lead the invocation please bow your head in pray Lord we come Bly before your throne of grace and mercy asking you for forgiveness asking you to protect us guide us give us all the vision that we need to lead not only this college but to help lead in this community this state this nation in this world Lord we ask that you continue to bless our leadership uh faculty and everyone who does anything related to this college from the highest to the lowest but we ask that you continue to bless us to go to and from these places and all these blessings in Jesus name in whom I pray and in name you may pray amen amen amen to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under go indivisible [Music] jice you do our uh you do our spotlights abely good morning everyone and welcome back from spring break hopefully you had a wonderful time I did see a few little Smiles out there maybe you're rested and ready to jump back in the saddle I'm proud to share these spotlights um this morning first I want to um applaud the St Pete Gibbs in downtown Midtown campuses for hosting the Dr M J Williams Senior academic Excellence program on Monday February 26th at the Palladium and I believe we recognize middle and high schoolers who are doing well and so we're starting early to make sure they know that they are capable and able to go to college um and earn a itial as a tribute to Dr M J Williams and his legacy of service and generosity seven High School seniors were presented with a $500 scholarship to St Petersburg College also want to applaud the college for being awarded the 2024 highly established action plan seal by at Allin campus democracy challenge we're honored to be one of 93 institutions to received the 2024 highly established action plan seal for our work GR in our work in working with the next generation of Voters that's what that is all about is helping students understand the importance of voting this recognition is awarded to campuses with strong action plans exploring Innovative strategies to increase nonpartisan Democratic engagement on campus and I believe um T Tara Nome she's probably not here um has been intricate ly involved in making that happen so good job um one of our advisors Dominique Inola Dominique forgive me if I mispronounced your name was recently recognized by the pelis county schools for his outstanding service as a School Mentor he works um at the Clearwater campus and mentors students at Sunset Hill Elementary School in his local community at Tarpon Springs also one of our professors Greg bird um was recognized by a poem he wrote for the city of dun Eden which has turned into a video and was presented as part of the city's recent state of the city meeting good job Professor bir and then today the podcast standing in the Gap launches I'm so proud um it is featuring thought leaders who Foster positive change in education and Beyond the podcast will provide individuals from diverse backgrounds including corporate Executives students faculty staff and Community leaders the opportunity to come together and explore the impact of supporting others by standing in the Gap and what's so important about um this podcast is we're looking at everyone who stands in the Gap we're not looking for just politicians or Big Wigs we're looking for individuals who get up every day with the goal of helping people have a better life and that's something that our Board of Trustees um do so well so they will be invited guests so get ready um and as um a part of women's History Month the Show's first guest will be Dr Kena Tomlin president and chief executive officer for foundation of healthy St Petersburg and that will be my spotlights for today Mr chair uh thank you for sharing those it's always exciting to hear how um the St Petersburg College Community is making an impact in the uh the community so thanks um just quick comment wanted I know we just finished up our uh annual audit um so wanted to thank the team um for that um received the good news that everything went well um so thank everybody that that put the time and effort into that I know that's an extraordinary amount of work so um thank for thank you team um any comments I I have one go ahead um I just want to I wasn't here last month when we had our meeting and I want to say to um the spr family and all the folks on the event last last month that um there there could not have been a a more transformative uh better leader that we could have named that building after on our campus up there I ran into I didn't run into him but I had a meeting with Congress and Bill rakis and he said it was a well-deserved thing and by the way I was not in my robe I know people thought that I was in my robe on The Zo it was actually a sweater I was in the Northeast it was very cold so so um but yeah I heard it was a great event I'm I'm very upset that I missed it but um a Duty called and I had to go do some other things but I just wanted to acknowledge the spr family and acknowledge you all as a board for making that happen uh he helped this college tremendously um there have only been four or five people that I can name that have changed the face of of how we do business and changed his college in a very transformative way and he's been one of them so it was welld deserved thank you guys and I want to say congratulations to him and his family gibons trusty Kidwell I'm on the foundation board now and uh I've attended a few meetings and one thing uh first of all they're doing great work but I wanted to recognize Mr Jesse Turtle for celebrating his fifth anniversary uh that is yeah um and uh the I've only been on the board for two meetings but the love and appreciation from the board members toward Jesse on all of the emails that came back to you and to the group uh was pretty cool to read uh and way more eloquent than anything I could ever put in an email so it was pretty cool to read and congratulations perfect uh moving moving on I'll entertain a motion to accept the minutes from last meeting thank you is there second second Perfect all in favor minutes are approved and uh with that we will turn over to you always know when you're your guy you always know when your guy that's raising money is doing a good job when when people tell you don't have them call me that's a good sorry uh minutes will show as um as approved but uh did move past the public comment um we do not have any cards pertaining to the agenda today so public comment period is closed um and with that we will move to uh general councel report Mia trustees Dr Williams the college continues to bargain with the full-time faculty we currently have 11 articles that are agreed to there are six outstanding including faculty duties compensation and benefits and we meet with them on Friday for another bargaining session and we have bargaining scheduled through April great thanks Mia uh strategic focus in planning and good morning good morning chair buts members of the board Dr Williams my name is Sabrina Crawford I'm the associate vice president of institutional Effectiveness and academic services and I'm excited to be here today to share our results of our uh administration of the survey of entering student engagement that we did this past fall I want it to work oh there we go okay so the sense survey we we uh administer the survey every three years it's a national survey and it focuses on the questions that allow us to see what the student experience is for our entering students we send it out to all of our entering students who are first time at SPC and um it looks at those