PANAMA CITY — Five years of planned development ends on a balanced note.
Gulf Coast State College President Jim Kerley, who is retiring July 31, presented the college’s annual report at a press conference Wednesday. The report was the final year of the college’s 2008-2013 Five Year Strategic Plan.
“We really went through some bad times,” Kerley said, alluding to the recent economic downturn. “But we’ve created some fabulous ideas and we had some pretty big goals and we’ve accomplished a lot of that.”
When parts of the nation’s economy began to turn upside down in 2008, GCSC was floating above water. Enrollment was at 13,065 — the highest it would be for the following three years. By 2011-2012 academic year, enrollment spiked to 22,054 students, including credit, noncredit, workforce and continuing education.
Enrollment has slightly decreased by about a thousand students — 22,054 to 21,109 — from last year, according to the college’s reports.
“Community state colleges like ours bounce some with the economy,” Kerley said. “We see a lot of our programs … are real solid.”
Since the start of the strategic plan, the college has added four bachelor’s degrees, nine associate of science degrees, 35 certificates and has increased its total number of online course sections by 30 percent.
In 2011, the institution became a state college, offering bachelor’s degree programs.
“It’s given more opportunities and hope to students,” Kerley said. “Our mission statement is about students, the central core of our mission. I think giving more opportunities through programs — we’ve offered a bunch of programs … it’s given better jobs, better opportunities.”
Diversity has been stagnant.
In the 2008-2009 school year, about 81 percent of students were white, about 9.7 percent were black and about 4 percent were Hispanic. In 2011-2012, the percentage of white students dropped to about 72 percent, black students stayed the same, while Hispanic students at the campus nearly doubled to about 7.8 percent. In 2012-2013, 76 percent of students are white, 9.6 are black and 5.2 are Hispanic.
Kerley said the biggest challenge in the past five years was balancing “economics and the budget.”
“Budget cuts, budget cuts, budget cuts,” Kerley said. “It just hit us. It started in 2007. Those are the years we were slapped.”
Although the college didn’t have layoffs, he said, positions were frozen, and operating expenses were cut by 10 percent. Food services were outsourced, which saved the college about $100,000. Cheerleaders were cut altogether.
“How do you have these lofty goals and how do you accomplish all of those?” he said. “We’re taking budget cuts several years in a row. How do you navigate through that? But we did.”
The college has a higher GPA average, retention and success rate than the state college system averages. It touts the lowest tuition in the state.
In fall of 2013, the $35 million Advanced Technology Center had its grand opening — one of the greatest successes for the college, community and state, he said.
And although the governor previously vetoed a STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) building project, Kerley said the college will continue to move toward establishing a new STEM building.
“I think putting emphasis on the STEM building that we’ve sort of pitched out already” is important, Kerley said. “We’re going to go, with the Legislature coming up, to get that new facility, the new STEM building.
“And I think it’s critical,” he added. “Our new STEM building, that we are sort of (in the) planning stage, needs to be completed because a lot of jobs in Florida and across the country are related to STEM and a lot of those jobs are going unfilled because we don’t have trained people for that.”