To our colleagues and partners,

What a summer it has already been! I am excited to share about our recent commencement, our championship baseball team, and highlights on students, alumni, faculty, staff and community partners. First, I want to express my gratitude to you for everything you do to support our students, our college, and student success at Georgia Highlands College - it makes a difference!

I am happy to announce Georgia Highlands College was named a Top 10 Finalist for the 2025 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence!

The $1 million award is the nation’s signature recognition of strong performance. The institutions selected for this honor stand out among more than 1,000 colleges nationwide as having high and improving levels of student success. You can read more about the award and announcement on GHC Today, but, in short, GHC’s focus on student success and outcomes has put us at the top of the list for colleges across the country by the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program.

COMMENCEMENT: This May, we celebrated hundreds of graduates. GHC is THE college to get a career-targeted bachelor’s degree! Of note, Armani Skrine, Pedro Robledo, and John Chorn were the first graduates from our Building Information Modeling Management bachelor’s degree. Allison Vessell and Kayley Shepherd were the first two GHC students to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental and Natural Resources. Congratulations to all of our graduates! I would like to specially thank our guest speakers this year: Regent Tom Bradbury, Sen. Ed Setzler, GHC Foundation Trustee Greg Patton, Regent Cade Joiner, Rep. Katie Dempsey, Atrium Health Floyd President Kurt Stuenkel, GHC Foundation Trustee Randy Quick, Rep. Long Tran, Executive Director of the Booth Western Art Museum Seth Hopkins, and GHC Foundation Trustee Sally Platt. 

BASEBALL: Which baseball team has an average 3.15 team GPA, had 16 students graduate this year, and played in the NJCAA Division I Baseball World Series!? THE GEORGIA HIGHLANDS COLLEGE BASEBALL TEAM! In addition to their academic accolades, our baseball team has had a record-breaking season, including the winningest record in Georgia Highlands College and Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association (GCAA) history. The team has a record of 56-10, won both conference and district championships, and was ranked among the top 5 teams in the country.  Head Coach, Dash O’Neill, was recently named GCAA Coach of the Year, and star student-athlete, Barrett Eldridge, has earned Player of the Year honors. Barrett and Ryan Wiseman were both named to the 1st Team All-Americans - the first two in GHC's baseball program history, while Trip Dovale was named to the 2nd Team All-American. These accolades, and so many more, reflect the dedication, hard work, and talent of our student-athletes and coaches.

GHC@NIGHT: We have added a dozen more pathways to our new GHC@Night program, which is geared toward busy and working adults who would like to advance in their careers or start a new career and allows students a unique opportunity to earn a college degree. Students attend GHC just one night a week from 6PM to 8:45PM, and nearly all student support services are available to students after hours in-person or through the GHC Student Services Virtual Hub. New degree pathways include business administration, communication, psychology, education, sport management, English, criminal justice, film studies, political science, sociology, history, journalism, FinTech, general studies, recreation administration and Spanish.

NEW BACHELOR’S IN ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP: We recently launched a new online Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership. The program hosts four concentrations: Public Service, Social Justice, Office Administration and Technology, and Healthcare Administration. The bachelor’s in organizational leadership provides current students an additional opportunity to continue their academic journey at GHC while meeting the needs of a diverse workforce and expanding economic development throughout the region and neighboring states.  

GEORGIA STUDENT FINANCE COMMISSION: We were honored to host the GSFC on campus for their recent meeting – and we were excited to bring them to our commencement to meet the graduates face-to-face they help secure funding for! I want to thank them for choosing GHC as the site for their meeting and for helping us celebrate our graduates this year!

PRESIDENTIAL AWARD FOR COMMUNITY IMPACT: It was an honor to present this year’s Presidential Award for Community Impact to Frank Barron and the late Dr. Paul Ferguson. Both have displayed a commitment to our community and helping GHC grow. The award honors those in the Georgia Highlands College region with a dedication for helping to create a better, stronger community. This honor highlights significant community members who exemplifies leadership, service, and has a legacy of community engagement. Frank Barron and Dr. Ferguson were instrumental in the effort to bring a satellite campus of the Medical College of Georgia to Rome. The University System Board of Regents was seeking to increase the number of medical school graduates to deal with a shortage of physicians across the state and originally thought about bringing a third- and fourth-year student campus to Carrollton in conjunction with the University of West Georgia. Frank Barron and Dr. Ferguson took the lead in persuading MCG to bring that campus to Rome and Georgia Highlands College instead.