types of questions that look at those experiences who do you meet what do how do you feel when you first come onto campus do you feel supported will you always administer it during the fourth or fifth um weeks during the term and the questions are really grounded in the research around what helps retain and support our students there are six categories of questions the first one has to do with early connections and those types of questions include do you feel welcome do you get information about our support services do you get to meet with financial aid does someone get to know your name um and is one person assigned to you to help you lead you through your first weeks the second area is called high expectations and aspirations those types of questions include do the staff want me to succeed um do I have personal motivation to succeed and do I am I feeling prepared for college and ready to walk into my first day of classes the third section of questions have to do with clear academic plan and pathway and these have to do with whether or not you have a chance to meet with an adviser do they to help you create a plan pick your degree program pick your classes and have the most important discussions about do you have life needs that we can help you with the next section has to do with effective track to college readiness and these are those precursor questions did you have to take a placement test have you learned study skills do you understand your strengths and weaknesses the next section has to do with engaged learning and this has to do with both your personal ability to participate in class do you get opportunities to work with others there's um sorry there's questions about your communication with both faculty and other members around the college and whether or not you're willing to ask for help from either your faculty member or your tutors and the last section has to do with academic and social support network and those questions have to do with faculty explaining the support services that we offer grading policies and providing opportunities to meet and connect with other faculty and students so I'm going to start off with an interview an overview on the overview slide are the six categories that I just explained and you'll see the SBC is the white category so the bottom one in each of the areas the numbers represent the students who either agree or strongly agree so the percentage of the students who responded to those two areas you'll notice if you just run your line down your eyes down the chart that the first four categories that white line as far in excess of our two comparison groups which include our extra- large colleges group and the overall cohort of the of every University and college that took this survey the the last two areas engaged learning and academic and social support network are the ones that you can see that we need a little bit of work on the most exciting thing about this is that the fourth category effective track to college readiness this is the first time that we've exceeded both of our comparison groups in the last three surveys so we're very proud about that because the college has been working on various initiatives for this last several years around our first generation Our entry students our first- time in college students I want we wanted to kind of look a little bit about our first gen students how are they doing because research says that those students are the ones that do not have the support services at home they don't have people that they can go and talk to and they're the ones who need the most help in order to na navigate those first few weeks of college so our first gen students are the Green in the middle of these columns and you'll notice a very similar Trend to the last chart the first four columns those first gen students are really above both our overall and our not first gen and a lot of that is attributed to those initiatives that um my partner who's going to be presenting next Dr eln will go into a little bit more and similarly to the first Slide the last two areas engaged learning and academic and social support network are the ones that we still need to do some work on so I wanted to delve into some of the different um questions to give you a kind of an overview of how this survey went so the sense administrators provide an executive summary and they look at two different categories the highest aspects of student engagement from their survey and the lowest aspects of student engagement in their survey but they look at it in point in time so just this survey how did we do I didn't want to look at it that way I wanted to look at the trends to say okay so overall how are we doing yes I want to look at those High ones but what are the ones that we're also showing Improvement upon so here are four of those good examples the first one has to do with early connections and the question that I picked has to do with whether or not when you walked in the door did you feel welcomed and you'll notice that our first gen students are almost exactly on par with both the 2023 cohort first gen students so not the overall but just the first gen students as well as the SPC all this is good news for us it's a high number but it did show an improvement of almost 4% so I wanted to share that one the next one has to do with clear Pathways and it talks about whether or not you've met with an adviser and the most important part of this question is at a convenient time and it really speaks to the work that our student services and our advisers have done around making sure that they are meeting with students at times that are convenient to them and you'll note that our first gen students are really receiving that it's improved by over 6% and we we're above both the cohort and our overall the third area has to do with high expectations this U question had to do with whether or not the students feel that their instructors want them to succeed very important question when they first walk into that classroom our first gen students are at 90% that's astronomical it did go up almost 4.5% for the college overall but it far exceeds what the cohort for first gen Across the Nation is doing and the last one is college readiness is that whether or not students have learned to understand both their strengths and weaknesses and that could have happened in high school it could have happened in the intervening months before college or it could have happened during the first weeks or during orientation and again you'll notice that those first gen students are doing really well but not all things are always perfect so let's talk a little bit about improving areas so these are areas um both in those two lower those two lower buckets where we need some work and I did pick some areas that showed high growth but they possibly weren't um the highest in those in those categories so the first area has to do with that engaged learning and whether or not students have an opportunity to work with others and since we have a lot of students who are taking online classes this is a very important question for us and this question really speaks to how much our faculty are working on trying to embed those in those opportunities to have Project work work with other students get to know other students to be successful we did improve 18.8% in this category There are 16 questions only half of them showed Improvement year-over-year this one did go up a lot but you'll see that the overall is still a pretty low number so we have work to do but it's way better than we were at