By Edna Horton/managing editor
TCC is on the way to finalizing its five-year strategic plan.
Members of the Vision 2015 Team met March 1 to discuss with a consulting group the feedback from the participants of focus groups and community summits.
The Vision 2015 Team is a group of 100-150 community leaders developing a plan of what they would like to see happen at TCC in five years. Consultants from the Cross Group were brought in to help with the planning process.
Several focus groups and community summits occured on each campus, allowing students and the community to share their input on how the college should improve. Students and community members who could not attend the meetings were encouraged to post their ideas on the TCC “Buzz Blog.”
On March 3, members of the Chancellor’s Executive Leadership Team and a few other TCC leaders met to discuss the strategic plan, which will be finalized by the Vision 2015 Team March 23.
Donna Darovich, director of public relations and marketing, said 1,000 people attended the focus groups and community summits. Their comments were narrowed down into three different strategies: student success, affordable access and diversity. Darovich said the group noticed the college had more strengths than weaknesses.
“What it has come down to is what the strategies are and what we are going to do,” she said. “The CELT group still has to meet, talk about and present these to the Vision 2015 Team.”
Jim Cross, managing partner of the Cross Group, said the focus groups and summits went well and believes the college does a good job for the community and students. Cook said the focus groups brought 15,000 suggestions to the college on how it can improve.
Cook said the Vision 2015 Team narrowed
down the suggestions to nine initiatives, which came from the main topics of the groups and summits.
He said those initiatives are accessibility, affordability, technology, brand, process improvement, professional development, diversity, assessment and real estate and facilities.
Cook said the next step is putting it all together.
“We had the large group of students and community and the leaders of the college working together,” he said.
He said what was learned in much of the meetings was positive feedback, but they also discussed ways to make it better.
He said other ways to become accessible, for example, could mean more online classes or the brand could mean making a name for TCC by using more marketing and public relations.
“TCC is doing a good job with accessibility and marketing now, but what can we do to make it better,” he said. “TCC has a lot to offer.”
Bill Lace, vice chancellor of administration, said the plan when it is finished will be successful.
“We have made excellent progress. We have gone more into the community at large than we have in the past,” he said.
Lace said the focus is on student success.
He said the initiatives and strategies are about making things easier for students in terms of geography, student services and course completion.
“We need to ask in what direction should we be heading, and that should be student success,” he said.
