Dear SCC Family,

With the end of Summer Term IIIA upon us, I want to touch base with each of you as you sandwich vacations and time off in between busy four-day work weeks and gearing up for Term IIIB and Fall. It's important that you hear about actual events and plans directly from me rather than hearing things through a grapevine that I suspect is alive and well these days. So ... let me touch on three "hot" topics on many minds these hot summer days:

Compensation Increases

Nothing is as important, or as volatile, as issues concerning one's paycheck. So I want you to please know ... our goal is to try to provide a greater increase for all SCC employees this October than we have been able to provide in the past several years. Approximately $1.7 million has been allocated for salary increases for our 600 full-time faculty and staff, adjunct faculty and part-time staff for this next year. Our goal is to give the best raise possible within the parameters of our state allocation and enrollment increases. The Faculty Compensation Committee, Executive Staff and others are working hard to "crunch" numbers and evaluate different scenarios so that the best possible recommendations can be developed to go to the Board in September. Please know that no final decisions have been reached yet ... we are still working on many fronts to listen, to understand, and to discuss solutions that can reward everyone who has worked so hard and at such a whirlwind pace these past few years. Please be patient. We will know more as we reach the Fall Term, especially as we see how many new students come to SCC.

Cy-Fair Visit

As you know, SCC has accepted an invitation to become the only Florida college in a select "share group" of "Strategic Horizon" community colleges from across the nation. On June 1-2 a group of faculty, staff, and administrators journeyed to Cy-Fair College in the Houston area for such a visit.

We found Cy-Fair to be an impressive new multi-building community college. We saw things that we liked and things that we didn’t like. However, I think we all agree that it was a good experience and that we gained tremendously from the research they had done. Attached you will find an executive summary from our SCC group (superbly produced by Susan Dooley), that chronicles in detail the major findings and opinions of our group, and potential implications for SCC. Please take the time to read through this summary, as several key aspects are already being implemented ... such as our new "one-stop" student services center. Perhaps most important of all, I feel our visit stimulated our SCC group's creative thinking about our mission, our structure, and the future of SCC. I know I learned much from such productive, quality time with both Cy-Fair and SCC faculty and staff.

Progress On Our 2004-05 "Redesign"

We are still on target with development of the Educational Specifications and Site Plans for the new Altamonte and Heathrow facilities. To that end, on July 6 and 7, we will be holding open forums for everyone to come see the "Ed Specs" and to update you on the timeline for the design / construction of these 2 new facilities. Please look for a separate email alerting you to the times and dates for these meetings. We will hold similar meetings later this fall when the Sanford/Lake Mary Master Plan takes shape.

In regard to the comprehensive review and update of SCC's Strategic Plan -- our "redesign," if you will -- we are still on target with the previously-outlined timeline for this process that is being facilitated by the Consortium for Community College Development (CCCD), based at the University of Michigan:
*Summer 2004 ..... Pre-Visit Analysis completed by the consultants
*Sept. 13 - 17 ..... Consultants Visit Campus, meeting with 300-400 internal and external constituents in a series of large groups, 10-15 member focus groups, and individual meetings.
*Sept. - Oct. ..... Consultants analyze all data
*Oct. 20.....SCC Retreat, where consultants present preliminary analysis to a representative group of SCC employees.
*Nov. 2004.....Comprehensive Report delivered to the College.
*Dec. 2004.....Consultants present final Comprehensive Report to the Board at the December meeting.
*Jan. - March 2005 .....Using the Comprehensive Report as a foundation, the College will finalize a Strategic Plan and an organizational redesign by March, 2005.

In closing, I know this message is lengthy, but I wanted each of you to be aware of all that is going on. We've certainly been through some tough times these past few years, and there are always going to be more challenges ahead. But with so many faculty and staff working hard to do the right thing for each other, for our students, for our College, and for our community, I am more confident than ever that we will, like our motto, "Be Ourselves ... Only Better." ann

Did you know?

SCC is just minutes from metropolitan Orlando.