the prior prior survey when we were in the 30s the next section has to do with the academic and social support and this is when some one person actually knows my name and that's a really important thing because if you have one peer that you can reach out to then you know that you have a better chance of actually wanting to stick around because you're not out there by yourself so this did improve 10% it did go up into um uh into the 50 % range it's it's getting better but obviously we still have some work to do in this academic and social support category there's seven questions and um all of them showed Improvement year-over-year these were the two lowest in both of these categories but did show Improvement and then my last slide has to do with areas that might be you know that we really should be working on there's areas of continued concern here the first one has to do with college readiness so these are high numbers they're in the they're in the 75% range but it was one of the few that actually went down year-over-year so it has to do with whether or not um you have an opportunity to improve your study skills so work that we can still be doing it's not it's about on par with these extra- large colleges it's about on par with everything else but we did go down about um one point the last three categories you're going to see that little word never and bold and yellow that's because I did a reverse analysis on these uh I looked at rather than looking at the strongly agree and agree I looked at the Never So students who never do these things and what this means is that if the number Rises we're not doing good so yes there's a point Arrow up and so your eyes are like oh good maybe we're doing well no it means that we're not doing well so the first one has to do with engaged learning and this is one of those questions that I talked about that it's a little awkward because it does say do you use an electronic tool to communicate with your your instructors well sure of course most students if they read this question without the little add-on to the question which is they qualified it by saying using Myspace or Facebook and if you think about our students in the age of our students that are getting lower younger and younger these students are going to be like what on Earth are these things no of course I'm not using Myspace I don't even know what it is so so of course this question was not so good and we do have a rising number on there but I'm not as concerned about that one uh the next one in engaged learning has to do with um that I um I never asked my instructor uh for help this did go up about 5% overall at the college um but you do see that we um we are not as good as our large colleges so we do need to work on encouraging our students to be able to reach out to those faculty members and then the last one in engaged learning has to do with that um I re I received prompt feedback from my instructors this also went up about almost 3% and and it's a very low percentage I mean it's 14.7% so in the numbers based upon how many people there's a big swing but you can see that we do need to have some work on that as well and those are my areas for the sense survey and my uh partner Dr eln is going to talk a little bit next about the all the work that she's doing around firsttime experience thank thank you good morning chair buts president Williams members of the board I'm amberland I'm the assistant dean of communications and also our firsttime Titans academic lead firsttime Titans is spc's exploratory first year experience pilot first year experience programs are long-standing evidence-based high impact practice that traditionally yield increases in persistence retention completion and sense of belonging so what you see here is sort of a infographic of the model that we are using for the 2324 school year um in conjunction with student affairs and orientation academic Affairs is using this model to engage our first time in college students so we have cohort classes that's ENC 1101 MGF 1106 mat 1033 and we piloted a special section of introduction to business typically Gateway courses that our first time in college students struggle with so these serve as an anchor class um that the students are taking together from those anchor classes we have 16 full-time faculty members assigned to one of those courses to case manage about 25 to 30 students throughout the school year um and so they do individual group group mentoring things like that um they also plan events student engagement opportunities on the campus we are basing our program around this idea of relationship Rich education and using a very relational approach to connecting our students to the college so we are trying to Foster student relationships with one another through taking the class together and sharing a mentor um the student is assigned to The Faculty Mentor but we also have student peer mentors assigned to The Faculty Mentor so the students are working with an older student who's shown success at the college as well as with their faculty and then through our research with FYE programs we know that once students are connected to faculty and engagement opportunities at the college they are more connected to the college and ready to come back and be successful as they move forward so some of our program highlights we have 16 faculty mentors and I will show you their names in a minute across the college not just in our gen Ed classes we have um mentors from business education nursing ethics any discipline you can imagine and are located at all of the various campuses so it's really nice to see again The Faculty mentors are paired with a student peer mentor um they do work collaboratively as a campus-based team with their associate Deans to host events and opportunities in the 40 minutes between classes that their students can engage in we were also able to bring in a New York Times best-selling author and journalist for these students Haron Cohen um between the seminal and Clear Water campuses we had about 100 students attend he signed all of their books they were Eng enging with each other some of them will never have that experience again so it's was very cool to see um we have really strong Partnerships across our five major sites with our Titan care student life and Leadership career Navigators and our advisers and then I'm really excited about this last one um because they're happening in the next few weeks we are offering experiential learning opportunities for the firsttime Titan cohorts as well as our entire ftic population this Thursday uh a group from downtown Midtown an ENC 1101 class and a political science class along with the faculty members are taking a trip to the dolly Museum and then they're going to go back to downtown have lunch and talk about the relevancy of Art in everyday life and then in a few weeks our Tarpon Springs mentoring team are taking a group of the tarpon students to a wild careers workshop at Bush Gardens we are going to have some career Navigators come with us to talk about transferable skills in in all um fields and so we're excited because this work really aligns with the direction we're going with better jobs better lives so we're able to start tying everything together early for our students these are our 16 mentors um I won't read their names because I will butcher some of them but we we have three at every campus with the exception of clear water we have four because we were piloting um a special section of the introduction to business class they've been great they're