STUDENT HIGHLIGHT: Alyssa Kmitta plans to continue her education after she graduated this May from the Associate of Science in Dental Hygiene program at Georgia Highlands College. Her next step? A Bachelor of Science in Dental Hygiene from GHC. Her road toward GHC and dental hygiene started as a junior at North Paulding High School, where she participated in the Dual Enrollment program. In the ASDH program, Alyssa has had the opportunity to shadow dental hygienists and participate in the college’s dental hygiene clinic.

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHT: During the third annual Academic Showcase, GHC presented Robyn Coggins with the Emerging Leader Alumni Award. She is currently an English teacher at Etowah High School. Alongside her role as a teacher, Coggins serves as a Faculty Advisor to Etowah High School’s Chapter of the National English Honors Society and is an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English and the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As an avid learner and firm believer in the power of literacy, Coggins dedicates her career to ensuring the growth, achievement and success of all of her students.

COMMUNITY PARTNER HIGHLIGHT: Dr. Sheila Bennett became the first recipient of the new GHC award named in her honor this May. The Dr. Sheila Bennett Excellence in Nursing Education Award was presented to Dr. Bennett and will be presented moving forward to those who have an unwavering commitment to the advancement of nursing education that leaves an indelible mark on countless students, colleagues and healthcare institutions around the world. Dr. Bennett exemplifies the meaning of this award, and we were proud to present the first award to her.

FACULTY HIGHLIGHT: GHC History Professor Jayme Feagin has been selected as a Governor’s Teaching Fellow. We are so proud of her! Dr. Feagin has taught at GHC for 15 years. Her teaching experience includes the American, World, and Western history courses in both traditional and alternative modalities (online, hybrid, flipped, and 8-week models). She has chaired grant-funded projects aimed at transforming survey courses using open educational resources, including the creation of video lecture series in both world and American history, and served as a liaison for the Gateways Project at GHC from 2015-2019.  Her most recent article, “Transforming History Survey Courses with OERs: The Case Study of Georgia Highlands College, 2016-2021” was published in Spring 2022. She was recently recognized at the GHC Academic Showcase for her innovative use of case studies to get students “doing history” in American and world history.

STAFF HIGHLIGHT: I am so proud of everyone who has made special events like the fishing rodeo, the accepted student days, and preview days such a success over the last few months. I am particularly proud of our staff for showing up and helping us, especially when it comes to volunteering outside of their normal duties at the college. Showing up for our students and community creates trust in our college for our students and community to in turn show up for us. I just want to say thanks to all of our staff for always going above and beyond.

When I first started at GHC, we were looking at tremendous budget cuts that could have resulted in potential reductions in force and possible "pauses" to some of our services. I am happy to report that our momentum and enrollment trajectory has changed that. Our Fall 2023 enrollment was up 6.7%. Our Spring 2024 enrollment was up 5.6%. And I'm happy to report our Summer 2024 enrollment is up 9%. Avoiding a reduction in force was a priority for us, and thanks to the extra hard work of our faculty and staff these past few years, the budgeting expertise of our business office, and additional support from the University System and our community partners - we are building back to pre-pandemic enrollment numbers! 

We are grateful for all the continued support we have received from our legislators and community. During the last legislative session, the state allocated $900,000 in design funds to GHC for the renovation of our Lakeview building on the Floyd Campus. 

This would not have been possible without the tireless effort of our legislators and the overwhelming support from our community. We received overwhelming support from Rep. Matthew Gambill and Rep. Katie Dempsey, as well as Sen. Chuck Hufstetler and Sen. Ed Setzler. Additionally, our legislative partners provided letters of support with signatures from Reps. Eddie Lumsden, Mitchell Scoggins, Martin Momtahan, Deven Seabaugh, Kimberly New, Kimberly Alexander, Tyler Paul Smith, Trey Kelley, and Joseph Gullet. 

We also received letters of support from Atrium Health Floyd, AdventHealth Redmond, Rome-Floyd Chamber of Commerce, Cartersville-Bartow Chamber of Commerce, NWGA dental hygiene committee, and the Rome City Council.

The renovation of this space will allow GHC to continue expanding healthcare programs tied to careers for graduates and offer more opportunity from degree to career across our region and state.

I am thankful to our community and our legislators for investing in our students at Georgia Highlands College, and I am also thankful for all that you do to support our students, our college, and student success. 

Thank you, 

Mike

President Mike Hobbs

Georgia Highlands College