MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE
BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT
OF NEWTON-McDONALD COUNTIES, MISSOURI
June 25, 2018
There being a quorum present, the meeting of the Crowder College Board of Trustees of the Community College District of Newton-McDonald Counties, Missouri, was called to order by Board Chair, Mr. Andy Wood, at 10:01 a.m. on Monday, June 25, 2018, in room 101 of Dawson Spencer Hall at the Crowder College Webb City campus.
Members present for the meeting were:
Andy Wood, Chair
Diane Andris, Member
Vickie Barnes, Treasurer
Rick Butler, Vice Chair
Al Chapman, Secretary
Larry Vancuren, Member
Also attending the meeting were:
Jennifer Methvin, President
Tom Burke, Interim President
Martha Nimmo, Administrative Assistant to the President
Joseph Brenner, Accounts Receivable Manager
Cindy Brown, Director of Public Information
Jeri (Phillips) Cochran, Director, Training and Development Solutions
Kathy Parker-Collier, Grants Director
Glenn Coltharp, Vice President of Academic Affairs
Christina Cullers, Controller
Jim Cullumber, Director of Institutional Advancement
Aaron Divine, Director, McDonald County Instructional Center
Jeff Elwood, Project NOW Academic Coordinator
Mark Fitch, Director, Webb City Instructional Center
Keri Keckley, Fine Arts Division Chair/Speech Instructor
Adam Morris, Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs
Melissa Oates, Director of MARET Center
Monte Padgett, Director, Nevada Instructional Center
Amy Rand, Vice President of Finance
Tiffany Slinkard, Vice President of Student Affairs
Keith Zoromski, Title III Curriculum Specialist/Social Sciences Division Chair
Rayna Karst, The Joplin Globe
A few moments of silence were observed to prepare for the meeting. Interim President Dr. Tom Burke was introduced and welcomed to Crowder College.
Minutes of Previous Meetings
Minutes of the May 21 regular and closed session meeting, the June 5 closed session, and the June 12 special session were approved as written and previously distributed.
Financial Reports
Mr. Wood noted the monthly cash flow statement with the anticipated bank balance as of June 30, 2018. He said there are two sets of check for May 8-31 and June 1-8 for approval.
Personnel
Dr. Methvin recommended approval of three resignations: Nancy Goodwin, Assistant Director, EOC; Shelby Larkin, Secondary Para-Professional/Community Education Coordinator, and Donnaka Wagner, CTE Office Assistant (PT). A MOTION to approve all three resignations was made by Mrs. Andris, seconded by Mrs. Barnes and unanimously carried.
Dr. Methvin recommended approval of the following seven employments: Stacy Hopper, Academic Coordinator of Concurrent Enrollment and Joplin Advanced Training and Technology Center; Molly Bryan, Nursing Instructor, Cassville; Elizabeth Smith, Behavior Technician, Maddox Hill Behavior Support Center; Mary Rebecca ‘Becky’ Harry, Nursing Instructor, Nevada; Kristian Vinson, Nursing Instructor; Marti Millikin, Talent Search Office Assistant, and Karen Marion, Behavior Consultant, Maddox Hill Behavior Support Center. A MOTION to approve all seven employments as requested was made by Dr. Chapman, seconded by Mr. Vancuren and unanimously carried.
Policy Revisions: Policy 4.4 Bid Regulations; Policy 4.11 Purchasing Procedure
Mrs. Rand said we recently had a visit from the Missouri Division of Workforce Development (DWD) relating to our electrical apprenticeship grant, and they are recommending that we officially put some of our practices into written policy. She said all of the additions provided have been our practice, and some have been on our Purchase/Requisition Form, but the DWD does not consider that the same as ‘policy.’ Mrs. Rand said these also come from the Department of Labor, and she thanked Kathy Parker-Collier for bringing this to our attention. She reviewed the changes to section 4.4 Bid Regulations saying bids are now preferred to be sealed and when there is a sole source supplier, specific documentation is required, and who has final responsibility in determining whether an item is a sole source is specified. Regarding the additions to section 4.11 Purchasing Procedure, the college “shall take necessary affirmative steps to assure that minority business, women’s business enterprises, and labor surplus area firms are used when possible.” Mr. Butler asked how that would be handled. Mrs. Rand said we will be developing a list of potential vendors that meets that criteria, and the Small Business Administration and the Minority Business Development Agency already have these types of lists available. She said we must reassure them that we are making a proactive effort to solicit minority businesses in the bidding process. Mr. Butler asked what is meant by ‘labor surplus area firms’. (Mrs. Rand sent information to the Board after the meeting saying that would rarely apply to the college.) She said the last section 4.11.4 to be added states that “Any indication of fraud, waste, misappropriation, abuse, or other criminal activities related to state or federal awards” must be reported, and who to contact will be included “in the Employee Handbook Purchasing section.” Dr. Chapman recommended one minor wording change in section 4.4.1 for clarity. Without further discussion, Mr. Wood asked if there were any objections to rolling this forward for approval next month with the one minor change noted. There were no objections.