really engaged they're super excited to be doing this work so we're lucky to have them and then um I've spoke to you a little bit about the benefits but just wanted to outline them here for you for the students they're really getting their mentors are not mentoring them in terms of content they are focusing on academic success skills time management work life balance um juggling multiple things effective communication they're getting assistance navigating their SPC resources we're providing the experiential learning opportunities so they can sort of get into what they want to do early and then there are the one-on-one and group engagement activities which sort of helps with that academic and social network that Dr Crawford was just talking about we've also had incredible faculty benefits from our faculty who are serving as mentors um they're increasing their engagement with students outside of the classroom and if you talk to any of the 16 I think this is their favorite part they're hanging out they're playing pingpong they're having pizza um and they're getting to know their students as people and likewise so that's been really fun to see we are again building our cross-discipline faculty relationships and more important I think our colle college-wide collaboration so our faculty are getting connected with other divisions at the college in order to provide resources to our students um and then we've also been able to embed some professional development opportunities within the program I wanted to leave you with a few images of some of the work that we have done um so these are our mentors and our students participating in some of our activities uh the one on the bottom is at the Clear Water kindness fair that just happened I love the one on the top left Corner though because that is harlon Cohen speaking to a room full of students but he actually asked for images from us to incorporate in his presentation to our students so behind him You' seen de Demmer and Nick Manus one of our mentors at a firsttime Titan event they hosted with a group full of students so that was really fun to see and finally I know some of our mentors would have liked to have been here to share their experiences with you but most of them are teaching and so I wanted to leave you with some words from Dr Eric abber crumby about the program and his thoughts about it he says I think I am safe in speaking for both myself and many of my colleagues that the opportunity to serve as a faculty Mentor has been an overwhelmingly positive one it seems difficult to overstate the quality of engagements this work is producing I confident this work aligns with and supports spc's commitment to not only the development of student intellect but the care and growth of the whole person the pain of disconnection of which so many in higher ed have spoken demands something more than a shallow technical and the firsttime Titan program provides a vision for the cultivation of the robust human connections at a time in our students academic Journeys when they need them the most [Music] questions thank you would like to say that our Focus right now is making sure that students earn their credentials complete transfer or go straight to work to do that we have to keep them in school and that first semester is critical that first four weeks it's critical that we're engaging students to help guide them through the process many of them trusty gibons was talking about um how can I mean we help our younger students stay in school and are they well prepared coming in and I believe that we do have a large number of students who are not prepared for college who don't understand understand how to do it or may not have the support at home to teach them how to do school I think the other side of that is the academic strength are they academically prepared and we're finding more and more students are not academically prepared um for the rigor of the work at the college and so having um the Titans program and the faculty who are volunteering to help us is going to be critical but when we bring you in information on Student Success we also need to bring you information on student non-success and I think chair buts has asked for this information about what happened to the other 20% and then how many of them stay in school complete transfer to their next institution or us um or or or get a high wage paying job that's the end result that's what we're working on with better jobs better lives and the Strategic plan and moving forward I definitely want to applaud the 16 faculty who have decided to volunteer to help these first time in college students move forward and I think this is the very charge that we as a college need to take and to invest in our students because many of them are not prepared many feel they are but they are not and so having the sense survey done by an outside vendor who's looking at how the students feel it's very important how they engage us it's very important and it's a big part of retention and how we keep students and re-recruit them every single semester so I felt this was important for the board to see to understand that we are looking at what is what's their experience not from our vision but what are the students saying yeah and and what are they and what are they doing the other side of this survey is the cesi survey Dr Crawford I do not remember what cesi stands for okay but it is our currently enrolled students who have been here for a while and what their experience is now we've got to take this data and do something about it to make the improvements that um Dr Crawford talked about and I want to thank you Amber for all of your work Shannon R um for being a part of that and everyone who's doing the work on the um first time in college student program trusty G you have a comment thank you Mr chair um two I have um a question two questions and then a comment um a question is for whoever can answer I'm I'm not sure but how many of these students um that we see that are from high school um that are coming in and or um have taken a gap some long Gap or a gap year coming to us in terms of being ready academically for college I think I think that makes a a big difference we need to know what that number looks like um I'm not going to be critical I know Dr Williams is not want me to say it well I'm not going to say it uh uh we need to know how many people are coming Young Folks are coming from cuz they're no longer children how many young folks are coming from the public school system to us who are unprepared so we can put a system in place to be able to prepare them help them prepare for the next step it's not all of our jobs but we have to figure out if they're coming to us how to help them be successful um so I'd like to know the differences between that because learning after coming back to school after 20 years and learning something you just saw at before the summer ended it's two two different things and you know I keep harping on this but we had this system figured out once the legislature did not do us any favor favors and maybe we can go back to something that looks like that that's a little bit more robust that will help folks if they will choose to do it and we push it that they will be more successful I guess that's the best way to say that so that's my first question the second question is it looks like we're saying we gone down on the Gateway the success in the gateway gateway courses and I would imagine do we go down or up on the success in the Gateway course up up okay go down all right so