in it, just jump in. It’s worth it,” said Devona.

Arriving at the College in the fall of 2022, Moo Muhammad followed the advice of his mentor, whom he met by chance while working as an Uber driver.

"She encouraged me to return to school and suggested a degree in Cybersecurity," said Moo.

Not wanting to rely on family yet not making quite enough for rent, Moo decided to live out of his car while going to school. Close friends were there to help when he occasionally needed a place to stay, and they offered support and encouragement.

He is now graduating with High Honors and a degree in Cybersecurity, and will begin his bachelor's degree in Computing and Security Technology at Drexel University. With this career, Moo will work to protect sensitive data and information systems to ensure privacy and integrity in the digital space.

"I'm here to protect everyone from the dangers of the internet," he said.

Extremely involved in College life, Moo was a member of the Chess, Math, and Cybersecurity clubs; the Latin American Student Organization; Philadelphia L.E.A.D.S. – The Student Leadership Society; the National Society for Black Engineers; and Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society. He was also awarded the N.B.C.U. Academy Scholarship, the Renaissance Scholarship from the Beygood Foundation, and the Drexel Promise Scholarship.

Moo balanced academics and activities at CCP with his work as a career services consultant, personal trainer, and tutor. He sought services at the College, including counseling, single-stop, and career services, and he helped other students navigate resources and processes. He also offers advice to those looking to apply to school.

"I began researching when others asked questions, and I found the answers about education, scholarships, and navigating the College," he said.

Previously, he was enrolled at Delaware County Community College but dropped out three times.

"The first time I dropped out was due to immaturity; the second, time management; and the third was due to the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

From all of his experiences, Moo has learned that "you cannot create a perfect plan for anything, but you can create contingencies. Be flexible."

Looking forward to his program and joining organizations at Drexel, Moo ultimately wants to earn a Ph.D. He appreciates the resources and individuals at CCP who helped him along the way.

"I would recommend CCP because you can build a foundation of friends, family, and a professional network needed for the next College and beyond. Thanks to mentors, friends, and faculty, I've been prepared extremely well," said Moo.

Moo Muhammad will graduate Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Cybersecurity. While at the College, he earned several scholarships, including NBCU Academy Scholarship, the Renaissance Scholarship from the Beygood Foundation and the Drexel Promise Scholarship. He is a member of the Chess Club, the Cybersecurity Club, the Latin American Student Organization, Philadelphia L.E.A.D.S. – The Student Leadership Society, Math Club, the National Society for Black Engineers and Phi Theta Kappa International Honor Society. Moo enjoys helping students navigate the College and offers advice to help others succeed. Outside of the College, he is a member of Blacks in Cyber Security, Blacks in Tech, Women in Cybersecurity and Prospanica. Moo also works as a career services consultant, personal trainer and tutor. After the College, he will pursue a bachelor’s degree in Computing and Security Technology at Drexel University. Moo is glad that he took the opportunity to apply to be this year’s speaker, and looks forward to addressing the Class of 2024.

When we started the process of creating Community College of Philadelphia’s new brand nearly three years ago, we knew students had to be part of the discussion. After all, our students are at the core of everything we do. We couldn’t create the College’s new look and feel without asking our students what makes them proud to be part of the City’s College—and what would encourage others to see what they already know.

We put out the call and assembled a focus group of students who wanted to share their expertise as part of our College community. 

“The goal was rebuilding the brand inside and out,” said Sabriya Marshall, one of several students who were instrumental in providing brand feedback. “Were we getting the right message, right mantra, right color patterns? Were they bold enough? How did we feel as a student? How would you feel as a prospective student?”

Community College of Philadelphia is often seen as a hidden gem in the city. Students who attend here know the benefits of the College, the people who work here see the difference we make in the community, but it often feels like not enough people know about us. If you know, you know—but we want everyone to know!

A major reason for the rebrand was attracting new students.

“As a student, I want to look at myself as if I could I be at this campus,” Sabriya said. “Is this somewhere I’d want to go?”

For the Philly native, the answer is a resounding yes. Sabriya will be finishing her degree this summer and plans to walk during Commencement this May. Her major is Health Care Studies and she plans to go into nursing.

“CCP has professors and staff members who are understanding,” Sabriya said. “They’re very aware and it’s apparent. That’s what I love about the culture of the school. There are so many different varieties of people you’re going to come across and no matter what, you’re not alone.”

