Random Acts of Knowledge

Dr. Seshanand Rao is the co-recipient of the 2020 Heartland Community College Distinguished Alumni Award.  

When Dr. Rao came to the United States at age 20 he wasn’t on a path to become a medical doctor. His journey to medical school went through the Clinical Nursing Assistant program at Heartland Community College.

Dr. Rao discusses his path from the C.N.A. program to becoming an M.D., and how caring for patients as a nursing assistant made him think about healthcare.

Dr. Rao is currently Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois.

View the transcript here.

Getting from point “A” to point “B” is a little easier when you have a map.  But there isn’t a GPS to assist when the path is to attaining college degree or a dream job.

That’s where setting SMART goals can help.  SMART stands for Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.  Another tool to navigate the steps of those goals is visualization.

Continuing Education workshop instructor Jennifer Caldwell discusses how she uses Vision Boards to help achieve SMART goals.

View the transcript here.

Many parents are finding themselves sheltering in place to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.  Kids are home from school, preschool and daycare.  Adults are working from home.

Child Development Specialist Michelle Ruestman discusses ways parents can keep their kids learning and developing while staying at home. 

View the transcript here.

Maintaining a work/life balance is a struggle even under normal circumstances.  But when working from home, focusing on work – and creating time away from work – is a real challenge.

With the COVID-19 pandemic keeping more people inside in Spring of 2020, the home space is turning into the workplace, even if we don’t prefer it that way.

Success coach and wellness trainer Lisa Summers shares some tips for keeping healthy, productive, and sane while working from home.

View the transcript here.

Living organ donation is one of the most personal choices one can make.  Some become donors to help a loved one. Others make the choice simply because they know that there is a person, somewhere, who might not survive without a volunteer willing to make this donation.

In 2019, there was only 1 living donor for every 16 in need of an organ transplant.   

Four living donors, each who work at Heartland Community College, discuss their decision to donate a kidney and what the process was like for them.

View the transcript here.

Wilma Copeland lost her sight later in life and worried that she'd never be able to achieve her educational goals.

Not only did learning braille allow her to study at college, she is now teaching others sighted and non-sighted in the course Braille: Not Just for the Blind.

Wilma talks about how she found her way back to education in this interview with Oumaima Bouhlna.

View the transcript here.

Douglass High School in Festus, MO, near St. Louis was the first segregated school in the area to offer the 11th and 12th grades to black students.

As Douglass gave African American students an opportunity to complete their secondary education, teachers, attorneys and activists used the legal system to seek equity in the area’s schools and colleges.

Dewhitt Bingham looks at the civil rights legacy of his home town in his book ‘The Douglass Connection.’

View the transcript here.

With the art installation MURO, two artists are using their backgrounds living and working as global citizens to re-think the idea of walls and tribes. 

The gallery installation physically separates the viewer from the art.

The artists, David Dow and Jim Neeley, discuss what it felt like to build a wall and populate the community on the other side.

View the transcript here.

Equal access to education has been a struggle that has improved only in fits and starts.

Even when schools became integrated there were unaddressed barriers that kept many students separate with only the impression that they were equal.

The McLean County History Museum examines the Central Illinois history of equity in their exhibit “Challenges, Choices, and Change: A Community in Conflict.”  Partnering with Heartland Community College, they are holding the presentation “Who has the power to get an equal education?” 

The Museum’s Hannah Johnson and Heartland’s Terrance Bond discuss the struggles that individuals and organizations have had in offering equal opportunities to learn.

View the transcript here.

Before the pious begin to fast for Lenten season, Fat Tuesday provides one last chance to indulge. And the pious and less observant both love the foods that are associated with the Louisiana home of Mardi Gras: New Orleans.

The Big Easy is a melting pot of European and African cultures. As such, the traditional food of Fat Tuesday have origins from around the world.

But you don't have to be in New Orleans to eat like you're at Mardi Gras.

View the transcript here.