that's good and I I know Dr Williams thinks I can never learn anything but I actually learned something this week um I um I took my son on some college visits all week uh Sunday to Thursday and one of the things that we talked about at two of the schools was that they created a buddy system where they paired students who have been successful on their campus for three or more years with students who were coming in um at the from the very where go like at the start but the interesting thing was they got credit a two credit class as long as they met with those students at least two times a week so they did not get lost on campus and when I say lost not meaning walking around lost a lot of students were coming to some of these schools and they were afraid to ask for help they would have IEPs and all kinds of other things and they did not want people to know those things and so they got them with their buddy up front from day one and they showed them hey all right how are you doing in math how are you doing here here's what I had to do that instructor is great sometimes having someone who's your age will be able to help you I thought that was a phenomenal system that had been put in place they've shown a 89% rate of retention with using that and that most of the students that are in that program to be a buddy were actually getting the two credits because they signed up because they want to be helpful or they have been through something in their own lives on that particular campus and was able to help that other young person so maybe we should consider those but I really would like to know how many of those folks that are coming to us from um the public school system doesn't have to be panel's County U most of them are but just how many are coming straight from high school and how many are coming from outside after a certain amount of time so maybe we could update that and replace Myspace with Snapchat and we're good I just wanted to speak to that a little bit we are digging into the numbers and the tradition versus sort of non-traditional students we can certainly get back to about that we do have our peer mentoring program and I know um Dr Zac and her team at orientation they're trying to provide a lot of those answers and it's a very Hands-On orientation which has been great she's gotten great feedback um from that process and so the goal is as we scale this up and find a way to institutionalize it is we have 15 peer mentors now who are assigned to the cohorts but to have smaller peer mentors and the requirements for that are students who've been here for at least a year have a certain GPA shown success gotten recommendation and in small pockets it's not large yet but in small Pockets we are seeing exactly what you're saying the students do connect better to a student who's already been here um the challenge is sometimes our students don't know that they want or need that until the second semester so we're trying to introduce it through orientation and in those first few weeks and through the faculty Mentor as well um because especially post Co our students aren't asking they're not even asking the questions um but this second in the spring semester we've seen them start reaching out a lot more logging more hours in our peer mentoring centers so that it it is something we're working on it's just a very slow building process wherever you go somebody you had it in the survey if somebody knows your name you're more likely to be successful right so to pair them up in the very beginning is is brilliant um but we also need to probably incentivize the folks that are peers to be more active and to follow up with them right cuz a lot of times you come I I mean I'm just going to be totally transparent my mom is here today but I can tell you right now after my first semester at the University of Florida I thought I was coming home cuz she didn't lie like those grades and it's because I didn't know what to ask I didn't know who to talk to and then when I got into when I got into I happen to be on the football team so I when I got into the the with the core guys in the fall they were like here what you do right you go see your instructor make sure they know who you are they don't think you're a dumb job if you got a question go to their office hours don't just sit back and think you're going to make all A's and B's so there are some things that people that have already been on this campus or on these campuses know that these other folks don't know and so that's why I said maybe we need to incentivize it in some way that these peer mentors are could be more helpful cuz I got to tell you like anytime I I got off track it wasn't my parents well that first was but after that the rest of it was guys you say hey man you ain't spend enough time over here doing this you need to be doing that you know and so there are people you know when you take an interest in someone and you become a mentor or a friend to them it's easier to push them and and believe it or not I am a firm believer and I know Dr Williams is too of the group that you're around is is going to prove out your success right so if you come on campus and you never see your Mentor or peer or whoever that supposed to be helping you and you're with a bunch of folks that aren't doing well you're not going to do well right cuz you're going to take on those bad habits so I agree we're working on it thank you I think the other thing that the data shows is the good work that the student affairs team is doing um a lot of the case management um from the advisers they all have a huge case load they all reach out to the students this is week four you should be doing this this is so there are a lot of um benefits that our students get and a lot of hard work to pull push and get them in there I think even in advising they've had peer um mentors in the advising centers and helping students all around so we're doing all we can to make um failure you know not happen and to provide those resources so when you aren't successful it can't be because the colleges lackluster and we're not putting things in place to help you be successful but we want to make sure that we stay focused on that transfer and Student Success to do that they have to stay in school and so this survey is very helpful to us and we'll go back and look at how we can work on improving in the areas that Dr Crawford identified as well as expand the first time in college student um program great great yeah thank you uh I think it's important to note that a lot of times the mentor gets just as much out of this as the mentee right and and they they become the Storyteller for um for the college so love what you love what yall are doing thank you what o like to Echo um Dr Williams thanks to the faculty members who have donated the time to be involved it is so important it makes such a big difference and um in the student life so thank you very much H Dr Turtle I believe you are up you say do doctor sorry I me oh you you stayed a holiday in last night right I did say at a holiday in last night good morning trustee buts trustees Dr Williams my name is Jesse Turtle I'm the vice president for institutional advancement and the executive director of the foundation and I love St Petersburg College um I'm going to ask for a little audience participation uh can I get a drum roll please I am uh proud keep no keep going proud to announce our fundraising for our fiscal year is record-breaking 12 million 91,000 and change uh this is because of the hard work that you all do it is the hard work of all