NORTHERN ESSEX COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOARD OF TRUSTEES
MINUTES OF MEETING (OFFICIAL) – November 6, 2024
A meeting of the Northern Essex Community College Board of Trustees was held in the Dimitry Building, on the Lawrence Campus and via Zoom on Wednesday, November 6, 2024.
Ms. Borislow
Mr. Cousins
Ms. Gomez
Ms. Hatem-Roy
Ms. Mohammed
Ms. O’Rourke (via Zoom)
Mr. Silverio
Also Present: President Glenn
CALL TO ORDER: With a quorum present, Chairwoman Borislow called the meeting to order at 5:09 PM after full quorum was met across all members
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Chairwoman Borislow asked for a motion to approve the
October 2, 2024, minutes.
On a Motion presented by Trustee O’Rourke and seconded by Trustee Cousins, by roll call vote, the Board unanimously approved the October 2, 2024, minutes as presented.
CORRESPONDENCE: There was none.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS:
a) Introduction of Newly Hired Employees (Verbal)
President Glenn introduced and welcomed the newest employee, Cherie Pinardi (FY Career Advisor – Essex County Sheriff’s Department (Lawrence STAR), William Haden (FY Education Director – Essex County Sheriff’s Department), and Nancy Pynchon (FY Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education).
The Board welcomed our newest employee to NECC.
EDUCATIONAL REPORT: Enrollment Update (ADM-3893-110624)
Provost Paul Beaudin shared an insight on how his personal prayers had been heard and as of 6:30 AM that morning the enrollment dashboard showcased numbers going in a positive direction for NECC. The presentation went on to showcase improvements to areas around headcount (especially due to credit changes), and improved numbers for the Fall II section with a 90% seat utilization, an especially impressive metric of note, with 14 more sections increased from 9/10 to 11/15 representing over 2000 credits.
Open access means NECC welcomes every student who walks through the door, and provides access to degree completion, too. NECC is pleased by these numbers, but early college is up less comparatively, and slightly down by FTE, as they aren’t taking as many credits as they did in that category. Transfer students are another variable to be monitored, where NECC processed about 2000 students, many of them coming from Mass Reconnect or Mass Educate, with new students for 26.62% year over year.
Across just about metric, the numbers are up but this is our highest fall enrollment number in over five years. 90% are occupied by a student seat utilization with 15 more sections, starting at the freeze date for Fall, extending on to our first day as of this day, we increase Sept 10 and yesterday by over 2000 credits per students, it’s the highest fall year to date – I cannot thank you enough, and the Board, and the Administration, enrollment processing, special thanks to Allison Dolan-Wilson, as of yesterday 87% term – less than 2% withdrawing from school, only 9% F’s but we will follow up more to see.
Trustee Gomez – thank you for presentation, what are some of the challenges with the increase of volume at the college? Paul Beaudin – I’m told by accessibility office that there are more needs, including mental health issues, so many of them went through high school during COVID; thankfully, we are applying for another DESI grant to focus on this
Trustee Hatem-Roy – where are the students generally coming from? Paul Beaudin -They are coming in limited audiences from another Community College or another four-year school, but the word is out about the last dollar via MassReconnect or MassEducate, as transfers are way up, which we are grateful for Governor Healey for again.
President Glenn – we get a live database on our internal servers to view this data, we refresh this data and will keep updated as we move forward ahead.
BOARD CHAIR REPORT:
REPORT OF BOARD COMMITTEES:
a) Audit and Finance Sub-Committee: Trustee Hamm no present, no report at this time.
b) Alumni Advancement Sub-Committee (Verbal): Chair Borislow reported and shared notes from Trustee Fernandez:
Alumni: Congrats to Allison and her team for a successful turnout at the Alumni and Friends Opening Reception for Hurricane Diane in Newburyport, with almost 80 people attended. This allowed for deepening relationships with a range of constituents.
- Currently the alumni focus is bringing in new Alumni Board members and so far lots of great conversations and opportunities. All are encouraged to take look at the newly launched NECC Alumni Update.
Private grants: Receiving tremendously positive feedback regarding our Internship Stipend Program. We have raised $40k plus for the program from new foundation relationships, and more funds are forthcoming. The stipends help provide equitable opportunities for students to participate in work-based learning, as well as help to fill the workforce needs for work-ready employees for our local employers.
- Currently working with a new Foundation to bring a large dollar grant to campus in support of our Center for Accessibility Resources and Services.
