PRESIDENT'S REPORT

RECOGNITIONS

Students with 4.0 GPAs were recognized at Rotary Tuesday, April 5.
Dental Assisting Program Students - Presentation to Cassoday Elementary School in February for Dental Health Awareness Month - Monica Graves
Student Senate - Power Plunge/Special Olympics fundraiser - Brenda Carmichael

LEGISLATIVE UPDATES

These few items affect the technical colleges.

Excel in Career Technical Education - $2.5 million. Funding for anticipated additional high school students who will enroll in CTE programs, and funds would be distributed based on program enrollments.
Fund Two-Year Colleges Cost Model - $6.0 million. To fund a greater portion of the State’s calculated share of the cost model for tiered and non-tiered courses. The funding would be distributed based on proviso language and each college’s calculated gap in comparison to the cost models.
- Legislature approved a three-year plan to “recenter” the tiered and non-tiered state aid (Year 1, hold colleges harmless; Year 2, 50% reduction to colleges with no gap; Year 3, fully recenter state aid).
- For Year 1 of this plan, $20.5 million was approved to fund the colleges’ tiered and non-tiered gaps, while holding colleges with no gap harmless from taking a state aid reduction.
- Legislature created a 13-member workgroup to review this plan to reduce the tiered and non-tiered funding from those colleges currently over-funded and other formula-related issues.
Technical Education Capital Outlay - $1.0 million. The Board has historically distributed the funds with a $100,000 base to recognize each college has needs with the remaining distributed on enrollments in technical education programs.
- Legislature approved $3.8 million to be divided evenly among the 16 eligible colleges with the typical $1:$1 match and typical option to carry over unspent money over two years.

ARPA and SPARK. Nine community colleges, the technical colleges, Washburn Institute of Technology, and Washburn University to apply for a share of a $10.0 million challenge grant appropriation with a $1:$1 match. Match cannot be from existing institutional funds.

TO THE STARS--DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Emporia State Federal Credit Union. FHTC nominated Emporia State Federal Credit Union for their continued support of FHTC and sponsorship of “Tech Talk” on KVOE. This recognition by the Department of Commerce will be showcased during a luncheon Wednesday, April 20, in Parsons. We invite the Board to join us at the luncheon. Please follow up with Jacqui for that registration.

HIGHER LEARNING COMMISSION

Technical College Onsite Review. This site review provided me an opportunity to visit with technical college leadership and learn operations and practices that could integrate into or inform our own operations. For instance, South Dakota provides a technical faculty salary stipend for market-competitive technical industries. In addition, the state has a robust technical college faculty credentialing and certification process. I have shared these practices with the other KTC presidents for discussion and review. South Dakota also provides bond opportunities for the technical college facilities -- the equivalent to the Technical Education Authority works with Colleges on a distribution model, and the technical colleges share a percentage of the cost. The discussions were insightful and provided some additional considerations for us to mull.

Annual HLC Conference. I attended sessions on the credentials in higher education, the need for institutions to increase their ability to respond more quickly to community and regional needs, and some recommendations for discussion on return to campus. These include the variety of credentials and certificates we offer as well as pathways discussions and alignment among the secondary and other postsecondary partners, such as with healthcare programs and business programs. I also attended financial health sessions, differential accreditation sessions, and sessions on navigating change management. HLC may be moving to differential accreditation models to support the existing standard and open pathways models, and this differential accreditation would align to a college's mission and the ways the college aligns to and supports that mission. A question that was often asked in many of the sessions was about the Google, SalesForce, Microsoft, and other credentials and what our college would offer that makes someone choose us over the thousands of other credentialing agencies offering just-in-time training and credentialing.

April 11, 2022 Board Meeting

Meeting Information