the folks behind me do it's the hard work of our foundation team it really is telling our story developing relationships talking about the good work that we do continuing all of these great programs that we just heard about and supporting those great programs and making our community better uh I am honored to work here and to be here every single day and to talk about the great successes of this college um it it really the it has been 5 years but it doesn't seem like it's been 5 years it seems uh like a very short amount of time or a long amount of time it just depends on the day uh it feels like I've been here my entire career and I really do love St Petersburg College so I am extremely proud of all the hard work that we've all done so let's get into some of the numbers last year's fiscal year and I'll remind you the foundation's fiscal year runs April through March so we are at the end of our um fiscal year last year we did uh 7.3 million obviously this year uh just over 12 million uh some of that is um the $5.5 million from the Huff family to support the plaum project which is wonderful uh a million dollars from the Mitchell family to support uh the leapa Ratner Art Museum and uh mark on your calendars April 18th at 1 or 1:30 we're going to be having a nice ceremony to celebrate that gift uh on the Tarpon Springs campus uh we've gotten uh several estate gifts um this million dollars from Jerry Fishback was to create a scholarship and another if we could have another drum roll please our quiet phase of our campaign to celebrate the 100th anniversary is $25.3 million again 100% participation from this trustee board 100% participation from our foundation board so that says a lot of our leaders to be all in for this campaign and I'm I'm going to say 100% from these people because they're here today showing up for a trustee meeting so I'm guaranteed if you see me afterwards if you haven't done it yet you can sign up for payroll deduction very easy Jesse would you like to say what the go goal for the campaign and how close we are to that goal I would absolutely love to do that so our internal working goal that we uh came up with three years ago which $30 million we are obviously uh extremely close to that goal so we were going to punt um and probably do a $40 million goal we're going to wait and see how we do we are going to um use September 12th which is the anniversary of the college 202 to go public so we'll kind of see where we are next year and set a goal from there but I'm pretty confident that we can do 40 million uh by the end of 2027 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the college so yeah yeah good good thing good thing we're in a quiet phase of our campaign all right so all this adds up to making impact for the college our community our donors our alumni our faculty and staff uh almost 5 million this fiscal year for support uh to the college uh 7 point uh 2.7 uh for scholarships and over a 100 programs supported with um just over $2 million some of those programs uh Dr Williams mentioned the Maj Williams um we do scholarship for this was the first year we did scholar ships for the clearw water for youth program and that was a really great um uh introduction that trusty Gibbons did uh welcome back Titans Discovery day Titan carees Athletics uh recruiting uses um some funds to do application fee waivers for some of the programs that they do uh women on the way brother to brother um college for kids the theater program the plaum the leapa Ratner uh Museum of Art technology Hardware software student research Symposium uh and everything in between if we had a zoology program I can say Athletics to zoology do we have zoology yes close Okay so we support Athletics to zoology all right this year um we've had some great conversations with the foundation board myself and uh Dr Williams and uh the Titan achievement Grant uh We've renamed as the SPC Innovation Grant and in years past it had been maybe 10,000 or $220,000 and we were giving out uh $3,500 Awards or $4,000 Awards not very Innovative and not very enticing so the foundation board approved $100,000 and then we allocated $50,000 from the Titan fund to have $150,000 for uh The Innovation Grant this year we had um 45 applications almost a million dollars worth so it really obviously resonated with faculty and staff we had a campus-wide selection process uh as you can see we awarded 12 grants um uh and then that was the 35 member selection committee which included alumni and some of the foundation board member as well so we're going to continue to um ask for that support from the foundation and maybe even increase that and really have it be something that the faculty can um apply for and and have it be Innovative rather than just applying to support a program really we really want to generate that Innovation so I'm really proud of the foundation board um as they stepped up uh and speaking of our foundation staff I wanted to just of remind you if you weren't aware of who was on the foundation staff uh we have two folks uh in our scholarship team they do scholarships every single semester selection process and they work hand inand uh with the financial aid office so they're basically continuing uh just that scholarship application process uh our database and administrator and finance um Bonnie and Tim work really hard at making sure that we have uh everything squared away in our database and obviously our finance side uh work very closely with Mike uh Megs and his team Mike is officially our Treasurer um so he keeps us squared away uh our development team uh Debbie swin who is here Debbie where's Debbie and is poola here and P's here in stand up Piola those two and I were out in our community talking to um alumni businesses we work uh directly with our business relationship managers uh Marilyn is a wonderful uh partner she and I had lunch with a donor um last year and walked away with a $5,000 check uh it really is a great Synergy that we've been able to do so I'm really proud of the work that our development team does they're kind of out in the community and then Thea McFarland who's been here for about 10 years and Alisa Herer now uh in our newly formed annual giving and alumni engagement office I'm really excited about what they're doing and pushing forward with some new initiatives particularly with obviously um sending out solicitations for annual gifts anything under $1,000 and then really ramp up our alumni engagement opportunities with events and uh business opportunities and mentoring and all these great things that we all been talking about and really putting a focus on alumni because those are the folks that are success stories we should be talking about alumni and we do in our marketing and uh bringing them back on campus and saying hey you could be a nurse just like this student or you could be a firefighter or you could be uh a dental hygienist you know um or a zoologist a whole new program see uh some quick facts um some of you might already know this but we are a direct support organization of the college uh our foundation board currently is about 20 members we'd like to get to 25 so we are excuse me actively uh recruiting um uh would love to get to 25 we have over 470 donor funds that we manage um so uh the team does a wonderful job at uh all of those squared away uh obviously SBC day is our signature event to celebrate the college's anniversary we're really gaining momentum I want to uh say thank you to Dr Mark Strickland where's Mark Strickland stand up [Music] Mark the seminal