Annual Fund: President’s Appeal launched last month with a focus on the importance of private donations to help guarantee a comprehensive and supportive learning environment for every student as a necessary supplement to MassEducate and MassReconnect.
- Our focus now, is that with these programs we have begun to address access. Now we need to ensure success and still need philanthropic support.
c) Nominating Sub-Committee (Verbal): Trustee Cousins reported the following:
Trustee Cousins held first meeting on October 31, 2024 for nominating committee, with President Glenn handing out informative packets. Group went through vacancies coming up, showcasing that we have a small pool that had some interest previously, so we will work on that list. BOT members are asked to see if you can look at some of the names generally, but another meeting is on schedule before Thanksgiving.
REPORT OF ADMINISTRATION:
a) Employee Demographics – Presentation from VP Vivian Cavazzi – (ADM-3894-110624)
President Glenn introduces VP Vivian Cavazzi to help present data and information. VP Cavazzi aims to be more consistent with numbers and data starting now and going forward, including how visuals are presented (adjustment from bar graphics to pie charts, for example).
Other areas of focus included: NECC historical diversity view; PEDS data; NECC employees’ tenure; diverse candidate slate, interview panels, and candidate background, as well. We have approximately 25% full-time POC on staff; relative to that, we have almost 50% POC students – we must ask: is that good? We are asking ourselves these types of questions to determine if this is acceptable or should we be doing better?
Considerations for deterring focus areas
- NECC is dedicated to diversity
- Our diversity efforts have been ongoing, and we are making strides;
- Where should we now focus our efforts in an impactful and measure able way;
- We are a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI);
- Initial focus on full-time benefited student-facing employees, then look at adjunct faculty as well;
- How closely does/should our employee population be reflective of our student population vs employee population?’
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- Currently benchmarking against available labor in mass but will also benchmark against New Hampshire and Maine.
- Strategy will be determined once focus areas are identified.
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- We are looking at student-facing, but we want to look at first increase representing in this area (faculty, student support services)
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- We’ve got a great population of adjunct populations – while new to higher ed, our population was previously stagnant as all draw from the same pool; we have to solicit beyond the pool that’s established, so the opportunity to make a change in that population, we may not be our focus area, but we will look at the data going forward
- Our faculty vs students – 7% Hispanic, MA demographic for available post-secondary – not necessarily unemployed, we are matched 7% with outside population – that might sound great, but is it good enough, because we still have a 50% population?
- Around two-thirds come from MA, a third from NH – they have 2% post-secondary in their population, so that population is a draw from us but it’s not a big pool
- Looking at faculty is a big casting of the net, we break this down by academic division, there may be some opportunity to see this level is helpful to see adjustments between areas, especially health – liberal arts looks ok, STEM is ok, we will look at these individually going forward to see if any patterns change over time
- Opportunities average over the last five years = five opportunities every year; we have to define what does good actually look? Not targets or goals, but want to define satisfactory measuring methods;
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- Full time vs part time for NECC student support services vs students, 26% Hispanic support services, and this is a demographic different in MA and it’s still 2% in NH, so these includes the services like enrollment, SOAR, library, advising, tutors and those types of services that we know of – so is this what good looks like?
- The data in our computer system needs to be adjusted as we go forward to better present data and graphics here as it currently doesn’t do all that we are aiming for.
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- On average we hire about 20 minorities for adjunct faculty vs students, this individual grouping has allowed us to focus on opportunities to promote diversity.
- We don’t recruit into this other group very often, but we will focus on student facing for adjunct faculty, I think there is a group we will pay attention to, not a focus area we must pay attention as there is not enough hiring activity
- This is just a taste – more to come, more focus area, most of research is done, we must strategize going forward, next time we talk we will have the rest of the story – why we were delayed last month.
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- Trustee Borislow – what a credit to the school to only have five turnovers, a lot of that is retirement (VP Cavazzi confirms)
- President Glenn – we have more to share via context, some will remember from years ago when enrollment was really growing and more vibrant turnover a few things shifted: enrollment declines have stabilized and more stable adjunct faculty. To that, some are used to teaching 2 to 3 courses, in addition to that, over last several years, full time faculty are teaching part time classes on top of the other needs. To be clear, salaries remain low, but teachers are teaching more themselves to keep up with realities of their salaries, and many of them teach a lot, which takes away faculty pools, qualified people, etc. Every time we talk about this, it’s not to mirror the student population as it’s not a reasonable goal, geography is destiny and its difficult to recruit from far away unless special circumstances – low-cost jobs are challenges to the population
- Trustee Mohammed – 50% Hispanic population is listed – what does that say about our organization overall? VP Cavazzi – comparison of the threat – Hispanic faculty, when a student is sitting in classroom, they don’t know who they are categorically, but overall, we are showing progress, but 1,300 is not the whole number of students, how many students are really in faculty,
- President Glenn – we recognize the challenges and hold ourselves accountable, for example, health division needs to do better, but what do we do about that and what steps are we going to take to address that is what we are working on now.
