The strategic plan under which Virginia’s Community Colleges have been operating since 2003 is called Dateline 2009. As suggested by its name, the plan’s six-year window is approaching an end. You can see the progress that has been made on it by visiting this dashboard.
As you can read in this VCCS news release the process is beginning for establishing the next strategic plan:
A group of VCCS officials, led by Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the VCCS, [is conducting] a series of community discussions across Virginia to understand how the colleges can improve the service they provide to students, families and businesses. A dedicated email address, ideas@vccs.edu, is also being launched to collect comments.
…The regional meetings will include business, community and elected leaders along with economic development officials, students and other stakeholders.
The email address mentioned above is open to everyone both inside and outside of Virginia’s Community Colleges. It’s an effort to ensure that no good ideas are left behind for a network of colleges that serve more than 360,000 people across Virginia each year.
So the question is what can your community college do, or do better, to contribute to your success and to that of the larger community?
VaHigherEd Podcast: Episode 16- This podcast episode features Chancellor Glenn DuBois, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Chris Lee, and participants in the Chancellor’s Faculty Diversity Program discussing ways the program is expanding to meet the goal of a more diverse faculty for Virginia’s Community Colleges.
Reaching out to students in master’s and doctoral programs at Virginia’s top universities, as well as reaching out to organizations for minority professionals, will highlight Virginia’s Community Colleges as a great place for a career.
Listen by clicking on the audio link above or downloading the link to VaHigherEd Podcast: Episode 16.
VaHigherEd Podcast: Episode 14- This week’s VaHigherEd podcast features First Lady Anne Holton, keynote speaker at the Chancellor’s Award for Leadership in Philanthropy on April 23, 2008.
The First Lady paid tribute to the philanthropy leaders being honored from Virginia’s 23 community colleges and shared her passion for Virginia’s families and their youth through the foster care initiative she is spearheading.
Virginia’s Community Colleges have initiated a complementary program, in partnership with the First Lady, called “Great Expectations,” helping Virginia’s foster care youth through higher education.
Listen to her keynote address by clicking on the audio link above or downloading the link to VaHigherEd Podcast: Episode 14.
During Special Session I of the General Assembly yesterday, the General Assembly quickly approved SB 5001/HB 5001 which set out planning and funding for capital projects encompassing higher education, state parks, mental health facilities, and state prisons. The capital package was not finished in time for the adjournment of the regular General Assembly session, and new legislation was introduced and conferees appointed on March 13. The capital package was kept confidential until it was unveiled yesterday in a briefing to the members of the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. After the General Assembly concluded the reconvened or “veto” session to finish up the governor’s amendments to various pieces of legislation and to the budget bill (HB 30), the General Assembly went into Special Session I to consider the legislation. The Governor has 30 days to sign the bill, but it is unlikely that further changes will be made to the bill.
There are 25 projects included for Virginia’s community colleges. The total value of the projects is estimated at $240.7 million. Community colleges received 23.8% of the total capital outlay funding provided in the bill.
Posted by Ellen Davenport
Special Session II of the General Assembly will be convened by the Governor to address transportation.
Governor Tim Kaine released today his amendments to legislation passed by the General Assembly during the 2008 session, including amendments to the 2008-2010 budget. A summary of Kaine’s amendments are contained in this press release. There were 41 budget amendments, including some exchange between general funds and the Virginia College Building Authority for VCCS projects, and language clarifying the salary differential for Northern Virginia Community College Faculty.
Amendments must be approved by a majority of each house of the General Assembly. The General Assembly comes back to consider the Governor’s amendments on April 23.
Governor Timothy Kaine signed omnibus mental health billsin a special ceremony Wednesday, representing a renewed focus on - and significant investments in - the mental health system in the Commonwealth after last year’s tragedy at Virginia Tech.
“Working with members of the General Assembly, we will make significant investments in our mental health system and the bills before me today will establish standards for the system and increase accountability,” the Governor said.
The bills will make it easier for Virginians to receive treatment for mental health issues, allow more information sharing among providers, require closer monitoring of people in community based treatment and expand criteria under which a mentally ill person can be barred from buying guns, according to the Washington Post today.
Some of the bills (and some already signed by the Governor) specify additional planning and procedures for higher education institutions to prevent future tragedies. Virginia’s Community Colleges got a head start on emergency preparedness with a task force on emergency preparedness that published a report in January.
