To our colleagues and partners,

I am happy to share another report from the Office of the President at Georgia Highlands College. (Click here to read the first one, if you missed it.) As always, I want to thank you in advance for taking time to review this report. I also speak for many when I say our college appreciates your continued support for our students, our access mission, and everything we do. It’s not possible without your help. Thank you!

I started at GHC in July 2022. I have nearly completed my first full year. I would like to mention a few things about my first year at GHC:

In May, we held our commencement and graduated our Class of 2023. We had several hundred graduates and their families attend, and we heard some wonderful speeches from Regent Cade Joiner, Regent Lowery May, and Senator Chuck Hufstetler.

More than 250 community members and leaders came together for a special reception honoring Mr. CL Tidwell as the first recipient of the Presidential Award for Community Impact at Georgia Highlands College.

Hundreds of families from our community joined us for a fishing rodeo and car show on campus recently, and our faculty and staff showed up in force to help with the event, (including casting a few lines with a Barbie fishing rod for a young lady and her grandmother.)

Faculty and staff from across the college joined together at an “all-in” event that was a show of solidarity and unity for each other, our mission, and the challenges we face as a college.

Incredible things are happening at GHC, and I have been blessed to be part of it. Our faculty and staff truly care about our students, our community, and our college. I am constantly amazed by their work to move mountains and make a difference. And this is just the beginning!

According to Steppingblocks, over 85% of GHC graduates go on to start a career in the Northwest Georgia region. Our access mission couldn’t be clearer. We are the talent producer for our area. We have a great responsibility at GHC to build pathways from dual enrollment in high school through to college degrees at GHC and then to a career in our region (as well as higher education opportunities in the University System of Georgia.)

The path should be clear and accessible. Here are some ways we are making that happen:

Dual Enrollment: Thanks to Chancellor Perdue and our Board of Regents, test scores are no longer required to take dual enrollment classes at GHC. Entry will be based on a student’s high school GPA. In just a few weeks after this announcement, GHC had a 166% increase in the number of dual enrollment students accepted to GHC for Fall 2023.

Connecting Class and Career: This past year, students at GHC secured more than a hundred internships with places like Chick-Fil-A corporate, Wellstar, Advent, and Atrium, Zoo Atlanta, Floyd and Cobb Health, Beauflor, Vista Metals, Synovus, UPS, and Lowe’s. Over 80% of our business students have turned their internships into permanent job offers after graduation.

Enhancing Student Life: Over 100 registered to join new GHC teams in soccer, volleyball, cross country, and cheerleading this year ahead of the fall semester. Those joining the new teams represent counties across the region, including Gordon, Murray, Bartow, Polk, Floyd, Cobb, Forsyth, Douglas and Paulding, as well as a few from Alabama. The new teams are another way to enhance the student life experience at GHC. Basketball and eSports were also recently added.

Alabama Border State Tuition Waiver: We owe another big thanks to Chancellor Perdue and our Board of Regents for allowing students from Alabama to receive a border state tuition waiver when attending GHC moving forward. This means the many Alabama counties that border Georgia with an approximately 20-minute commute to our Floyd Campus will now pay in-state tuition at GHC.

Northwest Georgia is one of the major medical hubs for the state and the whole southeast region of our country, where thousands are employed by a number of hospitals, family medicine practices, urgent cares, specialists, and more.

GHC has added over 3,500 nurses to the workforce, and through a new partnership with Atrium Health Floyd, our nursing program is about to add a whole lot more. The multi-year agreement will increase the number of nursing student positions at the college and grow the number of nurses entering the workforce in Northwest Georgia.

Funds from the partnership will add scholarships, tuition assistance and financial assistance for learning materials. In addition, Atrium Health Floyd will fund a faculty position, and nurses from Atrium Health Floyd will serve as adjunct professors in the college’s nursing department. Atrium Health Floyd also will help purchase simulation equipment for training.

I have told this story many, many times, but when I was approached about my investiture ceremony at GHC and the inauguration year, I was not keen on having so much time, effort, and ceremony center around me. I was quickly reminded by our faculty and staff at GHC that the inauguration year is a great opportunity for the college to be front and center in our community and celebrate our students and our access mission. That I was sold on!

We will kick off the inauguration year at GHC in August with several events in the works, including my favorite idea so far: a “Week of Service” centered around our communities. We will also be hosting the first (of many to come) Highlands Scholarship Gala.

We are still very much in the planning stages, but I wanted to share the best place to go to get more information as things develop: inauguration.highlands.edu

I also want to briefly mention we are on track to add another bachelor's degree at Georgia Highlands College. The Board of Regents recently approved the addition of a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership, and we are preparing to present it to SACSCOC for final approval. The tireless effort of our faculty and the academic side at GHC makes it possible for us to provide more for our students and give them the options they need to succeed.

I cannot wait for what this next academic year will bring at Georgia Highlands College, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this lifelong dream of mine to serve as an access college president more than I could ever hope it would be. I appreciate you. And thank you for supporting our students, our college, and our mission.

Your support makes the difference in so many lives. Just ask Jose Sanchez, a recent GHC graduate we honored alongside Regent Cade Joiner and Regent Lowery May this summer. In short, Jose worked after high school for a few years to save up and go to Georgia Highlands College. This summer, he was accepted into multiple medical colleges, including Yale Medical School, and after careful consideration, he has chosen to attend the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine. Jose has plans to return and give back to the community one day as a surgeon with a potential focus on orthopedic surgery.

Thank you for supporting who we are and what we do at GHC. Please reach out to me anytime with ideas or ways we can continue to serve our community as the access college for the University System of Georgia in our region.

Sincerely,

Mike

President Mike Hobbs

Georgia Highlands College