Personnel matters accounted for much of Thursday’s Barton Community College Board of Trustees meeting. Trustees also learned about a change in BCC’s accreditation program.
The board approved new personnel as recommended, and met for one hour in executive session to discuss personnel matters. No further action was taken after the executive session.
Barton President Dr. Carl Heilman commented, “These personnel recommendations bring the college pretty close to full staff.” Individuals hired to work at the Barton County campus were: Katelyn Olinger, assistant softball coach; Anita Barker, nursing remediation & health-care programs coordinator; Kelsey Boyles, assistant volleyball coach and residence hall manager; Dior Lowrey, assistant track & cross country coach; Anita Maloy, secretary in the Adult Education department; and Melanie Zink, customer service representative.
The board also awarded a faculty contract to Courtenay Self, an instructor of military programs at the Fort Riley area.
BCC Vice President of Instruction and Student Services, Dr. Penny Quinn, talked about the “Open Pathway” option for accreditation. The college is still accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, but HLC offers different options for how schools document their compliance. Having completed a seven-year cycle on the HLC Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP), the college is shifting to the relatively new Open Pathway. This means BCC will now be accredited for 10 years, and will have less reporting to do. The college will also have more flexibility when choosing which areas to focus on, Quinn said.
Heilman said Open Pathway, like AQIP, emphasizes quality education and a strategic approach to improvement.
In answer to a trustee question about negatives under the new system, Dean of Information Services Charles Perkins said, “There are no negatives.”
Perkins also gave a monitoring report on Board End No. 8: The Strategic Plan. (The board is responsible for directing the college’s mission, vision and ends, and receives periodic reports on its so-called “ends statements.”) The college has a 5-year strategic plan, which is tied to the Barton Success Plan, which is tied to yearly college plans, departmental goals and employee goals. But the college must comply with external requirements from many sources: HLC accreditation, Kansas Board of Regents polices and mission, KBOR performance agreements, KBOR’s Foresight 2020 plan, U.S. Department of Education regulations, articulation agreements, military Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreements, college-to-university agreements, allied health accreditation bodies and the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). “There are many requirements and goals for many people,” Perkins told the board. The goal of the plans and monitoring reports is to “tie it all together.”