In a New York Times article, Mr. Jeff Seaman, survey director for the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group that studies trends in online learning, said the biggest growth in online teaching has been at two-year colleges and that “public colleges are at the forefront.”
Distance learning has come a long way. Virginia’s Community Colleges has seen the number of students taking distance learning classes increase 14.5 percent bewteen 2006 and 2007. We are ahead of the curve compared to the most recent national data,
“Nearly 3.5 million students were taking online courses in the fall of 2006, up nearly 10 percent from the previous year,” said Mr. Seaman.
What does this mean for our colleges? For starters, new job opportunities for online teachers! Online teachers host virtual classes, virtual office hours and streamline video that remote students can view online. Read the full article.
The Associated Press reports that an accord was reached shortly after noon today by the General Assembly’s budget conferees on the FY 08 “caboose” budget bill and the 2008-2010 biennial budget bill.
Yesterday, Speaker of the House Bill Howell issued a press release announcing that he was pleased with the progress that the conferees were making, and his strong interest in having them finish up their work this week.
A procedural resolution was adopted by the House and Senate on March 11, readjusting the budget and General Assembly deadlines, after it was clear that the General Assembly had been brought back in to Richmond on March 11 without a budget bill to consider. The resolution changed the budget deadline to midnight, March 12 and the end of the General Assembly to Thursday, March 13. The reconvened or “veto” session has been delayed a week, from April 16 to April 23.
Both Houses are slated to vote on the budget bills late tomorrow afternoon.
The members of the General Assembly chosen to be conferees on HB29/ SB 29 (the “caboose” bill for the year ending June 30, 2008) and HB30 /SB 30 (the biennial budget bill for the upcoming fiscal years of 2009 and 2010) still have not reached agreement on either budget. Their deadline for reaching accord had been midnight on Tuesday, March 4. Yesterday, each set of budget conferees held their own press conference–the House Appropriations Conferees at 10:45 a.m. and the Senate Finance Committee conferees at 3:30–to announce that they hadn’t reached agreement and that the areas of difference centered around:
raises for state employees and teachers,
the methodology for reimbursing localities through the Standards of Quality formula (which has recently been “rebenchmarked”),
funding for Governor Kaine’s signature initiative for pre-school for 4-year olds,
increasing Medicaid waivers for mentally retarded individuals, and
differences in philosophy in higher education with respect to caps on tuition increases, funding for “base budget adequacy,” and the ability of higher education institutions to hold on to interest earnings.
Delaying the negotiations between the two sides even more was last week’s news of a Supreme Court decision which overturned and negated the ability of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia regional transportation authorities to enact taxes and fees as allowed under legislation passed during the 2007 General Assembly session. The new taxes and fees had taken effect in Northern Virginia on Jan. 1 and were scheduled to be levied in Hampton Roads later this spring. In addition to sending the General Assembly back to the drawing board to solve the state’s transportation problems, the decision will bring back issues of how much state general fund money will be required to be set aside during the budget conferees’ deliberations.
House budget conferees are Delegates Lacey Putney, Phillip Hamilton, Kirk Cox, Johnny Joannou, Beverly Sherwood, and Clarke Hogan. Senate budget conferees are Senators Charles Colgan, Edward Houck, Janet Howell, Richard Saslaw, Walter Stosch, and William Wampler. In addition to the differences outlined by the budget conferees for higher education, Virginia’s community colleges have other issues still to be reconciled in the budgets. The House “caboose” bill proposed that $23.3 million in carryforward funding be removed. Both biennial budgets also have differences in funding source (use of general funds versus bonded indebtedness) and scope for capital projects for our community colleges which tie back to the two capital bills that are also still under negotiation and in conference, HB 1547 and SB 795.
According to this AP story at CNN.com, a student at Ryerson University is in big trouble from school leaders for organizing a study group, where students swapped tips on homework.
“Say what?” you think. How can that be bad? Well, you see, he did it on the popular networking website Facebook.
Still don’t get it, huh?
Yeah, me neither.
Kim Neale of the student union, who will represent Avenir at the hearing, says the incident has sent shock waves through student ranks.
Neale told the Toronto Star the Facebook site is no different than any study group working together on homework in a library.
I wonder if this is a case of college leaders being behind the times and not understanding the social media model that most students interact in every day without thinking twice.
Listen by clicking on the audio link above or downloading the link to VaHigherEd Podcast: Episode 16.
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