Another focus group participant, Aponte Anthony, said the logo needed to be something that stands out and sticks with people when they see it. He said the new logo, with its prominent P, achieves that in a way the previous logo didn’t for him.

“Philadelphia is something CCP wanted to emphasize,” Aponte said. “I remember that during the meetings, the idea that this is the Community College of Philadelphia. Emphasizing the people of Philadelphia. It needed to be something that gets your attention and when people pass by, they say, ‘Ah, I’ve seen that before.’”

It’s our hope that the new logo establishes Community College of Philadelphia in the pantheon of the city’s iconic Ps. 

Aponte, who is studying Applied Science and is about 19 credit hours away from his degree, said the College’s color palette was also important to him.

“They were talking about changing the color scheme,” he said. “I’m fine with the color scheme already. I thought, ‘Hopefully the color scheme doesn’t change too dramatically.’”

He wasn’t the only person who said they liked the College’s iconic black and gold colors. Not to fear: Those colors aren’t going away. We are, however, adding a splash of blue that creates a pleasant balance alongside the previous brand palette. The blue and yellow in the new brand also ties the College to the City; Philadelphia’s official colors emphasize blue and yellow and now the College’s do, too.

Another major contribution students made to the new brand was our tagline. In the moments before a final decision needed to be made, College stakeholders, Cabinet members, and the Strategic Communications team were still divided among a couple different options. Students were asked a final time which tagline they preferred; to everyone’s relief, they unanimously chose, “Rise from within.”

The tagline really captures the ethos of our students. Community College of Philadelphia is here with resources and compassionate educators who support our students, but those students’ individual accomplishments come from within. Every day, we see students find success as they rise from within.

Community College of Philadelphia launched a new brand and logo on April 11, 2024, reflecting our place in the city’s educational landscape as Philadelphia’s college.

Since 1965, we have served generations of Philadelphians, and we continue to increase access to higher education for students from across the city and around the world. Our rebrand will help us communicate our programs and services in a crowded higher education market and highlight the benefits we offer as Philadelphia’s only community college. With the continually rising price of a college education, CCP wants to ensure students know how we can help them achieve their academic and career goals.

Our new logo, a bold “P,” stands for Philadelphia, where most of our students are from, and where most of our graduates stay. The College has prepared generations of Philadelphians to lead our industries and communities. The “P” is created from three different shapes: a bold number one, celebrating the individual and collective strength of one community, one college, and one city. The contours of the one are inspired by the traditional columns on our Mint Building and the modern, rounded structures found throughout our campus architecture.

A light blue dot rises to the top of the “P” on the left side, signifying students’ ability to rise, relating to our new tagline: “Rise from within.” The message is a call to action, asking Philadelphians to recognize the power that we have to improve the world around us and ourselves—power that comes from our lived experiences, talents, and aspirations.

The new brand also features the colors black and yellow, with an accent of light blue. These colors mirror Philadelphia’s official colors of blue and yellow. 

“The College plays a large role in the careers of hundreds of thousands of Philadelphians at one or multiple points throughout their lives. Our new brand needed to reflect our place in Philadelphia as an institution that welcomes many students with different goals who ultimately need skills that lead to better job opportunities and futures,” said Dr. Donald Guy Generals, College president.

Roary still leads our Lion pride, and our Athletics logo will not change.

Student and staff provided input throughout the creative process, and the College’s Strategic Communications department developed and fine-tuned colors and brand attributes over nearly three years. Our last brand update was in 2006, and our new look responds to where we are now as an institution.

“The new look is bold. I believe the new brand represents the College and its students with 'Rise from Within,’ and the logo exemplifies Philadelphia and the staple CCP has been to this city,” said Sabriya Marshall, a Health Care Studies student who participated in one of the branding focus groups.

Look for the new logo and brand colors throughout the city as our community shows off its CCP pride!

Judy Wentworth, who will start the Nursing program in 2024, shared her story about presenting her research at a high-profile academic conference. She reflects on how this experience has prepared her for her studies, and how faculty and staff helped her achieve this milestone.

Last fall, I was honored to be one of five students who represented the College at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS), one of the most prestigious STEM conferences for students and faculty in the country. It was an extraordinary opportunity made possible by one of CCP’s outstanding professor/mentors, Dr. Beena Patel, as well as the College’s dedicated team of administrators.

