Edmonds Community College President

Edmonds Community College Kick Off

Jack Oharah, President
September 16, 2009

Well, there you have it! Edmonds Community College is a great place to work for all of those reasons. I agree.

Welcome everyone. It’s great to see you here.

We have a rewarding and challenging year ahead of us: rewarding because we are here to serve students, and even more of them need us, and challenging because of the dwindling resources we have to do our job.

Last year, we faced similar challenges and the response was tremendous. It’s seldom that people rise to the occasion the way you did. Many of you shouldered extra responsibilities while staying positive and remaining focused on what we do: serve students. It is a tremendous privilege to work with you and to be a part of Edmonds Community College.

Let’s look at some of the many, many highlights from last year. I don’t have the time to recognize all of our accomplishments, but here are a few:

We had record enrollment. As of this morning, we have 13 percent more FTEs and 10 percent more students than we did a year ago.
Our online enrollment grew 19 percent last year and continues to grow.
Enrollment in our adult basic education classes increased by almost 10 percent.
Our Head Start program, which serves 510 preschoolers, 30 infants and toddlers, and their families, must meet more than 1,800 Performance Standards. It received a perfect federal review.
The Edmonds Tech Prep program developed new articulation agreements between local school districts and college workforce programs and increased alignment between college and high school math classes and engineering and materials science programs.
Enrollment in our corrections program increased by 24 percent.
Our Business Training Center expanded contract offerings and developed new partnerships.
We created a new WorkSource Aerospace Center on 196th Street, quickly responding to a community need to provide employment and training services to laid-off workers.
We combined our continuing education classes under one roof and launched our new uLearn classes to complement our ArtsNow offerings.
Our Center of Excellence for Aerospace, Advanced Materials & Manufacturing reached new horizons in providing experiences for K-12 students in advanced manufacturing and materials science technology.
We filled the seats at our annual Community Read event as part of our arts, culture, and civic engagement activities. I’m looking forward to reading this year’s book—Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World.
Thanks to the ODET team, we had some great wellness events and speakers throughout the year. And our college team placed second in the Governor’s Health Bowl, a statewide health and fitness challenge. While I’m on the topic of wellness, we have put some thought into planning for the fall flu season. Look for general information on the Web site at www.edcc.edu/alert and updates, as needed, about the college’s response to the H1N1 flu virus.
Our Foundation had a banner year, developing a long-range strategic plan to better serve the college and raising more money than they did in 2007-2008 when economic conditions were much more favorable.

As I said, these are just a few of the success stories from last year. We have been praised on a statewide and national level for our work. Unfortunately, the reward for our efforts has been budget cuts.

In fiscal year 2009, we had to cut $1.2 million from our base budget;
For 2010 and 2011, we had to cut an additional $1.9 million from our base; and
In 2011, we are scheduled to take a further cut of $500,000 — and, depending on the state’s economic outlook, we could be asked to cut even more.

Nevertheless, we continue to serve our students well. We meet them where they are, help them attain their goals, and ensure that our graduates have the ability to contribute to the wellbeing of our community and the qualifications to help drive economic development in our state.

Our performance on the state board’s Student Achievement Initiative speaks to our excellence. The state assigns colleges momentum points as students show academic progress by attaining basic skills, demonstrating college readiness, or earning credits, degrees, or certificates. Since the program began in 2006, we have been among the top four colleges with the most momentum points each quarter and, in each of the two previous years, have increased our number of points per student. Last year’s results aren’t yet available, but I expect we’ll continue to improve.

Despite all we do, the budget cuts really sting. One positive outcome is that we’ve managed to become even more efficient in our use of resources.

Maintaining our commitment to providing quality services to students and to protecting jobs, we’ve saved money by:

reaching a 24:1 student-faculty ratio during winter and spring quarters last year (with great credit going to our faculty for this accomplishment — thank you); and
returning $190,000 to the general fund this spring through painstaking management of budgets across the college as well as freezes on hiring, travel, and equipment purchases.

In addition, we also remained true to our principle to try to increase revenue where possible (not just make cuts). We focused on recruitment and retention to do this, for example:

--Doubling our efforts to recruit international students
--Increasing local outreach efforts to our high schools and opening a workforce development center specializing in aerospace industry needs.
--Stepping up to meet the needs of greater numbers of students across services in financial aid, advising, testing, student programs, Services for Students with Disabilities, and the Career Action Center;
--Creating 25 new videos in roughly seven months to promote the quality of our professional-technical training programs (a joint effort between College Relations and Workforce Development); and
--Increasing our grant-writing capabilities by hiring Rebecca Hartzler as our Director of Grants. Some of you may have heard of her — she previously taught physics at our college. Welcome back, Rebecca. You and Beth Nichols make a formidable team, and we are already seeing dividends from your good work.

There was a bright spot in our financial picture last year — we were fortunate to receive a Title III grant for Strengthening Institutions in 2008.

This federal funding has allowed the college to move forward on some important tasks that were recommended by our accrediting agency, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. One of our best moves to date was hiring Jim Mulik as our Director of Assessment and Evaluation and Diane Dalton as our Database and Software Support Specialist. Both of these outstanding hires result from Title III funding. Each person will play an important role as we prepare for our follow-up accreditation visit this October.

We are putting processes in place that will allow us to boost our data collection and management systems and become a more accountable and effective college. We’re working toward detailed tracking of students’ academic progress, which will ultimately result in increased student success.

You will have the opportunity to be involved in some key efforts this year. These include:

Revising College Goals — you can help us adjust the college’s strategic plan so that our goals align with our values and we may plan to obtain the resources we need to achieve them.
Updating College Wide Abilities — you can help us more clearly articulate our guiding principles for students and faculty and create a system to measure how our students are meeting the competencies.

You will hear more about these initiatives and we will also keep you informed about any further budget or legislative news.

Please participate in the “big picture” work we are doing to build on the great intellectual foundation of our college. Make your voice heard. Edmonds Community College will continue to be a leader in providing quality opportunities for learning and service in this community — but we need you and your ideas to do so.

At the same time, our physical college campus is also evolving. Do you realize that between the migration from Beresford Hall and the new student residence, Rainier Place, we will have about 400 more people on our main campus this fall? And it wasn’t so long ago that most of the people now in Mukilteo Hall were off campus. We are meeting the needs of our students and community with our construction projects.

Many employees lent a hand to these projects. For example, this fall:

Rainier Place, our new student residence hall, opens with all 181 spaces taken and a sizable waiting list. Thanks to our excellent housing team. We will now have students on campus 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Our lease on the Beresford Building ends saving us $580,000 in the coming year. Many of you worked extremely hard to help us move out of that building and relocate our Allied Health labs and classrooms to the first floor of the Triton Union Building — thank you.
We’ve gained 100 spaces of parking due to some strategic planning by our facilities and security staff in order to maximize space. Take a look at the new parking map for details. Parking will be challenge this year, but the new parking configuration will help.
Our Diversity Student Center opens to provide student services in Brier Hall 240. Meanwhile, the Office of Diversity Affairs in Mountlake Terrace Hall 106 will focus on the college’s strategic diversity goals under the leadership of our Executive Director for Diversity Affairs, Shirley Sutton.
Our newest public art project is complete. We’ll be holding a dedication of “Reach,” just east of Lynnwood Hall at 11:30 today. It’s right before our barbecue lunch in the courtyard. Please join us!

As usual, we have a lot on our plates and a lot of work ahead of us. Thank you for your focus on serving student needs and for the extra effort you put forth to make Edmonds Community College a great place to work and learn. It is an honor and a privilege to be your colleague.

Thank you.