Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District Seeks Community Input for Master Plan

Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District is planning for the future and wants your help. The district is beginning a yearlong process to develop an Educational Master Plan that will set its long-term goals, objectives and priorities. 

“Our name is ‘community college,’” said Jerry Buckley, the senior dean of Research, Planning & Institutional Effectiveness. “There are actually 72 districts in California and 113 colleges now. Each and every one of those 113 colleges is supposed to serve their community. It’s important when we do planning to make sure that our community members have a voice, because it’s the community’s tax dollars that really support what we do here.”

Buckley explained that all colleges, universities and districts plan for the future, but the Educational Master Plan represents the longest "view plan" that is developed for an institution. It is essentially a “blueprint” for the future of the district’s colleges, he said, that will encompass up to 20 years. The plan will help determine the construction plans for the district’s facilities, as well as the development plans for the district’s academic programs and services, he added.

“It’s obviously not going to be completely accurate in terms of what happens year by year, but what it is, is an opportunity for a college, or a college district like ours, to create a vision for where our colleges should be over the next 20 years,” he said. “What are the things that are emerging in the communities that are basically new occupations that we should be training people for? What are the new academic areas that are coming into focus at four-year universities that we should be preparing people for?”

The district has requested that its employees, students and members of the community be observant of information in books, magazines, newspaper articles or research publications that could affect the district and its students. The district is interested in learning about society, technology, economy, environment, education and political and legal issues.

“It can be anything from what’s going on overseas in the Middle East, to things that are happening here in our own backyard that might influence either the types of students that we serve or the types of programs that we are interested in developing,” Buckley said.

The district has created an electronic form for people to submit their input online.  College and community members are encouraged to submit as many forms as necessary and include links to online articles and information or attach digital documents. 

After the data is collected, teams comprised of district employees and students will review, analyze and identify trends. The information will be used along with other data in the next phase of the planning process, which is to set long-term goals, objectives and priorities. Buckley said the district plans to form focus groups with members of the community to receive feedback on its findings.

Buckley said a community college’s two primary roles are to train or retrain students for the workforce and to prepare new and returning students to transfer to four-year institutions.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing those jobs well and that we are preparing people adequately for whatever the current needs are,” he said. “If there are other needs, we’d like to be able to address that, too.”

In an email interview, Chancellor Cindy Miles explained that the district drafted its current Educational Master Plan in 2000, which guided the renovation and construction at both Cuyamaca and Grossmont colleges. 

“It also guided our academic program development, specifically in health care and automotive technology and others,” she added.

Miles hopes to receive information from a wide variety of sources so the district “will have the best foundation possible to begin (its) research for the master plan.”

“This planning process is intended to gather input from our faculty, staff and administrators, as well as community partners and local residents,” she said. “As it is our mission to serve East County, we are working toward developing an image of the future needs of our community.”

To share your input, visit www.gcccd.edu/research/EMP/GCCCD_EMP_Description.htm.