When I started my CCP journey in fall 2022, I had not taken a science class in 15 years. It had also been two years since I had to stop working due to my disability. For those reasons, I was not sure if I would have the stamina to succeed in my first CCP course, BIOL 106: General Biology. Little did I know I was about to discover a passion and aptitude for science—specifically biology!—that I didn’t know I possessed, as well as a culture of academic rigor and support that I never expected to find at a community college. Certainly, I could not have dreamt how all of those wonderful surprises would lead to one of the biggest academic achievements of my life: presenting a scientific poster about aquaponics agriculture in Phoenix, Arizona, at a five-day conference attended by thousands of people.

The ABRCMS conference is a flagship program of the American Society for Microbiology and is designed to position students with marginalized identities for ambitious academic and professional careers in science. Each ABRCMS participant customizes their own conference program, attending whichever panel discussions, keynote addresses and student presentations sound most intriguing. The sessions I enjoyed most focused on issues of disability justice in research labs, as well as cutting-edge work to cultivate a more diverse, equitable and inclusive ecosystem throughout academia.

Every single facet of my ABRCMS experience pushed my confidence and goals irreversibly forward. Boarding the plane out of Philadelphia International Airport and seeing other ABRCMS-bound passengers—easily identifiable by their poster tubes and “Ask Me About My Research!” pins—signaled to my nervous system that my life trajectory was changing. At that moment, it dawned on me that I was joining a vast and diverse community of emerging scientists who had all been recognized and invested in by their own visionary professors and institutions—their own Dr. Patels and CCPs.

The pinnacle of my conference experience was presenting at one of the poster sessions alongside hundreds of other students, including many from the most illustrious universities in the country. I thought I would be nervous to field questions about my poster from passersby, but I became more and more comfortable with each conversation. I was also visited by a series of three conference judges who asked very thoughtful questions and congratulated Dr. Patel and myself.

The research that I had the opportunity to present at ABRCMS is from an experiment designed by Dr. Patel and meticulously carried out by the students from multiple sections, including mine, of her General Biology course. The experiment tested the efficacy of a form of plant cultivation called aquaponics. We had one grow bed connected to an active fish tank in a closed-loop aquaponic system, and another simple water grow bed, irrigated with tap water, that we used as our experimental control.

Over the course of the five-week experiment, we measured the nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, ammonia and pH levels in the two different grow beds, as well as the size of the plants in both beds. Our findings are reflected in the title of my conference abstract: “Nutrients from Fish Waste Enhance Plant Growth in Aquaponic Grow Bed.” What this relatively simple experiment demonstrates is that this sustainable, resource-efficient farming technique can yield robust crop outputs, at least on a small scale. The next phase of this research, which Dr. Patel and Prof. Magbity will be carrying out this year in their classes, will explore the viability of aquaponic agriculture on a larger scale and in a natural environment. Aquaponic farming at an industrial scale has the potential to help combat climate change.

When Dr. Patel encouraged me to apply to the ABRCMS conference, she coached me on compiling and analyzing all the data that our classes had collected. She then mentored me through the process of writing a compelling abstract and application to submit to the ABRCMS admissions team. One of my favorite CCP classroom memories will always be the last lab session of Dr. Patel’s BIOL 241: Principles of Microbiology class. The gel electrophoresis lab was extremely cool in and of itself. Additionally, whenever there were a few minutes of downtime, Dr. Patel would say, “Judy, come with me,” and we would return to our ABRCMS submission process on the computer in the adjoining room.

Once we received the invitation to the conference, Dr. Patel advised me on creating an effective research poster and preparing for my oral presentation. It is entirely thanks to Dr. Patel’s vision, her tireless dedication to student success and her decades of experience in biology research that I had this opportunity to represent our College on the national stage. With continued support from the CCP administration, I am confident that such incredible opportunities for students will become more plentiful.

Special thanks are due to: my fellow CCP students Jessica Ha, Xhesila Abedinaj, and Rama Diallo, for helping to prepare the research findings; Dr. Beena Patel, Prof. Solomon Magbity, M.S.; and Prof. Joseph Noyes, M.S., for serving as research advisors; Dr. Vishal Shah, Dean of Math, Science and Health Careers, for providing a STEM internal grant; Dr. Linda Powell, Special Assistant to the Vice President on STEM Outreach and Engagement; Isabel Gines, Abeer Hudaihed, and Rita Pagano for lab supply and day-to-day help; Dr. Woosly Calixte, Pathways Student Success Coordinator, Title III Grant Office; and the Full-Time Faculty Travel Grant provided by the College.

—Judy Wentworth