A walk through the Rose Garden at Mesa Community College with its curator includes stops at roses named Chihuly, Julia Childs and Day Breaker. This decades-old garden continues to grow and bloom each year through the work of hundreds of volunteers – and they’re ready to share their expertise.

With so many leafless, spiky plants growing all around us in this desert, roses seem luxuriously soft and frilly — even with their thorns — by contrast.

MCC offers online degrees, certificates

By Cecily Markland

In order to increase retention rates among first-generation Mesa Community College students, a new program this semester paired students with staff mentors to help ease their transition to college life.

The Mesa Arts & Crafts Festival (MACFest) selected a “Festival Favorite” among its exhibiting artists recently for her eye-catching paintings. We asked the artist, Kathleen Maley, to tell us about her experience and what led her to her passion for painting.

Students, teachers, professors, administrators and parents came together Tuesday night at Mesa Community College to view a 2009 documentary on the stress and over-testing of K-12 students and participate in a panel discussion on the issues that schools, students and families face.

‘The Dining Room’: Family meals no longer characterize American life. This play written by A.R. Gurney unwraps the consequences of this cultural shift.

Performing Arts 2012-13 season preview

Performing arts 2012-13 season preview

Performing Arts 2012-13 theater season preview

In the next year, five new universities will start welcoming students to campuses in Mesa.

Once more, the parking lot was filled with cars and the smells of popcorn wafted out the shuttered Mesa Fiesta 5, only this time it was to celebrate a renewed life for the boarded-up building.

Benedictine University has named a longtime Valley educator to oversee the branch campus it plans to open in downtown Mesa in August 2013. Jo Wilson will serve as the senior administrator for Benedictine University at Mesa and is working on the September opening of an administration service center at 51 E. Main St.

Starting Monday, Jodi Soden, a student at Mesa Community College, will be among those who have to get through the day without having a smoke on campus as all Maricopa County Community College District facilities become smoke- and tobacco-free.