Officials at the College of Lake County may not be able to imagine technology changes impacting its students and staff, the area’s workforce or the community overall when the next decade begins in 2030, so it developed a strategic plan to accommodate that uncertainty.
College President Lori Suddick said when the current strategic plan — taking the school through June — was crafted in 2019, no one contemplated the moves academia and society would make when the coronavirus pandemic dramatically changed learning with an explosion of remote studies.
As technology advances, Suddick said the school’s appropriate personnel will continually look for ways to implement it in learning, as well as methods to help faculty, other employees and students overall.
With the third of three pillars of the plan labeled “future ready organization,” the plan will “strategically integrate technology throughout employee, faculty and student experiences for intentional, ethical, equitable and innovative use,” according to the plan.
“We have developed the agility to pivot quickly to technological advances to deal with the needs ahead for us,” she said. “We transformed during COVID, and we will continue to do that when technology changes.”
The CLC Board of Trustees approved the 2030 Strategic Plan on June 24 which went into effect July 1, during a regularly scheduled meeting on the Grayslake campus, putting the school’s goals in place for the rest of the decade.
Along with preparing for future unknowns, the 2030 Strategic Plan strives for affordable access to the college, resources for student success, pathways to further education or the workforce while integrating career and learning experiences. It also involves the overall community.
“This is not a document, it’s a journey,” Suddick said. “We are using all of what we did in the last plan and now advancing it (here) to continue to improve the outcomes we achieve. We’re continuing to build on our success.”
As CLC makes itself “future ready” as idealized in the third pillar of the plan, it will “leverage data” to foster collaboration for continuous enhancement of its policies for “equity-minded operational, teaching and learning excellence,” according to the plan.
Some of Suddick’s goals for future digital planning include launching relevant digital dashboards, developing an artificial intelligence policy by the end of the first year and protecting against danger to the systems.
At the top of the list in the first pillar of the plan is affordability. Suddick said community colleges are traditionally the least expensive form of post-secondary education. The cost without financial assistance is $171 per credit hour, or $5,130 annually, for a full-time student.
By contrast, the cost for a year at the University of Illinois in Champaign is $34,226 for a full-time in-state student. A full-time student at a private school like Northwestern University in Evanston will pay $91,9867.
“Most of our students are not full-time,” Suddick said. “They’re living at home. They don’t have the expense of housing to live on campus.”
Students can start shaving the cost off college while still in high school through the dual credit program. Nick Branson, the school’s assistant vice president of strategic advancement, said a participant earns a credit toward their diploma while simultaneously banking the cost of a college course.
Not all students at CLC move to a four-year university after two years. Suddick said approximately 70% take that route, while the other 30% earn certificates to enter the workforce in well-paying careers like healthcare, manufacturing and more.
“Workforce skills are a major focus,” Branson said., “Manufacturing remains a pathway to jobs in Lake County. The Advanced Technology Center (opened in 2022), and we have room to add more programs.”
Suddick said financial aid for those who need assistance paying tuition remains available, spreading the affordability to more people. Increasing student retention is also a goal of the plan for student success.
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Adding classes in Spanish for those who read, write and speak it as their first language is another part of the plan to make schooling at CLC both more affordable and less challenging. Branson said 47% of the school’s students identify as LatinX. English is not a requirement for some “in-demand, well-paying jobs.”
With the second pillar of the 2030 Strategic Plan, Suddick said the college both used the community to help develop it as well as kept it involved to guide it through the next five years.
The outreach effort “involves partners from the community and education field to build pipelines to access college, support students to persist and achieve educational goals and yield valuable returns on investment for credentials earned,” according to the plan.
More than 2,000 community members were involved in gathering input for the plan. Among the community members, Suddick said employers as well as other community partners were involved. More than 200 students were quizzed, too.