EGCC trustees welcomed prior to board meeting

STEUBENVILLE - It was an afternoon for celebrations Wednesday when the Eastern Gateway Community College Board of Trustees met for the first time at the Jefferson County Campus.

The eight new members of the Eastern Gateway Community College board joined their three local colleagues, community leaders and employees from the local campus before meeting officially for the second time since the board was appointed by Gov. Ted Strickland.

"This is a great opportunity for our board and also all the communities that are now being served by Eastern Gateway Community College. This is also an opportunity to get to know each of you in the community and at this campus and a chance to get to know the challenges and opportunities before us," said Molly Seals, chairperson of the board of trustees.

"We began our expansion journey more than five years ago when Dr. (Laura) Meeks led us to begin offering classes in Columbiana County. That work intensified two years ago when the chancellor approached Dr. Meeks about the college expanding to serve Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties," explained Ann Koon, director of public information at EGCC.

"Last spring a consultant visiting our campus from Arkansas remarked to me that our college is being watched nationwide and our achievements in student success and student retention are being discussed nationally. Shortly, after that discussion we learned that the college was selected as one of 21 Leader Colleges by the Achieving the Dream national initiative. We joined Achieving the Dream in 2005 and since then we've seen much improvement in retention, grade-point averages and course pass rates to name a few," Koon added.

It was also a day for the trustees and college employees to "toot their own horns" as the trustees heard several reports from college administrators who discussed "College Celebrations."

"We continue to have many small and large milestones in technology services at Eastern Gateway, but two of the largest came this year. First, we have finalized our transition from the old MIS system to the new system, with an upgrade in the middle of it all. The second milestone is the installment of VMware, the virtualization software that allows employees and students to connect to the same computer programs and resources located on our main campus. This has saved us a lot of time and money," noted Karen Tucci, director of technology services.

According to a report from Karen Hall, developmental education coordinator, "Last fall the college was awarded nearly $750,000 to revamp and expand its development education programs. We have recently completed the redesign of the course curriculum and will institute the changes in developmental math with the fall semester."

"We received very positive feedback from national consultants reviewing our $1.9 million Department of Labor Grant that supports our expansion and virtualization of college programs and services," said Andrea Bell, EGCC director of work force and community outreach. "They found our work to be fulfilling the premise of the grant and to be promising for future directions in higher education."

The final report from Dr. James Baber, executive vice president for academic and student affairs, highlighted the approval for the expansion of the community college.

"I am pleased to report that just last week we received word of the finalization of the approval for our accreditation for the expansion from the Higher Learning Commission.

"As for our academic programs, briefly I would like to highlight the renovations to the chemistry and biology labs are complete, the new lineman program started in the fall with a full class, the respiratory therapy program passed continued accreditation successfully, the new teacher education program passed its initial accreditation visit, and the medical coding specialist program received certification," said Baber.

(Gossett can be contacted at dgossett@heraldstaronline.com.)