campus is hosting SBC Day this year so we're really excited um he's got um some big shoes to fill because we've had great uh events on the uh Gibbs Campus thank you Dr AER and the cler campus thank you Dr Griffith um so great things to come for uh SBC day on September 12th donors scars lunch is April 4th so that's coming up um we fundraised for the entire College lots of Institutions have uh segmented uh fundraising and we really um take a holistic approach and really we're raising for for everything for the entire college so uh I really enjoy that we're all fundraisers as I always like to say B bassadors Advocates and askers um this group has been instrumental in helping us with all of those Endeavors uh April 17th we will again gather with the trustees and the foundation board for social to make sure that the foundation board and the trustees are aligned in what we're doing and getting together and breaking some bread and creating those relationships so when we go out in the community we have a united front I want to say thank you so much to everyone here uh much appreciated for all your giving and Gifts it makes a huge difference you see our students that's why we do what we do that's why I get up every single morning to make a difference in our students in our community so I just want to say thank you so much thanks any questions um Jesse just thank you and the foundation board uh volunteers who I know spend a lot of time and help um and really uh try to you know get that sphere of influence wider and wider right and so um you know I would encourage anybody in the community that um feels like they really want to make a difference and help get the foundation board would be a a great spot for them to um to jump in obviously the work that you guys are doing is extraordinary so thank you also to the staff um great work I mean that year-over-year that increase um it's phenomenal so keep it up and look forward to hitting that stretch secret goal um later later this year so thank you yes Jessie thank thank you thank you so much for all you've done and you and your staff have done a excellent job um in uh with with fundraising and especially managing these fundraising accounts I a second thing I'll say is I I think um trusty Cole Will remember um that the foundation at one point uh we were in an adversarial type of role with them and I think you and Dr Williams have turned that around um I remember having to go be the bad cop uh in one of those meetings trying to get them to understand that they were supposed to be in the capacity of helping us serve and I think they have done an excellent job so I wish you would pass that on to them to this faculty staff and everybody else that has given to to this uh to to the foundation um it is the absolute right thing to do um you should give till a hurts um I do um and I know a lot of folks here do and then finally let me just say this and then Katie you were the only person on this board when Dr Williams got selected and I think two of the things that we were essentially worried about when she got selected was whether she could bring home the money in tasse we've dealt with that I think she've shown her chops in terms of her uh legislative prowess in we we have been amongst the topped uh top community colleges every year in terms of what we get in Tallahassee and then number two in fundraising and you have I know that you resisted that 360 evaluation that I wanted to do in the very beginning but but this was why I wanted to do a 360 evaluation so that you could get to know you have been here for so long but sometimes you don't know everything and every particular piece about the college and what their feelings are and you took that on like a champ you went out and found the right guy the right team Debbie and so many others Piola and other folks Teresa McFarland and if I'm missing somebody charge it to my head not my heart but that team is phenomenal I've worked with them on several different things but you went out you found the right guy the right team and Dr Williams you should you should pat yourself on the back you have surpassed any goal that I would have set for you I think I'm probably the toughest critic of you on this board um but you have surpassed any goal that I have and any expectation I have for you in fundraising not only in Tallahassee but also with this effort so job well done to you your staff and and the college you should all give yourselves a round of applause this is an excellent excellent report and thank you some great comments J great comments trusty giens thank you um with that we uh have the agenda uh we'll entertain a motion to take up the entire agenda um in consent format second second great all in favor it's approved um any old business just need to mention that the board was provided the informational reports and before we moved on to Dr Williams report um I thought I saw something going over this again last night that talked about the pathways program I believe was was was that in was that in the packet cuz I didn't see it on the agenda on the agenda agenda but it was in the packet okay so I'm not sure I'd love to learn more about that and just get an update on that maybe uh for next meeting if that's if that's possible um I'm just having uh you know like like trusty Gibbons having a senior in high school now and then learning more and more about this this uh this whole college process so I don't know who's more nervous me or my mom uh with that we'll turn over to Dr Williams for your report all right perfect thank you we have so much to um be excited about at SPC and I know many of you are waiting to um hear about the legislative update so I am excited to share um we talked a lot about fighting hard to get into the state's health insurance plan the last report I think I gave I shared that the Senate was in favor at that time but the house was not well at the 9th hour the house came in and we are um together with the House and Senate on an $80 million investment in the Florida college system for us to join the state's health insurance plan and I'm very excited about that because it will not help the college in its budget because we we wanted this really really bad as a council of President um not because of Any cost savings to us but the cost savings to the employee L you would have to pay more benefits cheaper subscriptions um prescriptions and um cost to see your medical professionals we committed to saying hey we'll keep paying what we're paying I I mean we were that serious about making sure that you had the best health care and the best cost as possible now we're waiting on the Govern and I believe trusty gibons he gets 30 days yes to July 1 yeah oh he has all the way to July 1 so that's like 90 days it's like 90 days okay we have to wait wait this is the early session yeah you 30 days cuz the session started in January yeah so he normally it would be to July 1 but yes yeah you're right so we're waiting and we're continuing to advocate for us to be in the health insurance plan and so I will keep you posted and as soon as I hear something you you will know what what that is now what this means is to bring in 28 state colleges and all of our employees into the new health plan that's going to take a lot of work and so if the governor says yes and I I know we all want to start um January 2025 but what the um rule is and what was submitted to the governor is no later than July 1 2025 to get us an opportunity to transition over so we may have a split year where we have half a year with the