Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
As I come to the end of my first year at Clovis Community College, I find myself reflecting on all that has occurred over the past year.
As a country, we have faced a pandemic and resulting recession; as a state, we have seen economic challenges. As a community, we have come together #ClovisStrong to face these obstacles head-on.
The community of eastern New Mexico has pulled together in support of local businesses. Businesses have come together to support students and families learning to navigate online learning environments, and nonprofit organizations have pulled together to support families in need.
In this spirit, I look forward to 2021 and the possibilities it holds as I enter my second year as CCC president. We are committed to joining together with local community organizations to ensure we are doing our part to help the recovery effort. We are expanding our collaborations with our local higher education institutions to explore ways to serve students more effectively in this changing environment, allowing them to reach their educational and career goals.
As an institution, and as educators, the pandemic has taught us many lessons and provided opportunities for us to expand our services to students. We have overcome distance education challenges by increasing our Wi-Fi network capabilities, expanding our laptop check-out inventory, creating new online course offerings, providing significant faculty professional development in online teaching and learning, and initiating remote student services appointments through admissions, advising, financial aid, tutoring, and more.
Additionally, we have continued to offer our allied health and occupational technology training programs while mitigating health risks to our students, faculty, and staff.
New Mexico's governor and Legislature have challenged our state's higher education institutions to continue to look beyond our traditional ways of operating as colleges and universities, to identify new ways to partner with each other.
Our community colleges have responded in a big way. In a breakthrough for higher education in New Mexico, five institutions — Clovis Community College, Northern New Mexico College, Santa Fe Community College, Central New Mexico Community College, and San Juan College - have signed a memorandum of understanding to implement and share a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. A shared ERP system provides a centralized database of student, financial, and personnel information that will allow the colleges to strategically share resources and information, such as accounting, student records, financial aid, etc., to serve our students better.
Through this shared ERP system (when fully implemented), we will have the opportunity to share courses and academic programs across institutions, allowing students to have a more seamless experience as they transition between member institutions and opening new doors for careers across the state. The ERP will also allow colleges to share staff knowledge expertise for system maintenance and future development, resulting in future cost savings.
The shared ERP system is only the beginning. The partner institutions are already planning to expand this collaborative model into other systems at our institutions. We are committed to exploring new ways to come together — to find innovative and efficient solutions to ensuring student success and prosperity in New Mexico.
Charles Nwankwo is president of Clovis Community College. Contact him:
