Things are busy at TCC as we prepare to welcome all our new and returning students for the start of fall semester next week. This is always an exciting time here at the College, and it is hard to believe this will mark my 20^th year at TCC and my 10^th as president!

Each year, we suspend operations for faculty and staff professional development and our annual welcome back event, Eagles RISE. We also host Convocation for our students the Friday before classes start. Both of these events not only signal the beginning of a new academic year but provide a great opportunity to look back at 2018-19.

I’m proud to say that the state of our College is strong. Over the past year, we’ve accomplished some amazing things.

• We expanded our open educational resource (OER) initiative to 26% of our students and saved them $1,986,976 in textbook costs.
• Our Math Champions program, a peer tutoring/mentoring program focused on foundational math courses, now has 1,220 participants, boasted a 95% peer tutor graduation rate and won an award from the National Association of Developmental Education (NADE).
• Our Associate of Science in Nursing program was ranked 7th out of 154 in Florida by RegisteredNursing.org, and our Bachelor of Science in Nursing program received its initial accreditation in the Fall 2018.
• We’ve trained 674 basic recruits in public safety fields like law enforcement, corrections and firefighting, and our recruits had a 95.58% graduation rate.
• We’ve awarded 447 industry recognized credentials at five correctional facilities to returning citizens who will transition back into our community.
• The students and graduates of our groundbreaking oyster aquaculture program at Wakulla Environmental Institute currently now have approximately 12 million oysters in the water.
• We sent 257,542 text messages to student in an effort to better communicate important dates and deadlines.
• We’ve been able to target approximately 4 million people through our integrated marketing campaigns for TCC2FSU and TCC2FAMU, and saw a 57% increase in program participants for the TCC2FSU program and an 89% increase in participants in the TCC2FAMU program.
• Since TCC2WORK was launched less than two months ago, marketing efforts have been seen by more than 600,000 people, generating over 6,000 new website views to TCC2WORK.com which highlights programs such as EMS, Early Childhood, Welding, and Firefighting.
• We awarded $2.2 million in scholarships to students last year based on merit, need and other factors.
• We collaborated with Farm Share for the Inaugural Market Monday, identifying over 500 individuals who experienced food insecurities and distributing over 14,000 lbs of food to students, staff, and faculty.
• Collectively, we raised and distributed approximately $63,000 in relief funds and supplies to our students, faculty, staff and community after Hurricane Michael.
• 46 out of 50 classrooms on campus have been either completed or are planned thanks to the TCC Foundation raising $1.15 million for the First Class Project.
• Over $2 million in private funds were raised and $2.9 million in grants were received to support the College over the past year for a total of nearly $5 million.
• As part of our commitment to sustainability, we’ve installed hydration stations across campus and have saved 130,000 water bottles from landfills, reduced energy and water usage, begun transitioning all wood products on campus to recycled plastic products, saving approximately 16,000 pounds of plastic products from being sent to landfills, and joined the Tallahassee Area Sustainability Council.
• Through careful management of our budget, we have saved or generated $985,000 in College funds by distributing costs, leasing space, taking advantage of rebates and more.
• In order for our team to make better, data-driven decisions, we completed more than 1,700 internal and external reports, administered nearly 100 internal and national surveys, and produced nearly 100 Institutional Effectiveness reports assessing effectiveness of various programs and initiatives of the College.
• Our Gadsden Center has maintained a 100% placement in all of our Gadsden-based HVAC program graduates.
• Our Wakulla Center was recognized by the Wakulla Chamber of Commerce with a 2018 – 2019 Business Service Excellence Award for its contributions to the community, and was also recognized for its above-and-beyond efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.
• We received a $1.2 million award from the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to support the expansion of the Kim B. Williams Advanced Manufacturing Center and the buildout of a state of the art welding lab that will double our current capacity from 15 students to 30 students.
• We have implemented document imaging software to reduce the need to receive and store paper documents, and have already we have scanned 26,033

Looking ahead, we have an exciting year coming up. We will be transitioning from our current student system to Workday Student to create personalized experiences for our students, and better, more effective tools for our faculty and staff. We will also be implementing our new strategic plan, which was just approved by the District Board of Trustees this past spring. Our refreshed plan is laser-focused on our core principles of access, student success, workforce, partnerships, and resources and efficiency, and I look forward to seeing what we will accomplish through high-impact practices.

Welcome to a new academic year!