Service Hours Proposal
Dr. Methvin reported that Servant Leadership Cohort 4 brought a proposal to President’s Council and then College Council to add a service leave component for all full-time staff, and since it would be a leave policy, it requires Board approval. Dr. Melissa Oates said their group discussed that while we expect students in College Orientation classes to do a ‘Service Seed’ community service, there is no mirror program for employees to do community service in a tangible, quantifiable way. She said employees do model servant leadership, but we wanted to increase and encourage servant leadership opportunities while also being able to measure it. Dr. Oates said it would be completely voluntary and could include a community event or on campus. Dr. Methvin said it would be four hours per semester or eight hours annually that an employee could be allowed with supervisor approval to have paid Crowder leave time to volunteer at a particular community service. Dr. Oates said employees would be encouraged to wear Crowder apparel while representing Crowder in the community. Dr. Chapman said he is concerned about employees working at for-profit businesses that might cause a conflict of interest. Dr. Oates said this is purely intended as service to non-profit entities. Dr. Methvin said we feel for the initial year we should make sure that supervisors understand the spirit of it is to be service, and as the group works out what guidelines are needed, they can be added to the Employee Handbook at that time. Dr. Oates said the current Absence Notification Form will be modified to include Service Hours along with current leave categories so that how many total service hours worked over the entire year can be seen. She said Cohort 4 would oversee this initial pilot year to take into consideration any issues that come up. Mr. Wood asked as a servant leadership institution if we should have to pay employees to encourage servant leadership. Dr. Oates said philosophically that did come up in the group discussions. Mr. Brenner said we have noticed that departments who request assistance during work hours sometimes have difficulty getting volunteers, and employees could also attend Service Seed activities along with students who need that support. He said the group felt providing a way to measure the hours outweighs the payment issue. Dr. Methvin said the student essays show how life-changing doing service can be, and we hope that providing this opportunity for employees will awaken the joys of philanthropy in them as well. She said all other Crowder policies would apply so employees would not be allowed to serve in political campaigns during Crowder Service Hours. Employees serving would be covered under insurance liability the same as they are anytime they do Crowder activities. She said approval for appropriate activities by the supervisor will be critical. Mr. Wood asked if there were any further questions, and there being none, members agreed to roll this item to next month for action.
Webb City Campus Program Review
Dr. Mark Fitch thanked Dr. Coltharp, Chett Daniel and the other campus directors for their help developing this report. He said Webb City has four full-time faculty in addition to some Neosho faculty who teach specific sections here in their field, and a large number of adjunct instructors. He said we are able to get highly qualified adjunct faculty due to our proximity to Joplin, Webb City, Carthage and MSSU. Dr. Fitch said overall enrollment over the last three years has declined by about 17%, and we are working with local school districts to show a high level of customer service as well as to emphasize what Crowder has to offer. He said we are also adding new programs to meet student needs such as the Certified Medical Assistant this past year and the Behavior Technician to be added this coming year. Dr. Fitch showed the top sending high schools with Webb City, Joplin and Carthage as the top three and Home School students almost doubling over three years. Dr. Fitch showed the average pass rate for Webb City saying it is about 80% each semester which he said is a reflection of the high quality instructors here who have a passion for their subject matter and take the time to establish a caring relationship with students. He thanked the advisors for taking care of students throughout the year as well. Dr. Fitch showed the top five majors and degree graduates saying General Studies is the highest number followed by Pre-Nursing. He said although we do not have Nursing, many students use this proximity to try and get into one of the other Crowder Nursing programs. Occupational Therapy Assistant, Business Administration and Teacher Education are the next three highest number of graduates. He said Teacher Education has dropped with many transferring into General Studies due to changing teacher education requirements at other institutions. Mr. Wood asked why we do not have a Nursing Program at Webb City. Dr. Methvin said there is a lot to consider including program approval, clinical space, overall expense and competition for candidates with our other programs. She said Nursing Director Sandy Wilson will be reporting next month who can better answer that question. Dr. Fitch explained the licensure pass rate report shows a decline in the OTA pass rate for 2017-18 at 85%, but we understand that some OTA students will continue to re-test in the next few months bringing the rate higher. Pass rates for CMA and CNA were 100% in 2017-18. Mr. Wood asked what the major concerns are for the Webb City campus. Dr. Fitch said the enrollment rate and getting more students is critical while also finding adjunct faculty who can teach during prime daytime hours when the classes are needed. He said we are trying to better understand area high school graduates in order to improve recruitment. Dr. Methvin said raising adjunct faculty pay has been desired for several years, but resources to do so have not been available. Mr. Wood thanked Dr. Fitch for the good report.
