January Meeting of the TCC Board of Regents

The TCC Board of Regents met last Thursday on the Northeast Campus and held both a special and regular meeting.

The special meeting included updates on the Key Performance Indicator Scorecard and the Advocacy Resource Centers.

The KPI scorecard updated in November and showed continued progress toward meeting the College’s five-year goals.

“We’ve trended upward every year, and we still have one year to meet our targets,” said Lindsay White, TCC senior adviser to the president. “Overall, we’re really happy with the trends on most of these. Next year will be the last year we report out on these KPIs. Those numbers will set our baselines moving forward.”

The KPIs at the outset were meant to be ambitious.

“We knew when we when we set these goals, they were considerably aspirational,” said Leigh B. Goodson, TCC president and CEO. “We are happy with consistent improvement, and even more improvement each year. We are ahead of everyone else in Oklahoma on positive movement toward change.”

The Regents were pleased with the College’s progress.

“We have laid good groundwork,” said Samuel Combs III, Chair of the TCC Board of Regents. “We should enjoy the challenge and embrace it. Hopefully, if we don’t exceed our goals, we’ll be close. We’ve done well to this point, and we have some work to do.

Dr. Jan Clayton delivered the Advocacy Resource Center update, which at its heart seeks to pair local non-profit resources with the needs of TCC’s student body thereby increasing student retention and success.

“There are community colleges around the country getting into non-instructional supports for students, such as finances, housing, food insecurity and childcare,” said Clayton. “We have a plethora of research that shows these issues can stop students from making progress. We want to be intentional in dealing with these issues, and leveraging those resources that aren’t within the College.”

Clayton cited increasing need in the student body for such resources, as well as an increase in students who qualify for Pell grants, an indicator of possible need.

“We need to understand our student population as much as we can to make sure our solutions are tailored to their needs,” said Clayton. “We have to expand the work we’re already doing.”

The plan is for each campus to have an Advocacy Resource Center in a high-visibility location on each campus in order to normalize it to the student body, and integrate it with other College resources. Clayton hopes all four Centers will be open by Dec. 2020.

Regular Board Meeting Highlights

The meeting began with a Student Success Update on TCC’s Air Traffic Control program. Recently, Brandon Grisko, a graduate of the program, attained the highest score ever on the Federal Aviation Administration academy exam.

Gary Wescott, faculty member for the program, noted that TCC’s program is beginning to receive regional notoriety, and that last fall, enrollment was at capacity (24 students).

During the President’s Report, Dr. Goodson discussed TCC’s work with OSU on the Linked Degree program.

“It’s created a lot of positive public relations about our work,” Dr. Goodson said. “We are working with OSU to see how we can collaborate, but it’s going to be a process. We want to be a more intentional partner. We are going to make sure it can’t be unraveled, and that we have a positive student experience.”

Other highlights:

• The Finance, Risk and Audit committee reported that TCC’s revenue is slightly ahead of projections, specifically because of better than anticipated enrollment in the fall and spring.