Armed with sticky notes and markers, a group of people gathered in a large room at Arapahoe Community College.
Over the course of the evening, the attendees were asked to share what they think the college is doing well and what it could do better.
It was the third stop of a statewide listening tour led by the Colorado Community College System, which is seeking input as it develops a new strategic plan.
During the conversation at ACC, attendees shared a desire for more collaboration among colleges and highlighted the flexible scheduling and personal support that ACC offers its students. Attendees discussed current financial models and ways to strengthen cross-college collaboration through virtual programs.
CCCS Executive Vice Chancellor Diane Duffy said the system’s board created the tour to get in touch with those who will be most affected by future plans.
“How can we be responsive and develop strategies and goals and measures if we don’t listen to what learners are saying, what employers are saying?” she said. “So this is like a goldmine to us.”
CCCS oversees the state’s 13 community colleges, including ACC. It is governed by a state-appointed board and serves an estimated 115,000 students annually through its colleges and programs, according to its website.
The system’s ten-year strategic plan comes to an end in 2025 and the system is looking at its next era.
ACC is a magnet for students from Littleton and beyond. Almost half of its student body in fall 2022 resided in Douglas County, the most recent data available from the college’s institutional research report.
And over 26% of its students that semester lived in neighboring Arapahoe County. Another 12% were from Jefferson County and other students even attended the school from as far away as Denver, Elbert, Adams, El Paso, Weld, Boulder and Park counties.
CCCS’s team, along with facilitators hired for the event, met with students and employees during the day on March 18. In the evening, they broke out the sticky notes and pens for ACC’s community partners.
Attendees included industry partners that run apprenticeship programs, as well as representatives from local nonprofits, schools and workforce programs. Several ACC and CCCS board members and staff and a Littleton resident also attended.
Several industry partners said they were happy with ACC’s willingness to create programs and collaborations based on what industry partners want.
Jaime Pearson from CommonSpirit Health Mountain Region said ACC staff was instrumental in developing the company’s Medical Assistant apprenticeship program, which helped fill the healthcare group’s need for people in that role.
“They took the lead at that time, based on what we were needing as employers,” she said.
Todd Lambert, superintendent at Littleton Public Schools, said he hears many stories from parents who say the college helped their children navigate obstacles, challenges and unique circumstances.
“There’s a thread there for us that we hear coming back through, which is … Man, are they appreciative that someone took an interest in their kids,” he said.
Several attendees also spoke highly of the college’s flexible scheduling, which makes it possible for students to take classes on top of full-time jobs and/or parenting responsibilities. The college also got praise for helping students in need.
“This school cares about its students enough to have scholarships and get grants to provide scholarships,” Patrick Holwell from Arapahoe/Douglas Works Workforce Center said. “If the kids are hungry, they have a food bank. This is huge, because life gets in the way sometimes of your education.”
When discussing how the CCCS could improve its operations and service, creating more system-wide programming was a common theme. Every community college in the state has different resources and offers different programs, several industry partners said. In some cases, this makes it challenging for them to partner with the right programs, because they may be physically far away.
Stephen Shepard from the Denver Metro Building Owners and Managers Association suggested using virtual tools to share curriculum between and across the colleges.
“I think there’s this economy of scale that can happen if the curriculum at the 13 community colleges is the ‘curriculum of community college’ — and no matter which one is your home base, you can plug in to some of these to make it a more robust experience,” he said.
Holwell said this type of collaboration across the colleges would especially benefit students in rural communities, who often have to leave their areas to find specific educational programs.
Julie Beggs, the vice president of economic mobility and workforce innovation at ACC, said this type of cross-college collaboration would require adjustments in financial models to incentivize it.
CCCS board member Karen McNeil-Miller agreed.
“The financial model and budgeting and planning model would have to completely change,” she said.
For example, if several students from Pueblo Community College took a class virtually at ACC, Pueblo would get the revenue from the student’s tuition, but ACC would carry the cost of the instructor.
Regarding economic mobility, Sasha Easton from Arapahoe/Douglas Works Workforce Center said it’s important to ensure those who are on public assistance at ACC are aware of the “cliff effect,” which is the sudden decrease in public benefits that can occur with an increase in earnings, as defined by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“There’s a lot of tools available … but just so we’re not setting the students up for failure as they embark on a new career pathway,” she said.
Jill Hawley, Vice President of Philanthropy at a philanthropy organization called Gary Community Ventures, said the strategic plan should mention innovation.
The draft guiding principles for the CCCS strategic plan focus on economic mobility, education for all, the colleges being a “partner of choice,” the “power of 13” colleges and empowered talent.
“When you read those five principles, it misses this idea of innovation, of cutting edge, of being on the forefront,” she said. “It feels, in the way you read it, as kind of the same and sort of responsive — as opposed to pushing, leading, cutting edge, forward.”
ACC President Stephanie Fujii said the listening session is valuable not only for the overall system, but for the college.
“(We) appreciate your involvement, your engagement, your expertise and your willingness to come and share,” she said.
The CCCS listening tour will continue through the end of April, visiting each community college in the system. A schedule of upcoming listening sessions is available at https://cccs.edu/press-releases/cccs-begins-statewide-strategic-planning-listening-tour/.