Pete Llewellyn, Assistant to Kathleen Anderson, Dean of Regional Centers Administration, met with the committee today to give us insights about the understanding of the College's mission in the wider community, and the ways in which regional centers help specifically in carrying out the mission.

Pete has worked in Community Services for twenty-three years. Some of his present responsibilities include coordinating course offerings with department heads, scheduling courses at Regional Centers, and serving as liaison with Registration, the bookstore, and the computer center. He showed us a document called Strategic Objectives and Initial Implementation Strategies developed by Dr. Curtis Bryan and co-authored by Pete and other Regional Center staff in 2000. . It is a strategic plan for Regional Centers, and its Statement of Role for Regional Centers amounts to an unofficial mission statement for the Centers.

Regional Centers have an inherent conflict between the goal of access (making college programs available at convenient times and locations) and the goal of diversity (providing opportunities for students to expand their understanding of the wider community).

Pete believes that the Regional Centers offer the "caring environment" expressed in the College mission. The smaller campuses are easier to negotiate, and many times the staff that work there also live in the community and have a commitment to it.

Some recent improvements in services include providing Financial Aid staffing twice a week, up from once a week, and improved library services. As at the main campus, Regional Centers lack the resources to meet student needs to the extent necessary. Pete said a significant, but unknown, number of students are unable to register for lack of available sections.

Jane Jacobs reported that she has scheduled visits with several Advisory Committees to get the perspective of the outside community on the College's mission. She attended the Early Childhood Education Advisory Committee and will visit the Office Technology committee next week. Mary Ann Quillen also left some information for feedback at the Printing Arts Advisory Committee meeting.

The committee's co-chairs presented the committee's findings at a Middle States Forum yesterday. Initial recommendations included:

1. Undertake a Mission Review with input from around the college. The task of Mission Review requires more discussion than the one-day Professional Development session last Fall.
2. Strategic Plan: Good internal and external research was done prior to the planning process, but the Plan is more of a marketing document than one based on addressing issues raised in the scans. Planning should: 1) link to the mission; 2) have support for goals; and 3) allocate resources to meet the goals.
3. To meet the needs of the labor force, the college needs to address the issue of offering well-developed curricula versus quick-fix short-term training. What does the business community really want?

At our next meeting, we will review the draft of the committee's final report.