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March 4, 2024. Study Session.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I'm calling the March 4th Governing Board
study session to order. Moving to our first order of business, 2.1,
board policy minor updates.
Jeff is going to talk to us and then we can ask questions.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Good afternoon, everyone. So just to
explain that item, the board policies, I think there is seven of them
that were included in this packet, if you will, are the next round
that are going out to the governance groups and for public comment,
but before we did that, we just wanted to see if the board had any
particular questions or aspects of them that there were questions or
concerned about that need to be addressed as we go through the
comment-and-revision process before we bring them back to the board
for a vote at a meeting later this spring.
Okay. If you think of something later, if you e-mail me, then
we'll be sure to take that into account.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Great. Thank you.
Item 2.2, the Drachman properties advisory group update.
>> NINA CORSON: Perfect. Hey, thanks for letting me come today.
I wanted to provide you an overview of the Drachman properties
workgroup to date so you can have a little bit of information prior
to the April board meeting where this will be more formally on your
agenda.
Today my presentation has four parts. One, I want to provide
just kind of a refresher on what the board actually asked the
workgroup to do. I also want to tell you a little bit about the
membership of the group.
Second, I will give you an overview of what the activities that
the workgroup has done thus far. Third, I want to give you a little
sneak peek as to what one of our subgroups that has formed, the
proposal that they are working on.
And then last, I'm going to turn this over to Jeff so he can
better explain some of the legalities or the processes that would
take place to make some of their proposals work.
So do I control this? Okay. If you can go to the next one.
Kind of disappointed Greg isn't here.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: He's online.
>> NINA CORSON: He's online. Oh, okay. Great.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I'm here. Hi.
>> NINA CORSON: Yay. This was his motion, right? I believe he
made the motion to the group, and you all agreed.
So what the workgroup was actually asked to do was to identify
uses if we renovate for adaptive reuse and then identify a way to
fund those uses, right? Or if we don't adaptively reuse the
buildings, what else could we do with that property and how could we
fund that, right? That's what we were asked to do.
Additionally, the board put forth that we should invite certain
individuals to participate. Maybe not individuals but groups, right?
Like Thrive in the 05, the city, the Tucson Historic Preservation
individuals, and some of the neighbors that spoke.
So we did that. I've got a list here. I don't know if you can
read them all. These are the folks that have been actively
participating and are part of our group.
Now, to be clear, there were others that were invited. For
instance, you asked us to invite someone from Pima County. We did.
They accepted. They just haven't been able to participate.
We also asked some local businesses that live right along or that
work right along the Drachman properties to participate. We asked
several. A couple have agreed but they have not been able to
participate.
But I do want to tell you specifically about three of our
workgroup members who care a lot about this project. Kristina Scholz
is the president of the Bronx Park Neighborhood Association. Bronx
Park is the neighborhood that Pima's Downtown Campus is in. She can
see the campus from her house. I can see her house from our campus.
She's that close of a neighbor.
We also have Mike Edmonds. He lives in The Tucson House. He
spoke to the board last fall about those properties. He's a strong
community advocate. He works very hard for the residents that live
in The Tucson House along with him, and he also happens to be a
neighborhood ambassador for the Ward 3 office.
Ken Scoville, of course, I think you all are familiar with Ken.
He's from the Tucson Historic Preservation groups.
Those three individuals are heavily invested in this work for
very different reasons, but they have worked overtime. They have put
so much of their personal effort into this project. So let me tell
you why.
Many of these other individuals care about what Pima College does
for different reasons also. Some come because they are personally
invested. Some of these individuals keep coming back every month
because they believe they have expertise that will help us.
The two neighbors, right, they love this college. I was so, just
touched to get to know them and hear how much they think Pima
Community College brings to themselves and their loved ones
personally, how much they think Pima College helps the community, and
how much they think Pima College's Downtown Campus adds to the
neighborhood that they live in.
The college has been a good neighbor to them and generally brings
only positive presence into their neighborhood. The college brings
the neighborhood up and not down, so they care what we're doing here.
Now, what I expected when we brought this group together was a
whole lot of people who wanted us to save the hotels and were going
to try to find grant money or, you know, private investment into
those buildings.
Now, believe me, there are some individuals that that's what they
are trying to do, but as a whole, this group has taken that work so
seriously and has been open to many different ideas.
So it was not easy work, and it is not easy work, and we are not
quite done. There is no magic solution. There is no easy solution
to this work.
I will say this again in April, because I have enjoyed personally
working with this group of folks, and I cannot thank you enough for
forming the group. Originally, I was a little miffed, and I thought,
oh, my gosh, I'm going to have to do something, something else added
to my plate, but what I have found is people that care about the
college, care about the neighborhood, and are willing to go above and
beyond to help us.
I believe when we present our final recommendations in April the
board also will be proud of this workgroup's efforts, and I hope that
you will be able to give the recommendations serious consideration,
because these people have worked for six months, giving us serious
effort.
In case you have forgotten, I put a little map of where these
Drachman properties are in relation to the Downtown Campus, so that's
Speedway at the bottom, Stone on the right, and that's Drachman at
the top. The Drachman Boulevard there actually gets a good bit of
traffic, but it gets more foot traffic than most streets around the
city.
There is a bus stop kind of down the way. You can't really see
it on these two photographs. There is a bus stop, there are
residents using the sidewalk every day, many walking from The Tucson
House to the college, many of our students getting off of the bus and
walking to and from the campus.
Now, these are not flattering pictures, and I went out and took
these pictures this morning on purpose in preparation for this
meeting. The reason I took these particular pictures is because I
want you to see what the neighbors see, what the small businesses
right across the street see every day when they are trying to run
their businesses and/or sell their businesses when they are ready to
move out. This is also what the neighbors see. This is what they
have to walk down. This is what potential buyers of their houses see
when they are trying to sell their homes.
Now, I don't know if you have ever lived next to a boarded-up
property, but it doesn't add any value to your own home's property
and it certainly detracts from the living conditions that you would
like to have. So I bring this up just so you can even maybe better
understand why the two neighbors have been so invested in this work.
Okay. Next. So here's what we have actually done. This is a
little summary of all of our meetings. At our very first meeting,
our interim chancellor provided an overview of the college's mission,
vision, purpose. Then she also made sure that the group understood
the directive that the college gave us, the parameters and what she
believed the board is expecting.
That was the first half of the meeting. The second half of the
meeting, we just opened it up to get the creative juices flowing. We
asked the participants to give us, just off the cuff, what would you
like to see? What are the uses that you would like to see happening
in these spaces? And what kind of funding do you think could be out
there?
What we found was a lot of the ideas that the workgroup had.
They were ideas for programs or services that the college already
offers either on campus or elsewhere. An example of that is our
culinary program. Because the Tucson Inn used to have a cafe, there
is a lot of talk about, oh, the culinary program would be great
there. But we just invested, I don't know, $6 million in Desert
Vista upgrading those facilities, so that didn't make sense.
So the workgroup said, gosh, to do this, we need to understand
the college better. We would like to know what are your facilities
around town? Some of them didn't even know we have five campuses.
What are your programs, what are your services, where are they
located? Also, what are the college's priorities and needs? What
have you identified that you could do with this space?
So we spent the December workgroup meeting really educating the
workgroup members on the college. They were very genuine in wanting
to know how we operate and what our needs are.
Also in December, we provided the workgroup a tour of the
existing properties so they could really see what it looks like on
the inside, what it looks like on the outside, what the condition
was.
And in January, Ken Scoville wanted the workgroup to see some
similar properties, properties that had been in similar condition but
had been adaptively reused. So he took us out to the Ghost Ranch and
Monterey Court, and many of the workgroup members chose to come and
see how that worked and what that looked like.
Then in January, now, mind you, everyone had homework along the
way, right? Like, there were individuals actively trying to figure
out where funding could come from, actively trying to think of other
ideas and spaces, walking around the campus, talking to students.
So in January, we opened the whole meeting to anyone who had
suggestions for funding. We had two individuals come forward and
say, I have identified some ways that the college might have money to
help develop these properties.
One was the Thrive in the 05 from the City of Tucson. Now, they
don't have a lot of money, but they have a little bit of money to
help build kind of a community kitchen space. So the city has their
own very short-term culinary program that's a little bit different
than the college's. They need a home for that. It's different
places all over the city. But also, there has been an identified
need for commercial kitchen space that individuals can rent.
There is a lot of home businesses that make food and sell it, and
to really expand their business, they need a commercial kitchen
space. So they have this money in that HUD grant. They have some
money. It is not enough to develop any of these properties. It's
not enough to take that cafe space at the Tucson Inn and turn it into
a nice commercial kitchen space like that.
It could be a significant help to the college if we wanted to do
that. I don't know that their timing and our timing is going to line
up. Pretty soon they have to identify where they are going to build
the commercial kitchen idea. I think they have to have the location
identified by July, but don't quote me.
Second, the University of Arizona has been super helpful.
Dolores had suggested that we invite the University of Arizona,
someone from them, to participate, because they have been in similar
situations with historic properties and how they handled that.
Well, the individual that came forward from the University of
Arizona, her name is Jessica Bassey, and she actually works for their
real estate division. Now, we don't have a real estate division at
Pima College, but the University of Arizona does. She wanted to tell
us about a way that the University has been funding some of their
development.
They did this to build their whole honors college, and they have
some other areas, I won't misquote if I try, where they've done this,
a land lease option. This is not something that the college has ever
done, and it is a little bit legally complicated, so I will give you
a brief explanation, and then Jeff, in the last part, he's going to
come up here and better explain it.
So as I understand it, the college can lease the land to a
developer and then the developer can build something new, renovate
those properties. We can put parameters on that. Then the
developer, they are paying us rent for the land or they are paying us
money for leasing the land every month or every year, or however we
work that out, but once they have buildings constructed, they lease
those out to someone and they get their rent money. Now, they can
lease it back to the college if that's what we want to do. As you
can imagine, in the honors college, the University of Arizona is
leasing those buildings back from the developers.
You can make that 20 years, 50 years, whatever it works out best
for the college and the developer, what makes sense to the
developers, and at the end of that 20, 50 years, the property is all
ours. The buildings are ours, the land was always ours, and it's
kind of a way to finance some development without the college having
to put money out front.
So most of the proposals that you're going to see would utilize
that land lease option, because like I said, there was no magic money
identified, no private donor coming forward, saying, here's $30
million. But the subgroup has identified, or actually the workgroup
identified this land lease option as a way that the college could
fund some development. And don't ask me questions about that.
Jeff's going to answer that in a minute.
So those were the two presentations that came forward out of this
group. Throughout the month of February, some subgroups were formed
that agreed to work on a section that would go into a land lease or
an RFI, we'll get to that in a second, to identify the parameters
that we would want to put on any development of that land. So, like,
what we would use it for, how it would be developed. Yeah, I know,
it's kind of complicated, but it's a lot of work.
So the subgroups worked. Initially there were three subgroups
that came forward saying, yes, I want to write something up. As
these things go, to date, only one subgroup has really made a
significant draft, and we are working on that draft a little bit.
So the subgroups were supposed to present on February 28, but we
really just had the one subgroup, and not surprisingly, the subgroup
was the two community members. They are so heavily invested in this,
because they really care about the college and they really care about
what's happening in their neighborhood.
So in a minute, I want to give you a preview of what is in their
conceptual ideas. Right now, the college is working on an RFI so
that we can determine if in fact there is developer interest in doing
this land lease option.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: When you say RFI --
>> NINA CORSON: Request for information, which is also not
something the college does regularly. So it's a little bit
complicated. We did RFPs and RFQs, but this is a little bit new
process for the college. It's a process where we are not talking
specifics. We kind of just go out and say, hey, developers, private
developers, is this something you would be interested in working with
the college on? And if so, they give us some information about that.
You know, if we get no feedback, then we can say, gosh, you know
what, there is actually no developer that wants to do anything like
this that sees any benefit to them. In that case, we'd have to do
something else for the properties or fund them in a different way,
fund something.
In March, we will hold our final meeting in order to prepare for
the board meeting in April.
I want to give you, this is a sneak peek, the one group that came
forward and said, all right, we want to spend some time on this, we
have listened to the college, we have listened to what you need, we
believe the best we can we understand what the board wants, we have
listened to students, we have looked at historic redesign, and here's
our recommendation.
So I'm not going to read these word for word. I am going to read
one of these word for word. But the first bullet just talks about
they want to do some kind of mixed use, some sort of development,
right, there in Pima College, that would be consistent with any
conditions a land lease type development option would require.
I think the second bullet is perhaps the one that might be most
important to you in this moment. What this subgroup, and remember,
this is the subgroup from the neighbors, and I hope you get to hear
it from them in April, but this is what they said. Adaptive reuse of
the existing structures is desirable but not a requirement of this
proposal.
What the neighbors want that live right across the street from
the college is for the college to do something responsible with those
buildings. They don't want to see parking lots, they don't want to
see a dirt lot. They would like to see something that is in active
use that makes sense.
What one of the neighbors tells me over and over, active use is
safe use. Something empty is dangerous use. It attracts the wrong
people, it attracts just destruction of the properties and et cetera.
So at a minimum, they would like the development should preserve
the historic signage, and they would like to see an acknowledgement
of the contributing facades.
They would like to see the streetscape kind of have the same look
and feel that it has, but it does not have to be those exact
buildings. They want something innovative, a high-quality design
that is aesthetically and functionally compatible with the
development and services from both PCC and the community.
So kind of what that means is they'd like a nice transition
between the neighborhood and the college. They are open to
multi-story and higher-density buildings and lots there.
I won't read the rest to you.
So they came up with their priorities on the design and their
priorities on the uses. So these are the uses they came up with.
Over on the right, I will start with the right-hand column. The
Downtown Campus, those four bullet points, the innovation center, the
diversity, equity, and inclusion office, that was really the
immigrant and refugee center, the teaching and learning center, and
our educational technology team, those are the original uses that the
college had identified if we were going to try to adaptively reuse
those spaces.
They are all great ideas. I would love to see them along
Drachman if we are able to develop these properties. They are open
to other potential PCC uses. One thing we talked about was moving
the police headquarters to Downtown Campus. We don't have to move
them from M&S, but there could be a lot of benefits to having more
police presence right there along Drachman.
I know that we need to enlarge our cybersecurity and information
technology center of excellence, so if we were able to build an
appropriate building for that along there, those kinds of ideas, they
are very much open to.
The other ideas that you see here are things that they believe
would benefit our students but also the community right in the area,
right, the neighbors that live right around there. They very much
understood that they did not want to put some suggested use that
might not have a benefit to students. So each of these ideas they
came up with they thought students would be able to use also.
So now, remember I said that there were originally three
subgroups and only one subgroup, as these things go, came through and
did some -- there is still a possibility that another proposal type
for this land lease funding option might come forward. They're going
to have to hurry up and finish it, but as of now, this is the only
one that we have, so if we have more than one, we will bring them
both to you in April.
So do you have any questions about my part before I turn it over
to Jeff to talk about land lease or the RFI process? That would be
Jeff.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I don't have any questions, but thank you
for this. It's nice to see we are taking something that was kind of
a mess and it's nice to see some organization behind it and some
positive thoughts and momentum from all those different community
partners that were a little confused and disoriented before.
So thank you, Nina, for everything you have done to wrangle that,
and I'm glad it turned into a positive experience.
>> NINA CORSON: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a fun group to work
with. I think future partnerships, nothing to do with these
properties, will come out of this group as well.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Nina, just express our thanks to everybody
in the group. We really do -- it was a mess, and this doesn't sound
like a mess. Hopefully those land lease options will be a
possibility. Thank you.
>> NINA CORSON: Sure. Thank you.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So I think Nina actually gave a really good
summary of a lease, basically what we are talking about. Let me talk
about what the next step is to advance that, and that will probably
clarify part of it. And if you have any questions, please let me
know.
As Nina indicated, one of the focus of this group after a number
of discussions became, well, if the college really wants outside
funding to carry the weight of this project, we really need some kind
of public/private partnership so that outside sources are investing
and providing the up-front funds to start and complete whatever the
project is.
So land leases you have heard is a way to do that. There is a
lot of different variations, which I'm not going to go into at this
point. It doesn't really matter.
I think what's important to know is so what we are working on now
is what Nina referred to as an RFI, request for information. In
other words, what we need to do is let's test the marketplace and
find out what kind of interests and other ideas are out there from
the private sector and see what they would be willing to invest in
and what that might look like.
An RFI does not commit the college to anything. It really is we
are a public entity, we have this need, we have this interest, we
have this opportunity. We want to see what's available out there.
So the committee has been working on parameters that they thought
would be helpful to include in that. On the staff side we have been
with reaching out to our counterparts mostly at the state
universities who have done this to get samples and figure out how do
we do this and how do we make sure we send this to the right places
so that we get private-sector investors and developers who would be
interested in doing some of this.
So basically what an RFI would look like, it's mostly drafted,
not completely drafted, we are incorporating some of the language and
ideas that the committee wanted to include in it before we release
it, but we thought this was a good time before we do that to just
share with you this is the approach what we hope to get out of it.
So essentially it's almost a prospectus, if you will, that
includes background information about here's the current activities
of the Downtown Campus, here is what the college anticipates future
needs and opportunities would look like, background information about
the properties, including their current state, the former
architectural, previous architectural studies about their condition
and what renovation would require if that's what a developer would be
interested in, and information about the surrounding area, both the
needs and the resources.
So, for example, the city, I think as you have heard before, as
part of the Thrive in the 05 initiative, applied for and received a
very large grant from the federal Housing & Urban Development
department. That grant includes money for renovation of The Tucson
House, which is a large low-income housing process, includes money
for a new housing project that's on the other side of the college
campus, also includes funding to increase community support
resources, so it's a comprehensive approach, not just housing.
So, for example, we would put information in this prospectus
about there is a significant amount of city investment through this
federal fund that's about to happen in the surrounding area.
As part of preparing that grant submission, the city did a fair
amount of research of the neighborhood to look at what are the areas
where there are resources lacking in that area, and what are the
needs and things that the community members would want and would
essentially be able to spend resources on.
So, for example, they don't have easy access to a pharmacy. They
don't have easy access to day care. So there are commercial and
service-type needs that a developer could incorporate into a
development knowing that, okay, this is the population in the area,
these are the needs, the incomes, et cetera, so what kinds of
development would generate revenue to help them realize return on
investment.
There are also other resources that would make this a potentially
attractive place to develop. So, for example, I don't know if you
heard in the news recently, the city is looking at doing an express
transit line that's going to go from Tucson Mall ultimately to the
airport. Well, the preferred corridor is Stone. In other words,
there is going to be a really enhanced public transit component
that's going to run right next to where we are talking about.
So there is a variety of planned investments and improvements
that are coming to that area. All of that would be included in this
sort of prospectus, if you will, so that private developers know it's
not them by themselves. This is what the area looks like, this is
what the planned future looks like in investment, which hopefully
would attract more attention.
As noted, the committee has identified a number of possible uses,
some of which are college-specific, but some are things that would
jointly benefit the college and the community. Like, for example, if
there were a commercial low-cost day-care provider or if there were
some additional food resources, that would be helpful for students
and employees as well as community members.
So essentially we're creating this prospectus, sort of a package
of all this information that we will be targeting sort of to the real
estate investment and development community and see what kind of
responses we get back. It's sort of a balance between putting
parameters on there and making suggestions but try not to do it in a
way that constrains anyone's creativity, because what we're hoping is
we may get some ideas that we hadn't thought of.
So what's going to happen is we will get these concepts, I'm
going to call them proposals, but they are not, they are not like
commitments of this is exactly what I would do. This is a we can
imagine doing this.
Depending on how many we get, another task that the committee
might need to undertake is to sort of vet or prioritize those and
give their thoughts to the board, and then the board would have an
opportunity to review them. If those are approaches that might work
for the college, the next step is we might do a formal request for
proposal where we would actually ask developers to commit, okay, if
you have this opportunity, this is what the numbers would look like,
you know, your projection, this is what the timeline would look like,
sort of a firm proposal on what they would do.
That would still require a fair amount of negotiation. Is it 20
years, is it 30 years? How much of it is college-use space, how much
of it would be space that they would lease out for some kind of
commercial purpose?
So a lot of unknown parameters that we would have to figure out
once we get the proposals, but that's kind of the direction. So the
idea, hopefully we'll have some back by the April board meeting,
might take a little bit longer than that, but essentially we'd have
sort of a suite of concepts and general proposals, if you will, for
the board to consider that would demonstrate what the possibilities
are using private-sector investment as the primary means to develop
the properties, and then we could see whether that is something that
the board thinks is a viable option or not.
Yes?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: So how much will an RFI cost us?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Well, there is not a hard dollar cost, so
it's staff time and committee time putting together the materials and
sending it out and reviewing it, so I'm not sure -- there is no,
we're not, like, paying someone to do this. We are doing it
ourselves.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, if we're doing it ourselves, it's
still costing us money, because we have to have -- so what I'm asking
is approximately how much will that be? You can't give me a set
dollar, but I'd like to know. Is it going to be the $10 million that
we have there now?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: No. So I think we're mixing things
together. So there was money previously reserved. That has nothing
to do with what I'm talking about.
What we're talking about is really the director of procurement
and Nina and I are spending some number of hours, it's not a huge
number of hours, because part of what we've done is reached out to
counterparts to get as many samples as we can. So we are borrowing
from the University of Arizona, we are borrowing from ASU to put
together a document.
So, boy, it's hard for me to give you a total estimate of hours,
but it's not like it's become our full-time job, right? Yeah, we're
talking at least several hours -- yeah, it's a few thousand dollars'
worth of time, probably.
It's also not like we are doing fancy graphics and stuff, right?
For example, all the materials I'm talking about, someone has already
produced them, right? So we have the architect's report. The city
has a nice study and a grant proposal they put in. So what we are
doing is basically linking key documents to this kind of overarching
perspective.
So if that was something you were concerned about, we are not
doing a bunch of graphic design, not doing fancy printing.
Essentially we are consolidating information to make it hopefully an
attractive opportunity for someone.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Okay. So will this RFI also include -- so
based on what the committees present and the funding that perhaps may
be there, are you going to have numbers to show us how much we can
anticipate getting for the project, and how much will it -- will Pima
College have to put up -- you know, because the other part of it too
of course is that, you know, our resources are limited.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Right. So that was part of the reason the
committee, when we had some conversations about some of the financial
situation, that's part of why the committee gravitated in this
direction where the college either would have a minimal up-front
investment or potentially no up-front investment. In other words,
it's a way to have a private party or partnership of some kind put up
the up-front money.
And the college, if we wanted some of the space, either we would
discount the lease of the land to the private developer in exchange
for some percentage of the space or perhaps we would pay to rent part
of the facilities.
But the idea is that -- the whole idea about this is to look for,
like I said, there is a variety of different ways to do it, where the
college would not be putting up any significant up-front investment.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: You know, personally, I like the use for
the community and the students, but on the other hand, when I look at
the amount of space not being utilized at our five campuses, I don't
even know why we would be considering that.
I mean, co-locating or getting rid of other facilities might be
an idea, but I don't know that we're there yet. You know, I don't
know. I'll just leave it to the board and see what they decide.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: A comment, and then hopefully I remember my
question, it just actually -- poof. But I have a vacant life in
Thrive in the 05, and I get developers all the time asking me if I
want to sell it, which I don't, but recently I have had two
developers approach me with this idea that they would lease the land
from me and then they would rent the houses out, they would get the
rent. So I think that this option, I have never heard of it before,
but I think it is out there, and so that's really, really exciting.
Did I understand Nina correctly that at some point the ownership
of the building, no matter what, it would come back to the college?
So in the future, we would have the full space for the college?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Right. So the concept is there would be
some package of development that a private developer would invest in,
and they might or might not have immediate college use. Again, that
all would have to be worked out and negotiated.
The other thing that would have to be negotiated is what's the
term of that lease. So it would have to be long enough for them to
recapture that investment. So maybe it's 20 years, 25, 30 years.
It's going to be some fair amount of time.
But, right, the other idea is at the end of that, they have made
their return on investment, and then the buildings, the structures
would then transfer ownership to the college. So at the end of this
time frame, which again is a long one, though, the college would own
whatever that building or series of buildings would be.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Just my last question is I'm sure that
there is more that we have to, you know, play with and figure out,
because, you know, who is responsible for the insurance of the
properties, I mean, the edifice, the buildings, all of the things
about, you know, keeping it safe, keeping it looking good, all of
that would have to be part of the contract, I would assume?
Okay. Thank you.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Right. And so if that's the road we're
going to go down, just we for sure would want -- so outside legal
counsel has worked with the U of A or ASU, we would get one of those
firms who would make sure we are including all of those points in
whatever the contract is with the developer so that we make sure
we're covering everything and all those issues are addressed up front
in the agreement.
So, yeah, there would be a lot more work to do, but hopefully,
first step is let's see what kind of interest there seems to be out
there and what kinds of ideas they think would be economically viable
that also mesh with both the college interests and the community
interests, which is where this process has been really helpful in
understanding from the community perspective, the city's perspective,
what are the kind of uses that they would be very supportive of.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Nina, thank you for the work your group has
already done. When you did the tour at Monterey, did you go dancing?
(Laughter.)
>> NINA CORSON: I did not. My husband and I chose to eat lunch
there before the tour. He did not go on the tours, but we were out
running errands and I was late and hungry, so we ate there and I just
walked over to the tour.
The food was decent. We were the only people there eating. We
had to go back in the kitchen and tell them we were there, trying to
eat. No dancing. I hear they have dancing at night.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Yeah, they do.
I think we're on the right track. The more ideas, the better.
We wouldn't have that structure on Country Club if people hadn't been
open and thinking about -- The Monastery, I'm talking about.
So more power to you, and the more brain power we get on this,
looking at it in different directions, the better we are.
To you, on the RFI, do we have any identified derailers that we
think we know we have issues with the buildings, such as that bad
word about construction that when you tear the walls down, you have
that stuff hanging around in there? So, I mean, do you put the
derailers in on this advertisement, or do we just have an open house
where they walk through it, or how does that information get
distributed?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So part of the information that we are
linking to this are there has been architectural assessment and
engineering assessment, so those properties, that tells you exactly
this is what meets code, this is what doesn't, this is what shape the
electrical, all the kind of things you're thinking about, because we
want to get realistic concepts of we think there is a great
opportunity to rehab this and here's how we would do it, or not, and
this is what we would do instead.
So we want to be open with potential developers both about there
is pluses here, this is a good location to develop, but on the other
hand, there is some challenges with these buildings so that they
provide us with good information so that you get good proposals that
then the board can really look at and know that they are viable,
someone's interested in doing this.
Yes, so we are sharing thorough background about these
properties.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you for your work so far.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Let me ask one more thing.
So on the derailers that he was discussing, they're on the
historical preservation list, so would they be able if they came back
with information to say we're not going to do it that way, we are
going to do it this way and for this reason? They have that option?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Yes. We are leaving it, we are interested
in learning, if you think you could rehab some or all of these
buildings, what would that look like? We are also open to ideas
where you don't preserve any of it and giving them a full range.
Some might be interested, because as private entities, there
might be tax benefits to them to preserving some of it, right, that
don't help us but would help a private developer. So that's the
other aspect of this where we'll see what the market says about
whether it's worth preserving them or not from a purely economic
standpoint.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Just one more thing. When you're talking
about, like, a community kitchen or stuff like that, you know, I
mean, I think that in my view I would not want to see us having a
whole bunch of homeless people, you know, in the area.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I don't think that's what the community
kitchen --
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: They are saying a regular kitchen just to
be able to cook the food and stuff.
>> NINA CORSON: It would have to be -- individuals that would
use that kitchen would have to sign rental agreements with whoever is
managing the kitchen. It would likely be somebody from the City of
Tucson managing the kitchen because that's not something -- I mean, I
don't think we would. Maybe we would manage it.
So it wouldn't be just random people walking in trying to cook.
You have to have a commercial license. You have to be there for a
legitimate reason.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, I know that Kino Hospital used to
cook the Meals on Wheels. I don't know if they still do. Used to
pick up the packages and then deliver them.
So, you know, so we didn't have a congregation except for the
people actually doing the delivery and picking up the meals.
>> NINA CORSON: This would be used for individuals who were
running their small businesses, just reserving it one night a week or
one day a week for four hours to make all of the jam. They jar jam,
but they have to make it in a commercial kitchen in order to have a
large enough distribution. It would be those individuals.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: It's not a question. It's a comment in
the beginning. Thank you for providing what the group is doing. I
think it's outstanding.
But my question or comment is initially we said that it's going
to be a collaborative effort. I really would like to see what the
commitments or any commitments at all from the City of Tucson and
Pima County, as well, too.
I know that there is a lot of entities out there that can
benefit, as well, too, because City of Tucson and the supervisor,
they also have, to make it a true collaboration, let's see what
commitments they are willing to dedicate, as well, too.
But overall, one of the ideas that really sparked at me is the
housing. I know we have a lot of our students that there is a
housing need out there, and they aren't housing but they are paying a
lot, as well, too. I think it's something to look at, as well, too.
Not only Pima but also the two other entities, they have an
obligation and a service, but I would like to see what commitments
and obligations they're willing to put forward on the table too.
>> NINA CORSON: Thank you. Yeah.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you, both.
Moving on to 2.3, strategic planning update and discussion with
Dr. Nic Richmond.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Chair Riel, members of the board, Chancellor
Duran-Cerda, colleagues and guests. Thank you for letting us have
time with the board today to talk about the strategic planning
process to provide an update and to have a discussion about some of
the emerging themes that are developing for the committee.
Do you all see my slide okay?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yes.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
So I'm here presenting with Kelly O'Keefe who is one of the
faculty co-chairs of the strategic planning team. I'm serving as the
administrative co-chair this year. Today what we'd like to do is
share a little bit of background about the planning process, the
members of the planning team, and then have a discussion around some
of the emerging themes that are evolving, both from a foresight point
of view and these futures clusters, which I will explain, and then
some traditional planning priorities that are emerging. We will
share next steps, and then I also have a key question for the board
that I'd like to get your input on today about the timeline for plan
approval.
So if you start with a little bit of the background about the
planning process that we are using, the image you see here gives a
sense of what the planning structure looks like at Pima today. So we
have a number of different strategic-level plans at the college. We
have the education and facilities master plan, and the education
master plan largely inform the facilities plan. We have the
strategic plan. These three combined inform the DEI plan, the SEMP
plan, the management plan, that is, and the climate action
sustainability plan, and then we have the annual chancellor's goals.
Each of these were, for the most part, developed by separate
people, so we had different leads developing different plans,
developing different disconnected sets of priorities.
This is one of the things that's led to us as a college having a
very high number of priorities, because we have all these different
plans that have lots and lots of good stuff, but they are all
creating priorities that the college needs to focus on. That means
that we end up getting stretched thin, people are working on multiple
priorities, and it's really hard to pinpoint what really is the
college's No. 1 priority.
So what we are moving to is a comprehensive planning approach.
We'll actually be launching the first comprehensive planning year in
fall of the current calendar year, and here we are taking a slightly
different approach. So for five of these plans, so the EMP, FMP, et
cetera, is listed here. The development for work for that and those
plans will go ahead led by the relevant teams, but they all get
filtered through into the strategic plan, and it's in the development
of the strategic plan that we will do some gate-keeping on the number
of priorities, make some choices and some recommendations about which
of the identified priorities are most important regardless of which
plan they are coming in from, or rather which planning process they
are coming in from.
This will put us in the position where the strategic plan and the
annual chancellor's goals that capture those emerging priorities that
we weren't really anticipating during plan development, those two
things will help shape Pima's priorities. That will give us a more
integrated process that helps to control the number of priorities,
which will hopefully get us in the situation that rather than being
kind of constantly stretched too thin, trying to do more than we
really have the resources to handle, we can have a manageable number
of priorities that represent the key areas that we need to focus on
to improve and better meet the needs of the community we serve.
So this is where we are trying to get to, and this is the process
that we will be launching, as I mentioned, in the fall. What we are
doing in the current year is kind of like a mini version of that.
With the timing on when Chancellor Lambert left the institution, we
made the recommendation around about a year ago to extend the current
strategic plan by one year, basically to buy us a little time to get
the new CEO in place so that we can then do that comprehensive
process with that person in place at the institution.
So that was underway for the strategic plan, but within this
suite of other planning efforts, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Plan was due to be updated, and the Strategic Enrollment Management
Plan was due to be updated. And so this year we are conducting like
a mini integrative planning process that includes these three pieces
in these boxes you see highlighted here.
We have four separate groups who are conducting the work, because
the key with this integrated approach isn't kind of like there is one
group that's doing all the work. We have subject-matter experts in
each of these different areas who are taking lead on their respective
planning process, and then they all come together through that
strategic planning step.
So for this year we have the social justice team who are looking
at priorities from an equity and social justice point of view. We
have a group led through Phil Burdick who is looking at enrollment,
and we have a retention team led by Irene Robles-Lopez looking at
retention. And then we have the strategic planning team, and that
SPT is the group that Kelly and I are here from, and that's the piece
we will be focusing on today.
But all of these pieces are going to come together. During the
course of April, it will be for us to develop ultimately the
recommendations that come forward to the Governing Board for approval
for the next two years.
In terms of the method we are using at the kind of the
college-wide level that the SPT is focused on, we are using two
different but complementary approaches. The first is a set of
futures methods from the Institute for the Future. This is a newer
approach to planning which we've used a couple times now. And then
we have these very traditional methods from the Society for College
and University Planning.
Now, the first of these from IFTF is a method we use these
futures methods. This is really about trying to develop a plan by
looking forward. The methods here are about trying to look for kind
of clues and signs of where things are evolving and how things might
change and using that to try and anticipate where we may need to go
as an institution.
