June 7, 2018
Good morning, CF Team,
Congratulations to our 2018 Gabor Award winners and all CF team members who were honored at the Employee Recognition program May 4.
Each year, the Gabor Awards are presented by the CF Foundation to three employees for outstanding contributions to our college, community and students. This year, Dr. Judy Downer was honored in the Faculty category, Bill York in the Career Service category, and Keith Bracey in the Administrative and Professional category. Patriot PRIDE Service Excellence Awards were presented to Debbie Bowe, Cole Diaz and Erina Gross. In addition, 52 team members were recognized for service milestones of five, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 years, with a combined total of 625 years of service to CF. Mary Copeland has been with the college for 30 years. Outstanding! If you missed either program, you can view them at these links. (Employee Recognition Video, Gabor Awards Video)
Also on May 4, we celebrated our students with two graduation ceremonies. We conferred 1,054 certificates and degrees, with 515 students participating in the ceremonies. We had a record 108 dual enrollment students earn their Associate in Arts before receiving a high school diploma. Again, outstanding! Videos of the ceremonies are available at these links. (3 p.m. commencement, 6 p.m. commencement)
Summer enrollment is up over 10% due to the availability of Federal Pell financial aid funds. Fall enrollment is down around 8% right now, but it is still early in the registration cycle. Our Student Affairs team is working diligently to get students enrolled. You can help. If you know a student who has not yet registered, encourage them to be proactive and register early.
As hurricane season approaches, please ensure that you and your family are prepared. Refer to our Hurricane Procedures flier for survival kit basics as well as steps to take before, during and after a storm. Please do not wait until we are in the path of a hurricane to begin planning. Printed copies of the Hurricane Procedures flier will be arriving in mailboxes soon.
I have some good news to share on the State Performance Funding Model. Last night, I received our performance results for student retention and completion. We improved from one point last year to the maximum 10 points this year! Unfortunately, our student completion rate fell slightly from 4.67 to 3.67 out of 10, so we lost a little ground there. That’s an eight point net increase on those two measures! There are two more measures (placement/continuing education and wages) that still have not been released and we won’t know if we earned any performance dollars until we see those. Fingers crossed!
We are getting close to finalizing a budget for the next fiscal year beginning July 1. One of our challenges in creating the budget is the delay in knowing whether we will earn any state performance funding. I am hoping for that information any day. Please know that providing additional compensation for our employees is a top priority. We don’t yet have a final decision on how that will look and I will update you as soon as we do.
I hope that you are enjoying your summer schedule. I know that the shorter work weeks lead to busier days when we are in the office. But that makes the Fridays that we spend with family and friends that much sweeter.
Thanks for your service to our students and CF!
Jim