Servant Leadership Cohort 4 Annual Review
Dr. Methvin thanked Cohort 4: Dr. Melissa Oates, Keri Keckley, Joseph Brenner and Jeff Elwood, for their great enthusiasm and work this year. Ms. Keckley said she has been at Crowder for eleven years, and servant leadership is what makes Crowder so different and wonderful as an institution so she was thrilled to learn more about it. Mr. Elwood said after we met with other previous cohort members, we decided to use a portion of All Staff Day to better involve employees. Ms. Keckley said we talked about what a servant leader is, what it means, and how we play that role with students and coworkers. Mr. Elwood said we had Wade Williams, Assistant Director of Upward Bound Programs, who had been a Crowder student and returned as an employee talk about how Crowder servants helped him along the way to get where he is today. Destinie Roque, Spanish Instructor, who had been an Upward Bound student also provided a powerful video about her life and how Crowder employees brought her to becoming a servant leader as well. Ms. Keckley said about 95 percent of staff participated that day. She said the next event was a ‘Privilege Walk’ in which employees started on a line on the gym floor. In silence, participants were asked to take a step forward or backward in response to twenty specific questions that deciphered if we were privileged or not. A couple of sample questions were given such as “take a step forward if your parents read to you as a child” or “take a step backward if you ever had to skip a meal growing up or were on free school lunches”. Ms. Keckley said we believe employees were transparent about their lives, and it was very eye-opening seeing coworkers in this light while also knowing that a majority of Crowder students come from underprivileged homes. Mr. Elwood said Cohort 4 did a book study on the book, “Servant Leadership in Action” edited by Ken Blanchard and Renee Broadwell which was very good. A couple of favorite quotes from the book were shown. Ms. Keckley said the group also provided two professional development sessions in April for employees. She said the first showed selected video clips from the recent Servant Leadership Summit that provided strategies for implementing servant leadership in your professional and personal life followed by small group discussion. Ms. Keckley said the second session asked employees to play an interactive game called ‘Walk a Mile in My Shoes’ in which each person was given a character role to play. As the dice was rolled, participants were given an event such as car trouble or scholarship funding to move backwards or forwards based on those life events. Mr. Elwood said it showed employees how things happen to students every day that affect their lives, and discussion took place about how we can be better servants in helping students to overcome those life problems. Ms. Keckley said it was a great experience to serve this year, and she thanked everyone for the opportunity. Dr. Methvin announced that Cohort 5 has already been chosen, and they are Chett Daniel, Jamie Emery, Jamie Ward and Natasha Davies. She thanked the generous donor who helped provide the group’s reading materials as well as The Servant as Leader books for all new employees.
President’s Update
Dr. Methvin reported we are about mid-cycle in the accreditation process with the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), and we have a System Portfolio due on June 30. She said the System Portfolio is an important document used to see if we are meeting the criteria for accreditation. She said in the middle of finalizing it, we received news from HLC that the AQIP pathway is being discontinued. She said we will now have a new HLC liaison, and we must immediately move to either the ‘standard pathway’ or the ‘open pathway’ process. Dr. Methvin said we expect to move to the ‘open pathway’ and continue in the same timeline as we have been with a comprehensive visit in 2022. She said if the Portfolio does not do well, we would move to the ‘standard pathway’ into a completely different timeline and process. Dr. Morris said we have had three HLC liaisons in four years. He said AQIP is more of a total quality management process that includes accreditation while the ‘open pathway’ is more focused on specific criteria for accreditation. Dr. Methvin said there will no longer be AQIP Action Projects that focus on continuous improvement. Dr. Morris said many institutions left AQIP in the past two years so HLC now feels that a college’s primary efforts should be focused on specific accreditation criteria. He said the System Portfolio includes six categories in which we give detailed information about how we meet those six initiatives and how we can improve on them. He said it has taken about two years of gathering data and eighteen months of writing the document. Once reviewed by the HLC, results should be received in mid-October. Dr. Morris said HLC has been pushing for colleges to provide evidence about anything that is stated so we now have 362 pieces of evidence that will be attached to the digital document. He thanked everyone at the college who has helped provide information and documentation during the process. Dr. Methvin thanked Dr. Adam Morris, Kathy Parker-Collier and Brittany Simpson who have been the main creators of the System Portfolio. She reiterated that there are no problems with Crowder’s accreditation although HLC is becoming more rigorous than in the past. Dr. Methvin said HLC provides an accreditation process among nineteen states in which peer institutions hold peers to specific standards which is how it should be.