And as you can see, the list of items on this slide give all the
different kind of processes that are available to us through that
system, some of which we are using, some of which we're not, but we
are primarily focused in the prepare phase for the work that we are
doing this year.
Then we have this more traditional approach from the Society for
College and University Planning, usually abbreviated to SCUP. They
have a number of steps to their planning process, which you see here,
assess the landscape, planning roadmap, creating a plan, et cetera.
For us, we are primarily focused on assessing the landscape.
This is really where our very traditional planning elements come in,
looking at the mission, which we aren't doing this time around
because we are extending an existing plan, but we will be conducting
a mission review in the upcoming year. Then some of the classics, an
environmental scan, looking at institutional context, competitor
analysis, and the tried-and-trusted strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats analysis.
So what we are doing as a planning team is working through the
futures methods, working through the traditional planning methods to
bring forward and identify a robust and hopefully valuable set of
priorities that will really help us shift the needle on where we are
at as an institution.
And the difference here with these traditional methods is they
typically rely on looking backwards to figure out what the plan needs
to be. So we are combining the backwards-looking methods and the
forward-looking method to hopefully give us the most optimum set of
priorities that we can identify.
So our next step is to think about who is involved in the
process, and for that I'm going to hand you over to Kelly.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you, Nic. It's good to see everyone
again.
So what I'd like to review here is all about our stakeholder
model, and the college has an AP, it's AP 1.16.02, and that
formalizes what groups should be included as stakeholders in the
process of the strategic planning for the college. Therefore, a call
for volunteers was issued, and from those volunteers, the members
were selected to represent those areas designated in the AP.
So here's the roles and responsibilities. We have an
administrative co-chair, obviously that's Dr. Nic Richmond, and then
there's faculty co-chair roles that I am serving in, and then we have
another adjunct faculty serving as another faculty co-chair. The
admin co-chair is tasked with developing the planning process and
making sure that the plan is extensive and addresses all the needed
topics, also co-leading the meetings with other co-chairs and
drafting the priorities based on the discussion had by the strategic
planning team.
The two faculty co-chairs are tasked with providing input
throughout the process and reviewing the agenda with Dr. Richmond in
advance of the larger group meetings and ensuring that the academics
are front and center for the planning.
We are also tasked with participating in the discussions, of
course, and reviewing the draft priorities before they are submitted
to the strategic planning team.
Then last we have all of our strategic planning team members, and
they are tasked with engaging in series of discussions to help make
sure that they identify the possible priorities and plan for an open,
offer their input. So they are also tasked with reviewing materials
and engaging with their stakeholder groups and bringing feedback to
the strategic planning meetings.
As you can see, the strategic planning team has many members on
it. I'm not going to read all the names here, but you can see that
we have representation from many different areas, including student
affairs, faculty from various disciplines, IT, finance, the PCC
Foundation, and many other areas of the college.
So the strategic planning team was asked to conduct work with a
timeline, working toward the year 2040, and the priority to January
-- excuse me, prior to January, members were asked to identify
specific drivers and signals for the future of education. During
this work session, members participated in activities that helped
them to start thinking about the future.
Out of the signals and drivers, they were tasked to create
clusters or themes, and those were identified and labeled in breakout
groups, and from those clusters, one or more forecasts were developed
for the year 2040.
So this is one of the activities that the strategic planning team
completed, and it's called Find Future Me, and we'd like to do this
activity with the board. It will just take a minute or so. We'd
like you to think about who you will be, where you will be, and what
you may be doing that connects you to the future.
This activity is an individual activity, and there are worksheets
on the next two slides we will go over really quickly, and I will
show you how this activity was actually presented to the strategic
planning team.
Here you go. The Find Future Me, it begins with our future
selves are strangers to us. This isn't just a poetic metaphor. It's
a neurological fact. Actively imagining our future selves can make
the future feel more urgent, prime our brains to pay closer attention
to it, and motivate us to actively shape the future today.
So in completing this activity, this tool helps participants
reverse certain behaviors in our brains that make it hard to think
about the future. It also primes the brain to be more open to a
different future. It also increases the cognitive flexibility in the
area of our brains that are activated when we start thinking about
ourselves. And lastly, this activity places ourselves in the future
that we are trying to explore.
So this next slide here is the worksheet, so to speak, that we
had members fill out individually, and we are just going to take one
minute here and ask the board if you could answer these questions to
yourself. After one minute, we will come back, and I'm hoping that
one of the board members would be willing to share what their answers
were, but no pressure.
We'll take just a minute here.
(Pause...)
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Okay. Hopefully that gave you just a little
bit of time to read the questions and give a brief answer.
Would anyone from the board be willing to share with us?
No? Okay. (Laughter.)
Well, we can move on. No pressure. It's fine. We'll go ahead
and go to the next slide there.
This is just an example of some of the signals and drivers that
our members of the strategic planning team came up with. We used
technology that was electronic Post-It notes and kind of clumped them
together to create these clusters.
So as you can see, there are some examples here. American
colleges have a political partisanship problem versus trust problem.
And then another person says national dissatisfaction with higher ed.
Yet another person on that breakout room said losing faith in the
value of college.
And you can kind of see the trend with these drivers that were
identified and how they created their cluster there in the middle on
the orange Post-It note. Trust in higher educational institutions
across the country has been diminished and needs to be rebuilt.
Here were some of the top clusters. We'll go ahead and refer to
the full list of clusters in the supporting materials, and that's
something that I'm sure the board has links to. The strategic
planning team were invited to select their top two clusters from the
list and the following other clusters that had the most votes.
So trust and value and interest in higher education was No. 1,
and then No. 2 was to focus on AI and technology.
The five clusters were tied in third place, and that included
degree/cert strategies, PCC's business model, and focusing on what
our students need.
Then on the next slide we decided to have a short discussion
about this, and I will go ahead and refer back to Nic.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Yeah, we'd like to have a brief conversation
with the board and hear from you. I'm going to stop showing my
screen so I can switch to sharing something different. Let me come
back in here.
What I'm sharing now is a view of the other document that was
shared as part of the board packet, just so you can easily see it
here. What you are looking at in rows 5 through 21 of the different
clusters that were identified by the strategic planning team through
the work they did, identifying the drivers, as Kelly was describing,
what I'd be interested in finding out from the board, as you look at
this list, are there particular things that stand out to you as
particularly important? Topics that in your mind are particularly
key for shaping the future direction of where the college needs to
go. And if any of you would be interested in sharing your thoughts
on that, that would be great.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Was any of your conversations along the
lines of training people for occupations that don't exist?
>> DR. RICHMOND: We haven't had that conversation yet, but it
has come up in different circumstances. I would say that artificial
intelligence and the impact of that is a somewhat common theme that
has come up throughout the conversations.
And I think kind of a logical next step in that is, like, what
does that mean, right? Both in terms of work, in terms of how we
deliver on education, and those jobs that, as you say, don't exist
now but may well exist down the road.
There are articles on that that will certainly go to the planning
team as we have that conversation. So it's a great point, and I will
make note of it to add it to the list to make sure it's captured
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So it would seem to me you'd have to have
conversations on several levels, one being what do we have to do to
prepare a student for immediate entrance into the workforce, based on
the occupations that are currently available, and the skillset, and
how do we take somebody, another student, and prepare them for the
next level for occupations that don't exist that we may be able to
predict the skillset that's going to be needed in order to prepare
for the next five or ten years.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Absolutely. That's a great comment. Thank
you.
Other thoughts from the board?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I was just going to mention that when the
Post-its that were all listed all seem to be very negative and very
heavy and very -- I guess "negative" is a good word.
But I sort of see change in the future in a very optimistic
sense. When I was a little girl, my mom bought one of the first
calculators. She was a physics teacher, and she was just so excited
because that was going to change education. No more slide rules,
having to spend all that time teaching students how to use a slide
rule. And then it was just four-function calculator, right? So it
didn't do any of the stuff. They still needed the slide rules to do
logarithms, et cetera.
Then we get, in my generation of teaching, we get graphing
programmable calculators, and the same sort of thing happened, oh,
this will be so much better because we won't have to spend all of the
time, you know... We always, we changed with technology, we got
better, we incorporated, it was exciting, it was really fun to learn
new things.
So I hope that when we think about the future, sure, we don't
know what's going to happen, but as long as we're teaching critical
thinking skills, math, you know, communication skills, I think that
we'll be able to meet the needs of the future jobs that aren't even
out there, hopefully, as long as we continue to make sure we have
high standards for students, expecting them to get great jobs and do
great things.