- VP Cavazzi – we want our five-year plan to coincide with the NECHE report, too.
b) ECE Foundational Certificate Motion (ADM-3895-110624)
Brief presentation from Academic Dean Jody Carson – motion to take agenda out of order ordered by Chair Borislow –
On a Motion presented by Trustee Cousins and seconded by Trustee O’Rourke, by roll call vote, the Board unanimously approved ADM-3895-110624.
(Trustee O’Rourke signs off Zoom call at 5:25 PM)
c) Whittier Tech Shared Campus Update (Verbal)
Recently, NECC and Whitter Tech welcomed MSBA contacts to collect important feedback, helpful advice, and other insights. We have been visiting towns and cities across region, and proposed Memo of Understanding (MOU) would demonstrate a collaborative interest in this project. Thankfully, 10 of 11 have now signed off on the effort – even though we don’t quite know what this is an exploration of a shared campus model, it is however moving in a positive direction. UMass Donahue Institute (UMDI) is putting together the first interim report, a has various insights including labor market analysis, but wonderful discussion planning groups were held on Monday this past week, with insights from national leaders, and companies likes Jobs for The Future, Workforce Development leaders, MassINC, executives, delegation like Mayor Gove, Senator Bruce Tarr, and more. There is lots of positive momentum building – but a lot of challenges ahead yet to solve, there isn’t an identified way for this to come together via MSBA – capital asset through DCAMM is an option, but somehow these must integrate. Thanks to Chris Sicuranza who has put lots of miles on his electric car, and thanks to Trustee Cousins and Trustee Hamm for helping to get this in a positive direction, too.
- Trustee Hatem-Roy – which communities are getting involved and can we look at communities who do want to get involved if otherwise? President Glenn – we want to involve all those that are interested, including original members but we want to consider all options across all ideas so early days yet.
d) VP of Lawrence Campus Search Committee (Verbal)
President Glenn noted that the VP of Lawrence Campus search committee members have been established, with the team ready to review and interview candidates before the end of the year. More updates will be provided when appropriate to the Board thereafter as this makes progress.
e) The Communique– (ADM-3896-110624)
President Glenn noted that this month’s Communique has been distributed along with the Board Packets.
f) Campus Updates (Verbal) – No campus updates at this time.
NEW BUSINESS: No new business at this time.
OTHER BUSINESS:
President Glenn acknowledges Trustee Evan Silverio family accomplishment of recognition within City of Lawrence for Hispanic recognition.
President Glenn cheers on the NECC Men’s soccer team in the NJCAA Division III, with bus leaving on weekend and all invited to goodbye rally
Trustee Gomez – Presentation on ACCT Seattle Conference (ADM-3897-110624)
- Background of trip and the various agenda of ACCT across trip, lots of networking sessions and engagement across the country and globe.
- Welcome was approximately two blocks away from downtown Seattle, but the assistance, positive attitude, programming and ACCT app were all very helpful.
- Community college as catalysts activating skills for the future. It was great to align and see what we are going to cover this morning to be pragmatic.
- We as Trustees can support presidents or chancellors – there was almost too much that I found interesting and couldn’t attend them all but enjoyed the challenges of midlife leaders’ session.
- Networking / Map Showcase – Galvin Guero of Marianas College in the Northern Marina Islands, right above Guam, all they from Seattle was over 15 hours to fly, amazing connections.
- Large group within ACCT Latino committee, including an 87-year-old woman of note
- Learning experiences and opportunities within the concurrent sessions as well as connecting with MA leaders
- It’s important to have some fun too, wanted to see the live throwing the fish, the Space Needle, = Penn and Teller, Jazz bands and more.
- Next ACCT will be October 2025 in New Orleans, DC trip is always February – all Trustees warmly encouraged to go and experience.
ADJOURNMENT: Chairwoman Borislow adjourned the meeting at 5:59 PM.