Strategic Plan Annual Report
Dr. Methvin reported that we have just completed our second year of working through the Strategic Plan’s ‘Building on Our B.A.S.E.’ three year initiative. She said Chett Daniel is leading a group this summer to see if any adjustments need to be made in the data elements of the plan. Mr. Keith Zoromski reported the B group, ‘Balance the institutional access & student success missions,’ was able to complete the development of a Coordinated Enrollment Management Plan (CEMP) that was adopted by College Council on June 5. He said it “seeks to align institutional recruiting, enrollment, persistence, retention, and completion goals.” Mr. Zoromski reviewed their other accomplishments including condensed (8 week) courses, learning community cohorts, supplemental instruction, co-requisite lab courses in English, and additional coursework as stackable credentials. Dr. Methvin reviewed the data and targets showing that we did not meet the increased retention rate goal with the Fall 2015 data, but we are hopeful more recent data will be more successful. She said we met the designated goal of improving graduation and transfer rates, and it appears we will increase graduates this spring as well. Dr. Methvin challenged employees to focus on increasing enrollment for working adults regardless of the improved economy. Mr. Zoromski recognized committee co-chairs Angela Seymour and JP Dickey, and members: Rhonda Helm, Kathy Parker-Collier, Tiffany Slinkard, Eric Deatherage, Chris Fenske, Keri Keckley, Abby Tribble, Sandra Wilson, Sherry Wilson, Ron Cole, Jerri Hudson and Dr. Savi Senanyake.
Dr. Methvin said the A team is to ‘Advance Crowder’s image/identity in the area as the best choice for quality, affordable education.” Mrs. Cindy Brown reviewed their accomplishments saying the “Our Success is You” campaign has changed to “You are the Difference” to promote current students and graduates. She said posters have been produced for area high schools using Crowder graduates who came from their respective schools, and we are working to promote tech and career programs more. Mrs. Brown said we implemented better tracking of social media campaigns, and the RPM Team (Recruiting, Public Relations and Marketing) meets three times annually to focus on new recruiting opportunities. She said we are developing brand guidelines for Fall 2018 to present to employees. Mrs. Brown said Crowder employees have attended high school assemblies to present scholarships, and signing events were held for high school tech students to attend Crowder. She reviewed the data from various social media campaigns. Dr. Methvin reviewed the targets listed and thanked Mrs. Brown for her hard work. Mrs. Brown thanked co-chairs Haley Reardon and Kristi Chapman, and members: Jeff Elwood, Tiffany Marion, Melissa Oates, Lisa O’Hanahan, Tammy Stark, Jim Williams and Jorge Zapata.
Mr. Joseph Brenner reviewed the strategies and accomplishments of the S group, “Strengthen Crowder’s fiscal position” saying all of the State Performance Funding Measures were met for 2017-18. Mr Brenner said there has been continued success receiving funds from the Missouri Debt Offset Program. He said the cost calculator was presented to advisors in March which will assist students in quickly seeing what their actual college costs are. Data shows that thirty percent of outstanding student debt is from dual credit students so their payment deadlines were changed to coincide with priority enrollment dates. He said we are still working to make the attendance taking process more streamlined for instructors which will help with financial aid and billing, and we will take a closer look at debt data and trends in 2018-19. In the effort to build annual, private program support, several scholarship and gifts were shown. Dr. Methvin said the target to increase cash reserves was met with an average of 20.96% over the year saying the goal of month-to-month cash reserves for 2017-18 was 17%. Mr. Brenner thanked the S group co-chair Jim Cullumber and members: Chett Daniel, Christina Cullers, Cynthia Quinly, Dr. Mark Fitch, Mickie Mahan, Stephanie Ferguson, Dr. Kali Bard, Tammy Stark and Colleen Holland.
Mr. Aaron Divine reviewed the strategies and accomplishments of the E group, “Expand student opportunities for personal and academic growth.” He said new “Wellness Week” activities were developed and implemented for one week in the fall to emphasize maintaining overall health and wellness. The group adopted a definition of High Impact Educational Experiences. Mr. Divine showed results from a survey to program coordinators and division chairs to see what we already provide. Several items were listed that have helped to expand career and technical education opportunities at various branch campuses. Dr. Methvin noted the target was met to remain above the National Community College Satisfaction while increasing Crowder College satisfaction. Mr. Divine thanked co-chairs Suzanne Puckett and Jamie Ward, and members: Dr. Melissa Oates, Taylor Juenger, and Abby Tribble.
Dr. Methvin said the Strategic Plan has served to help the college focus on specific goals while also making valuable connections between departments and employees. She said the four goal areas have been ingrained in the work of all employees over the past two year. Dr. Methvin thanked everyone at Crowder College for making the past four years very special to her.
Adjournment
Mr. Wood thanked Dr. Methvin for her great work in everything she has done for Crowder College while here, and wished her well in her future endeavors. The next regularly scheduled meeting is set for July 23 at the Neosho campus. The meeting adjourned to lunch at 12:25 p.m.
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