So thanks for doing all of this.
>> DR. RICHMOND: It's our pleasure, and we have really
interesting conversations as a group. There is sometimes a tendency
to find the problems that we have to solve for, but ultimately the
future is an optimistic place, right? We get the build the future
for the college. We just need to work to make the right decisions
today of the areas we need to prioritize in to improve that learner
experience, to make sure our programs are preparing the students for
the jobs of today, the jobs of, like, ten years down the road from
now.
So it's an exciting conversation, because we can help the college
be successful in its purpose, right, to transform lives through
affordable education, and it's the best kind of conversation to get
to have.
Other comments from the board?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: It seems to me that many of the jobs of the
future are being developed a few miles north of here or west of here,
and we have one of the best Research 1 institutions in the nation.
And I'm wondering what kind of interface do we have with those people
that are developing jobs, OSIRIS-REx is a good example, that are
looking at the next kinds of jobs in research, and how are we
reaching out to them to see what we can learn from them as far as
what the next round of occupations look like, the kinds of skills
necessary to test dust for Mars and those kinds of things.
Do we have those conversations? Because as opposed to those jobs
trickling down to our knowledge, are we moving up and having that
interaction to see if we can offer skill sets that they know future
students are going to need in those occupational areas that don't
exist yet?
>> DR. RICHMOND: That's a great question, and as a recovering
planetary scientist, I love the example that you mentioned there with
OSIRIS-REx. Now, the conversations happen in a number of different
ways, and that's going to evolve over time.
We have Dr. Ian Roark is here on the Zoom side of the call, and I
saw him nodding as you are mentioning are we having those
conversations. A lot of those conversations happen through his
branch of the college and the strategic partnerships that the college
is building.
We also have the Futures Conference event, which is one of our
primary avenues to get community input as well. This year we are
talking about some of the possible priorities and other related
topics in some of our centers. Last year we had a very
futures-focused session where we were talking about what's the future
of social justice, the future of the demographics within Pima County.
Next year is likely to be a very future-focused event to get into
some of those questions, too, and as we embark on the comprehensive
planning year, which is going to be -- well, year, it's a two-year
process, we need to be very active looking at kind of what are the
emerging industries, what are the areas, what's going to be important
within the community we serve so we can make sure we are training
people for relevant careers for the industries we have in our local
area.
So much of this is going to be a long-term process, especially in
that comprehensive planning year -- I keep calling it a year; two
years -- where we are building those longer-term priorities for the
college.
For the current go-around, this is a shorter-term thing. We are
looking at a two-year time frame, so some of it's more immediate
things we can respond to, but your points are really well taken,
Board Member McLean, and absolutely those are things we will be
prioritizing as we move forward.
Are there other comments from the board on this before we move
on?
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Yeah, I have a few. All of these things are
things that to seem to me to be important, but the ones that stand
out to me, certainly 5 and 6 in terms of the lines there, we saw, and
I think it was abundantly clear when we were at the Association of
Community Colleges Trustees Conference and interfacing with federal
officials that the community colleges' prominent role in workforce
skill development is something that they are relying on in terms of
national public policy, and so our ability to continue to stay at the
forefront of what that's going to look like for our students and for
this community to be able to build applicable workforce development
programs I think is going to be critical for us.
Can you tell me what No. 18 refers to? Is that how many people
have jobs coming out of the college? What does job outcomes mean?
>> DR. RICHMOND: Yes. So there is a number of different things
that -- I'd have to go check the mural for all the drivers that work
for this specific group, but partly job outcomes in terms of are we
building effective training people for the workforce.
This is a big challenge area for the college. We cannot
currently easily track our students into the workforce to see, you
know, if they were in, say, the aviation program, what proportion are
working in the aviation sector.
We have a new data system that we are this is close to having
access to which is going to enable us to answer those questions, but
our purpose is to, certainly in key occupational areas, is to train
people for the workforce, and it's really the true measure of success
if people are being hired into those areas as opposed to they are not
taking classes so now they can work more hours in McDonald's.
That's not the point, right?
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Yeah, absolutely. The other one that jumps
out at me is line 15, learner mental health one. We just saw in the
presentation on the Drachman properties, at least I don't know if it
was in order of priority, but the one at the top of the community
list there was community health center, if memory serves from that
presentation.
You know, we heard some information at the last board meeting, if
I'm remembering the right date right, about the college's efforts
around addressing food insecurity among our students and getting them
access to food resources. So I know that's not all mental health,
but that idea of sort of the college as a facilitator of or provider
of some of those social needs, healthcare needs for our students,
that they are adequately able to be successful as students and pick
up all those skills and do all of that, that's something that speaks
to me in there, as well.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
I'm watching the time. It's probably about time for us to move
on to the next topic, but before I do that, are there any last
comments on this one?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Dr. Richmond, I'd like to make a
comment, as well.
So to answer the vice-chair's question about these conversations
not only with the University of Arizona but I'd also like to share
with you that we have had conversations with SALC, Southern Arizona
Leadership Council, and Sun Corridor, in looking at what are the jobs
that Arizona's looking for, how can we be appealing to bring
industries to Arizona, and what are the jobs that would take place.
Also, at Pima College we have been talking about 21st Century
skills, which includes what the board chair was talking about, the
importance of critical thinking skills, collaboration, and other such
skills.
When many of us on the board and I went to the ACCT legislative
summit, we met with Noah Brown, who is part of the Department of
Education, and he also expressed the need for all of us to understand
what are the jobs that don't exist and that we need to prepare our
students for. And he mentioned, if I remember correctly, AI
technology, manufacturing, semiconductors, and other things.
So we have had pockets of these conversations. Also last week,
many of us went to the Helios ASU Decision Center, and we looked at
the data of where are there needs in jobs. So, for example, we all
know there is a shortage in the healthcare system.
So looking at those pieces of data and having more open
discussions throughout the college internally and externally with the
community I think is very important, but more of a cohesive manner,
because we have had them in pockets but now we need to be more
strategic and intentional.
Thank you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
So let's move on and talk about our second topic for today, which
is the traditional plan discussion. Now, as mentioned, this is using
some of the kind of the older-school approaches where we kind of look
backwards and look at the present day to see where we might be going
as we move forward.
Now, in advance of the traditional planning work session that we
held back in February, the SPT were assigned data reports to review.
So we had them look at enrollment data, progress data, outcomes, look
at some of the key survey results, particularly the Community College
Survey of Student Engagement, which is a key avenue through which we
hear the voice of our learners and how engaged they feel with the
institution.
We also split the team into two and had half of them review the
most recent environmental scan and half of them look at competitor
analysis to think about those documents, too.
So then we put them into a work session. We had three-and-a-half
hours with them, and we discussed these three primary areas. So
those are conversation around either the environmental scan or the
competitor analysis, based on whichever group they had been in. Then
we had a discussion about institutional context. This is a
conversation that focuses on the history of the institution, the
complexity of the institution, and the culture.
These are all key things to talk about to try and understand Pima
today, because we can't develop meaningful strategies for moving
forward unless we have a really good sense of who we are today, so we
know where we are, where we can build from, and kind of figure out
where is our starting point today that we need to move from to kind
of get to the future that we want to reach. Then we conducted a
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats discussion, as
well.
Now, we are watching the time a little bit, we know we have until
6:00, and we want to make sure we have time to talk about some of the
detail priorities, but we want to invite the board's perspectives as
we think about a SWOT analysis. We'd like to hear from the board
about what you consider to be the college's strengths, because there
is a tendency, and Chair Riel, you touched on this actually with your
comments, we often think about what are the things that aren't
working that we need to fix, but reality, what are the things we are
good at that we can be even better at to kind of build even better
services for our students, better programs, all those kinds of
things. How can we be even better?
So we wanted to invite your input, board members, on what you
consider to be the strengths that we could leverage moving forward.
What are your thoughts?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: My two top strengths are people. I think
we've got amazing people. And then the programs, the programs that
we teach, all these great options that we give students to pretty
much be whatever you want to be.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Other comments from other board members?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I think one of our strengths is our ability
to move in a direction that's reactive to the requests made by
community, whether it's business, workforce activities, when asked to
design a program or a plan that would help educate people to enter
the workforce and meet the needs of that corporation that seems like
in the past we have been able to do that very quickly and very well.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: One of the weaknesses that I think that we
have is --
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Strengths first.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: What? Oh, strengths first? Okay. You
guys have already said it. Luis?
