CCC president: College will act as additional site for COVID-19 testing

CLOVIS — Clovis Community College President Charles Nwankwo announced at Wednesday’s board of trustees meeting the college would act as an additional site for COVID-19 testing.

“With the recent spike of COVID-19 incidents in our region, state, the New Mexico Health Department and New Mexico Higher Education Department requested the use of our facility to conduct some testing for the public. So we offered up our parking lots to do the testing, and the National Guard is handling all of the testing,” Nwankwo said.

Other news in Nwankwo’s remarks included an update on CCC’s partnership with Clovis Municipal Schools for their early college high school program. The program currently has 140 students enrolled.

“This represents a tremendous increase, over 215% increase over last year,” Nwankwo said. “Of these students about 30 of them are on track to get certificates or associate degrees by the spring of next year. It is one of the programs that is well sought after nationwide because students in high school can earn credentials, certificates, and degrees while still in high school.”

In other business at the Wednesday meeting:

• A financial aid report for 2019-2020 was given by April Chavez. She noted that CCC awarded over $5.8 million in total aid to students. This includes federal, state, and institutional funds. Chaves said that this is roughly the same amount as previous years, but did include a small raise due to the one-time award from the CARES Act for student aid in the spring semester. The majority of the aid is federal, with over 82% coming from Pell grants and similar sources.

Chaves added that the college has seen a decline in students applying for FAFSA, and they have hired a financial aid specialist who will help students see if they are eligible for FAFSA and perform outreach for other scholarship opportunities.

A question was raised about student employment during the pandemic. Chavez said that while student employees earn minimum wage and can work 20 hours a week, they have not received a lot of outreach from students saying that they are in need of that extra income at the moment. Currently CCC has students working in the security department and in the HPE facility.

Chaves also said that if students were in need of extra financial aid during the pandemic there are options to review more recent tax returns to better determine aid amounts as well as scholarships available at the college.

• The college’s Drug-Free Workplace and Campus Policy was approved after a recent review which implemented “reasonable suspicion drug testing along with the standard operating procedures of testing,” as explained by Nwankwo. The board said that all employees and students are reasonably informed about the policies throughout the year.

• Employee Benefits were renewed for 2021. Blue Cross Blue Shield is the college’s provider, and the renewal included an increase in their custom PPO plan of 5%, the Blue Secure Plan with a 9.09% increase, and no increase in the BCBS dental plan.

• The renovation of two general purpose classrooms into science labs was approved by the board. The renovations are part of CCC’s five-year capital improvement plan to better support the colleges ongoing programs. The renovations will cost approximately $111,594 and will be done by Nick Griego and Sons Construction Inc. CCC had received $265,000 to complete the project, and what is remaining of the funds after renovations will be used to purchase new equipment for the science labs.

• Nwankwo announced that CCC’s 2020-2021 catalogue for summer and fall schedules were awarded silver and gold medallions by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations.

• Nwankwo added that CCC’s Director of Counseling, Advising, and Government Relations Marcus Smith successfully defended a dissertation and is now Dr. Marcus Smith. “In doing this,” Nwankwo said, “Dr. Smith has demonstrated what we have asked of our students, to persist and complete their education.”

• The next meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. Dec. 2.