Please see the update below sent by President Hobbs to regional/community partners as part of an periodic report from the Office of the President at Georgia Highlands College:
Georgia Highlands College: Update from the President
Good afternoon, colleagues and partners,
Starting this year, the Office of the President at Georgia Highlands College will compile periodic reports to share out at the start of the year, near our graduation season in May, and at the start of our fall semester in August.
The best way to enable greater coordination and collaboration between the Office of the President at GHC and our community partners is increased communication. I want to thank you in advanced for taking time to review this report. I appreciate your support for our students, our access mission, and our college. Without you, we couldn’t change lives, strengthen our community, and continue to serve as the first-choice University System of Georgia (USG) college for our region.
Enrollment
Enrollment remains a top priority at GHC. I’m proud to say early reports this year indicate we are heading in the right direction. For Spring 2023, our business office was proactive and budgeted for a certain percentage of decreased enrollment. At this time, we have more students and will come in under that budgeted amount. I want to thank our faculty, staff, and enrollment teams across the college for all their hard work turning enrollment around.
Additionally, we have 8-week classes still filling up for March. If we can add 188 students in the second part of our Spring 2023 semester, there is a good chance we will reach our first increase in enrollment at GHC after seven semesters of downturn. Our faculty, staff, and enrollment teams are working hard on new campaigns specific to the 8-week courses to help make this happen.
Part of our new enrollment strategy is emphasizing the long-term value of a college degree using various tools like the USG’s new site Georgia Degrees Pay while completely revamping and streamlining our enrollment process around a “customer” focused model. In January, we brought on James Story, who will serve as our Executive Director of Institutional Advancement. He has extensive knowledge of customer relationship management (CRM), and he will oversee our marketing, communications, recruitment, and financial aid teams at GHC. We have had significant USG assistance with the purchase and operation of Salesforce as our new dedicated CRM, and with James’ experience, he will help GHC build out our CRM and implement stronger data-informed marketing and recruitment plans.
GHC Foundation
I am so excited and happy to be working alongside our Foundation Board of Trustees at GHC. Our trustees give their time, commitment, and dedication to this college because they know we grow talent for our region and directly impact our communities throughout Northwest Georgia.
We added three new members last year: Dr. Gayland Cooper, the Former Superintendent for Rome City Schools; Sally Platt, a Registered Nurse for 33 years, who retired from the Scottish Rite campus of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta; and Cindy Williams, who serves as the CEO of the Cartersville-Bartow County Chamber of Commerce.
Our most recent addition is Dr. Lance Barry. He is a retired podiatric physician and surgeon who practiced in Bartow and Paulding counties for 27 years.
Longtime board member Randy Quick, who also serves as Ward Two Commissioner for the City of Rome, is currently serving as GHC Foundation Board Chair and Treasurer, and Randy helped us welcome on a new Director of Development in January: Sarah Bradfield.
Sarah is no stranger to the community, and she has served in development roles at Shorter University as well as for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northwest Georgia. She will be working with our Foundation to build greater partnerships that enhance our student experience and generate shared investment opportunities for the future of our communities.
Looking Ahead
Without going into too much detail, I want to outline a few other items that we are currently excited about and continuing to work on. With success in late 2022, we will continue to expand events on campus that are both student-focused and family-focused events to bring more of our community on campus more often. We will also be opening our new baseball and softball complex in Cartersville this year. We are working on potential partnerships with other colleges in the USG to host graduate courses/degree offerings to increase access and availability for those programs to students in our Northwest Georgia service area. We have added our eighth bachelor’s degree. We now have a Bachelor of Science in Environmental and Natural Resources, which follows the recent addition of our Bachelor of Science in Building Information Modeling Management.
I am continuing to meet local leaders and community partners to develop relationships and further identify needs for our region. In my first 100 days, I took part in more than 250 meetings, events, and presentations across 30 counties and 4 cities in our Northwest Georgia region. We will use what we’ve learned from this time in our community to create a plan for GHC’s first major campaign to kick off this fall.
We are excited about the current economic investments in our communities, including Hyundai Motor’s $5 billion electric vehicle and battery plant in Bartow County and a $20 million investment in production facilities by the parent company of TYM-USA and Branson Tractors that will include a new 142,500-square-foot facility off Cedartown Highway in Floyd County.
We are also in the process of developing the first ever “Presidential Award for Community Impact” to honor a significant community member in our region. GHC will present this award at our next commencement ceremony in May.
Ultimately as we seek to achieve the goals outlined in this report, I want to keep our access mission at the forefront of everything we do, because what we do at GHC better than anyone else is change lives and make a difference for the citizens, community, and economy in our region. I want to personally thank you for being part of that. And I look forward to what this new year at GHC will bring.
Sincerely,
Mike Hobbs