Consortium and and then half a year with the new plan but we'll keep you posted as things unravel we're going to try to move this as quick as possible because we'd love to start in January but I know that that's a um it's a wish the um other thing that happened legislatively um you know how a lot of colleges have the the Collegiate um uh license plate well we never got one because there were rules that you have to guarantee that you're going to sell so many so that rule got changed for colleges and well we just got it we talked about that we did House Bill 403 passed the legislature and proposes changes to the existing laws on specialty license plates for Florida Collegiate license plates it removes the pre-sale voucher requirement and the annual discontinuation process for license uh specialty license plates so Jesse I think we could start looking into um that means that we get to say some right you get to right so we we can look into that you have to wor J do that tomorrow so I'm I'm excited um about that the other thing that happened we asked um I have to give it to Capitol City they just are second to none we we asked for $800,000 for the Palladium and what was approved in the House and Senate was1 million we asked for 1 million for a South um County manufacturing Hub and they both House and Senate got the 1 million so those are also on the governor's desk at the governor's desk so hopefully those will be approved but capitol city did their job in getting it to his desk that's the that's the whole purpose and so they've done that and um I definitely want to thank Melissa for all her work and helping us um with that they also approved um us to continue the line program funding which is for nursing um the cape incentive funds they um are giving funding for students who earn industry certification 20 million to the state system um 1.6 billion was um given back to us in the program fund which is the same basically that we had last year nurs nursing incentive education 59 million Student Success initiative funds 330 million 2 plus2 Student Success 17 million and Workforce incentive funds 13 million they did not approve any tuition increases for any educational uh institution so we will not be doing um anything there for the trustees there's a new um House Bill 1285 about um board members and colleges um doing things together uh and so we're going to wait until the interpretation comes out on what that means the detail is not clear um but it's called the Florida college system trustee business affiliation rule um that passed the legislature House Bill 1285 I'll bring it back as we get the interpretation to make sure you have that also um last year there were two um bills that passed one was Senate Bill 240 which is the student money back guarantee bill this is the one where um for Workforce uh programs once a student finishes 6 months afterwards they have to have a job making a certain um salary and if they don't earn that salary then we have to refund them their tuition so that is in full play and um we would we were just asked what will be our first I I think what three programs that this will apply to and um we chose nursing radiography and dental hygiene for the first three programs for the money back guarantee and there's a process that the students have to go through and then um we follow up with them to ensure that they have a job making the salary that the um state has um yeah mandated this initiative is a testament to the quality of our faculty and program in the college commitment to getting students jobs immediately upon graduation so when we talk about better jobs Better Lives it's really a state requirement it's really our desire and it goes beyond what used to be the goalpost of graduation because in the past if they graduate we're done now it's no you're done when they transfer and get the high wage paying job or when they go straight to work and so our job is to make sure they get better jobs and have better lives the second one is House Bill 233 this has been in session um I believe since 2022 this is the one where we are required by Statute to conduct an annual survey of employees and students to assess how much they feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus um the surveys are selected and created by the State Board of Education must be objective nonpartisan and statistically Val valid in according to the stat statute for consistency and ease of managing this survey an outside vendor was selected to assist in administering secure Anonymous surveys for Florida college system and State University employees and students this year so I believe the student surveys have gone out already and the employee surveys are forthcoming so I just wanted to give you an update on where we are there and um on the Strategic plan we've had several work groups and um we are narrowing it down we'll be bringing um this to the board in individual meetings and then we'll bring it to the board as a group just to make sure that we're on track for um what you're thinking and what we're thinking um going forward and we're really moving um hard and fast on making sure that we put in place a process to help students transfer even to SPC preferably to SPC um and where it's not SPC that they transfer to their University of their choice and that we ensure that we help um Place students in jobs um the good work that Jackie and team did last year I think it was 1,600 students rep placed this year I think we're on track to to have that or even be higher um on placing students in those High wage paying jobs um this Thursday night is the CEO conversation with me and Melissa SAS I think the last enrollment was 500 UND individuals were registered to attend um and this is an opportunity for us to just share our um life story and how um we became CEOs and sort of from poverty to prosperity to help people understand it's not where you start but where you finish I'd love for you guys to join us if you cannot I totally understand and then on Friday women on the way will have their women's Symposium I believe it's here Dr Strickland um on Friday morning so if you can join us that would be fantastic and that's my report aming Mr chair can't get my kids to listen to my life story you have 500 people come in to listen to yours it's amazing um just quick comment uh extraordinary work in Tallahassee um getting this done I know that that was a uh an extremely large lift to get all 28 colleges on board to get that done we're keeping our fingers cross it um the governor will will sign that and um all of our team will be able to have access to uh to that insurance program so that's exciting um one comment Madam president if there are things that you would like for these board members to do to make sure that we don't um see the veto spin uh pin please uh let us know early so we can start advocating for those things in the budget especially congratulations because I know you work really hard on that on the um the the piece related to the uh Healthcare um she learned a lot about the conference this year very different process it's where budgets don't match and it's horse trading um back in fourth then last weekend of session they take go in with folks from the house and the Senate to compare notes and then they come up with the budget um but if there are things that you need us to do please don't hesitate in a timely manner so that we're able to help good any other comments good our next meeting will be at the Clearwater campus uh April 16th we'll see everybody there this meeting is adjourned