>> DR. RICHMOND: Other thoughts around strengths?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: I come back in reference to the strengths,
as mentioned a while ago, is not the people but the community,
because the community expands not only from those young people but
also, too, the adults and everybody in between. I think that's the
community that we need to look at, in preparing the young people but
also embracing them when they reach at the 18-, 19-year-old, when
they will be here at the college.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Board Member Garcia, I noted you had a weakness you wanted to
share, so let me open up the other categories. Weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats.
Are there particular comments or items that any of the board
would like to share and highlight to make sure we take them into
account as we're working on the planning process?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Well, you know, the strengths, we have
great faculty members who teach our students very well. The
resources that the college gives are outstanding. They have some
great programs.
On our weaknesses, I think that equity and inclusion is extremely
lacking in certain specific fields. Not in all of them, just in some
of them. I think we need to re-evaluate that. Specifically the
healthcare field.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I think we've got a great opportunity to
fix our website and the admissions area, because if we could fix
that, we would not have students turning away before they even get
through the door, which would improve our enrollment numbers.
So I think fixing the website and making sure that students don't
get the runaround when they are trying to apply and be accepted, that
would just be a great opportunity that we actually need to act upon
soon.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Other thoughts on any of these four?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I think one of the weaknesses we have is at
times the organizational self-talk can be negative and
self-defeating. So if I had a magic wand, I would change that, and
don't ask me how to do that.
The biggest threat I see in the future is the fact that the
legislature is not our friends, and it's going to be financial.
There is already a financial burden placed on the college for trying
to prioritize resources. I see it getting much more difficult to do
that in the future, and I think the only way that's going to change
is if we can again get an allocation from the state legislature.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I think there is also a demographic reality
that we have to face, and that is probably both a threat and an
opportunity. You know, as the pool of traditionally community
college-aged students shrinks at a time when the competition for
higher-education opportunities for those 18- to 24-year-olds is
increasing or has continued to increase, we need to make sure that
we're not just designing programs and opportunities for that
traditional community college-aged group but also for adults through
their careers, or even into retirement, for that matter, so that we
are able to effectively serve a wider range of age bands so that we
are not as negatively impacted by those demographic realities.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Let me move us forward now. We have another discussion coming up
shortly. So based on the conversations that the SPT had, we prepared
a very rough working list of the possible kind of priorities and
things that the college might tackle.
The list is part of the document provided in the additional
materials. It's kind of all over the place in structure. Some
things are a couple words, some things have a couple sentences. This
is very much a working document at this point.
We invited the SPT to select the items from the last that they
considered the most important so we could try and do a little bit of
preliminary prioritization. The topics that received the most votes
were enrollment, rightsizing the institution, and providing support
for learners who were new or struggling.
That last one in particular I would highlight. As you look
through the list, and I will switch over to the other screen soon so
you can see that, there is a lot of different items that touch on
support for learners in kind of different ways, so that's been a
clear theme that's come through the conversation of how do we support
our learners, help them be successful, and help them get the support
they need to help them succeed.
Fourth place was tied across a number of different things.
Leveraging Pima's value over the competition, improving
accountability, et cetera.
We also gave the SPT the option to identify two priorities that
were not on the list that they considered to be important, so we have
a few additional items that we gathered that way as well. This is
kind of typical of a lot of the conversations we have and with
different groups. It's, like, give us your ideas. What are the
things we need to think about? And then the SPT will go and talk
about those different ideas and try and kind of consolidate around a
few key things.
With this, we'd like to turn this over for a conversation with
the board again to get your input on these priorities. I'm going to
switch to the other screen and slowly scroll through the list, it's
more than I can fit on one page, and I will hand you over to Kelly
who will take point on the discussion.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Yes, thanks.
So looking at that list, and I believe Nic is going to bring it
up here, and I believe it's also in your packet there, so when
looking at this list, we're looking for different themes within our
traditional planning session and looking to see if maybe you have any
additional planning themes that you don't see on here.
You know, as Dr. Richmond alluded to before, we did ask the
strategic planning team members to come up with two that they did not
see on the list after they ranked theirs. So I know it's a quick
scroll, but if you have any ideas, we are open and we'd love to hear
them.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: There is one about annual performance
reviews, and I think that we need to bulk up our performance reviews.
I think we need to do 360-degree reviews. It happens for faculty
already. Students review us and so do our supervisors, but I think
faculty are the only group where there is that 360-degree evaluation
process.
I always learned a lot from those, and I just think that that's
an important thing to, you know, beef up a bit in the college.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: That's a great suggestion. Thank you,
Theresa.
Anyone else from the board?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I don't have anything to add. There is a
lot here.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: There really is. (Laughter.)
>> DR. RICHMOND: Something I might add, if there aren't new
things that the board would like to add, are there things you're
seeing here that seem particularly important to you that you would
want to see us prioritize in our conversations?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I'm sorry, but I was not able to pull up
that list that you are showing us right now. But anyway, the one
thing that I'd like to ask is do you do any type of assessments or
are we doing any type of assessments -- we had a student that went to
our legislative session up in D.C., and he mentioned that he had
completed the course in public safety or --
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Law enforcement.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: -- law enforcement, and at the end, he had
graduated and then was not able to get the job because he was
color-blind. So are we doing -- I mean, are we telling, informing
the students beforehand on if there is any, like, any of those kind
of specialized tests that they may need to be able to pass before
they start a program?
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: In my area, which is health information
technology, we do. We often speak to our students before they begin
the program, making sure they know what criteria is needed before
they go to school and earn their certificate or their degree with us,
to make sure that they are someone who can get a job in the industry,
because there are some very sensitive areas within healthcare and
data security. So in my area, we do.
Nic, do you know of any other areas that do a screening like
this?
>> DR. RICHMOND: It's a good question. I'm not sure. I made a
note. I think our best option here might be to follow up on this one
and check and find out.
I'm going to hope that we do in these different areas, but I
don't know for certain what the process is in the different programs.
So we'll check and we'll find out for you.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you for that question.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: One other comment someone made about
leveraging PCC's value over competitors, I think that's a great idea.
One way we could do that is we could try to get, you know, a graduate
of all of these different programs to come and do a three-minute talk
here at the board meetings, get them on advertisements where, you
know, I went to PCC for my first two years and now I'm a mechanical
engineer. I'm thinking of my niece right now. She just has nothing
but fabulous things to say about her classes at Pima College.
So I think we do need to leverage that, because it is the best
deal for so many people, and I don't think we do a good enough job of
having our graduates, you know, our alumni, I don't even know if we
have an alumni association, but, you know, we need to leverage those
groups of people to talk more about their great experience so other
people will think they can do it too.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I just want to add a little bit more
-- sorry, go ahead.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: No, go ahead.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: I was going to say I'm going to add a
little bit more about what Theresa was saying. Today I was out
collecting signatures to run for the board, and one of the gentlemen
that I met was saying that his daughter had graduated from the
nursing program at Pima and how proud he was, and now she's a
psychiatric nurse.
So, yes, there is a lot of really good publicity out there, and I
do believe that bringing in some of those students to talk about
their experience and what they are doing now would be great, you
know, really helpful to us.
Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Yeah, and I can actually think of a few
graduates myself in different programs that would be very willing to
come and speak to the board if that's something you would like.
So that's a great suggestion. Thank you.
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: You know, one more. On the advertisements,
you know, TV advertisements, not just coming to Pima, but what have
we accomplished. What has it meant in their lives would be a good
advertisement.
Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Just recently there was a video put together
in the IT/cyber security area with students involved who they have
responsibilities within their life, children at home, insecurities in
different areas, and they are coming to Pima, they are doing very
well, they're in these videos that the PCC media I believe has put
together, and it would be wonderful if we were able to do those kinds
of videos in all areas.
Okay. So should we move on, Nic? Okay. I'll go ahead and pass
it back to you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: All right. Let me stop showing my screen. I
will switch back to the slides again.
Actually, I might hand it straight back to you, Kelly. Let's see
what's up next. Next steps. Do you want to overview the next steps,
and then I will take the last section about the timeline, the
question that we have?
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Sure. So the next steps are we are having a
discussion obviously at the Futures Conference that is this Friday
morning, and in mid-March we have a strategic plan update sessions
which will include the embedded planning activities for our
attendees. The March strategic planning team topics are going to
include some of the areas in which our members can see that we can do
some cost savings within the college and get some different ideas as
to where they see where we can save some money.
We're also hoping to get a student panel. That's of course
tentative, as you can see there. And then also we are going to have
a review of all the ideas that were generated by the '23/'24 data
sessions.
In April, we're going to have the four groups that Dr. Richmond
spoke of before and come and they're going to get together to draft
the two-year extension to the strategic plan. The draft priorities
will be open for comments from internal and external stakeholders
once they are developed. So we hope to have some comments come in
and see what other people are thinking about that, as well.
The goal is to bring the priorities to the board for discussion
and approval in June, but of course we will need input and that's
something that we are hoping to get from the board, from other
stakeholders, as well, hopefully the community. And then the
comprehensive planning process will start in the fall of this year
and we'll take about two years with the resultant plan going into
effect for July 1, 2026.
Next slide.
>> DR. RICHMOND: All right, great.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: You want to take this over, Nic?
>> DR. RICHMOND: Do you want me to, or do you want to do this
one too?
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Perfect. No, go ahead.
>> DR. RICHMOND: So thank you for summarizing the next steps.
Board members, thank you for your input today.
We are having a lot of really good conversations on the SPT and
we're generating lots of ideas. One of the things we will do in
April is kind of refine this list down. We're not going to come to
you with a list that's as long as all the items in the draft list you
see here. It's going to be a subset, a small list that we are going
to prioritize and try and recommend the most valuable things for your
consideration, input, and ultimate approval.
But we have a key question that we need your input on. So with
the chancellor search underway and the possibility of bringing on a
new chancellor over the summer, we need to get your input on your
preference regarding the strategic planning timeline.
So the slides have three options which I will run through
briefly. It could be one of these three options, it could be
something else. But we want to make sure we get your input and that
we proceed according to a schedule you're comfortable with, because
ultimately the strategic plan is yours for approval. So we want to
make sure you're comfortable with what we are doing.
So the option that we have been working towards as a committee
was to bring forward the extension to the plan in June of this year.
This was the plan back when we starting the planning work in the fall
semester. The reason we are kind of reconsidering that now is simply
because of the timeline of when you hope to bring onboard a
chancellor and a new CEO.
Now, there are some advantages if we continue with the originally
planned timeline so we will have a refreshed set of priorities
informed by internal and external input. This is good, because we
are moving into year 4 of a plan that was developed back in
2020/2021, so it's kind of getting a little bit stale, right, so we
want to reconsider whether we have got the right priorities in there.
It also means that we continue to make good forward progress in
our plans and the implementation of our plans, which is aligned with
Criterion 5, but that's not an essential component here, because
Criterion 5 will be fine whatever we do.
The downside, however, is if we bring the plan to you in June, it
won't be informed by ideas from the new chancellor, and they will be
walking into the college with a -- it's not really a new strategic
plan, an extended strategic plan. We are just extending what we
already have.
So they won't have the opportunity to inform that, but as a note,
we can at any point revisit the strategic plan. We are doing it now.
We can do it again. And also, we have the annual chancellor's goals,
which is another opportunity for the chancellor to have a direct
voice in the priorities at the institution. But it is potentially a
downside if we bring a new extension to the plan online before they
get here.
Option 2 would see us deferring plan approval into fall 2024.
This has the advantage that the incoming chancellor, if they are able
to start over the summer, as is the goal, will have the opportunity
to inform the plan. It might add a little bit of additional time,
though, because any adjustments to the plan would need to get posted
again for input from internal and external stakeholders, but if we
move it to this one, either option 1 or 2, this board and the current
composition of this board, you all would be the ones who would be
setting those priorities for the college for the next two years.
A couple of potential downsides, if the chancellor is from
outside of the college, they won't be that familiar with the
institution, so it may be hard for them to give good, robust,
meaningful input when they've only been with the institution for a
short period of time. And as mentioned, the timeline could get a
little challenging because we'd have delays because we then have to
post it again, so realistically would probably be around December it
would come forward for the board.
This would mean we are working from a slightly older set of
priorities, which might be a negative in terms of us being able to
make good, meaningful progress, but we are only really talking about
a few months, so this is not like a critical issue if we delay.
Then another option, a third one, is if we defer plan approval
into the spring. This gives plenty of time for the new CEO to get
onboard, up to speed with the institution, inform the planning work.
It also gets us through what will doubtless be a very busy period of
time with the HLC visit. The fall will be quite busy with that work.
There would be plenty of time for us to get input from internal and
external stakeholders on the adjustments to the plan that may come
about through the input from the new CEO.
Some of the potential downsides with that timeline is with the
board election coming up, we don't know what the composition of the
board will be in January, and the new board would be the ones who are
approving the priorities.
It's also possible we need to take things back to the community
at the Futures Conference in 2025. And as noted, there would be this
delay in refreshing Pima's strategic priorities, which for this
timeline, we'd be getting towards potentially a year delay from where
we could be.
But it's really the decision of the board, and I'd like to invite
input from the board members on when you would like us to bring the
draft priorities to you for review and approval. In June this year?
Or would you like us to push that into the fall when the new
chancellor is hopefully here to be able to inform the plan? What's
the preference of the board?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I can speak for myself. I think with the
amount of work that you have done, the input from different
constituents, I see no reason to defer this and I would recommend
option 1.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Okay. Thank you.
Other board members, what do you think?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Nic, I was just pondering, I'm not 100%
sure of this, but I was told by numerous people that the former
chancellor had applied for other jobs and he had been finalist on at
least a couple of different occasions prior to accepting this job in
California.
Had he left earlier, whoever was the new chancellor would be
still, he or she would still be the CEO under a former plan, right,
or the current plan that we have right now. So I don't really see
that this is any different, you know, moving forward and finishing
what you all have started.
I agree with Dr. McLean. I think that we should continue the
momentum and we should go with option 1.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Any other comments from the board?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: Dr. Richmond, I would agree with option 1,
as well. My reasoning for that is that I think that at the present
time we have a very diverse group of board members that have a vast
amount of experience. The three new members that we have have
contributed greatly to this board. Then of course me and
Mr. Gonzales have the history. So I would vote for option 1.
I think you guys have done a great job in trying to bring forward
what needs to be done. So I'd have to go with option 1. Thank you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Other comments?
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Last comment -- well, not the last. Mr.
Taylor is up there still. I also believe option 1 would be probably
the best that we have.
I think, as we all know, it's ongoing and others will be meeting
with different composition within the new coming year, but I think
it's very important and critical that we approve and support this
option that we have right now, which is option 1. Thank you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Great. Thank you.
Board Member Taylor, any comments?
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I concur. I think we can keep moving
forward.
>> DR. RICHMOND: All right. Great. Thank you very much for the
input. We will proceed accordingly and plan to bring you the draft
extension to the plan in June of this year so you can take a look.
You're under no obligation, if something has changed between now
and then, you wish to defer it into the fall, you can of course do
that, but on our side, we commit to bringing that to you for
consideration at your June meeting. So thank you very much.
I will stop showing my slides. That's everything that we have
today. I would just ask, just as a closing question, are there any
other comments or input any of the board would like to share into the
process?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I don't think of anything right now, but if
we have a thought in the next day or two, we can always e-mail it to
you, correct?
>> DR. RICHMOND: Absolutely. Correct, yes. And you can send it
to me or via the chancellor's office.
Great. Thank you, everybody.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thanks, Kelly.
Okay. So I think we have come to the end of the meeting. Any
final thoughts, or I'm going to adjourn the meeting?
>> MS. MARIA GARCIA: My final thought is thank you, everyone.
The information was great.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yeah, I really do think especially this
last presentation, it was very -- it was refreshing. I feel like I
got a lot out of it as a board member. So thank you.
Okay.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: The first one, too.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes. Yes, actually all of them.
(Laughter.) The first one gave me a lot of hope.
Okay. I'm going to adjourn the meeting. Thank you.
>> MR. LUIS GONZALES: Thank you.
(Adjournment.)
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TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM
CITATION.
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沙巴官网
Sports-club-contactus@sxjiuxin.com
太阳城官网
赌博平台大全
Sun-City-entertainment-City-help@randolphcountyalabama.com
华谊兄弟时代文化经纪有限公司
澳门威尼斯人
Gaming-platform-support@myliucheng.com
澳门皇冠体育
义乌热房网
沪鸽口腔
体育博彩平台排名
New-Lisboa-official-website-contactus@cdeke.com
博彩平台
尽享网
Gambling-website-recommendations-hr@taste-happiness.com
博远容天
中国食品设备网
Galaxy-Macau-sales@chloecycling.net
皇冠博彩
9724小游戏
海外网台湾频道
推酷
青岛全搜索网
晋城赶集网
南京信息工程大学学分制教学管理系统
皇冠蛋糕
平顶山工业职业技术学院
搞趣网资讯频道
370看看影视
奥鹏教育
广州新东方烹饪学校官方网站
旭途旅游
非凡安卓手机频道
站点地图