Gogebic Community College hires three to fill positions

IRONWOOD - Gogebic Community College's board approved the hiring of three new personnel at their meeting on Tuesday night.

GCC almunus and Ironwood native, Adam Arthur, will fill the newly created position of Marketing Coordinator, effective Jan. 5.

The Director of Student Outreach & Engagement, Cindy Franck, recently resigned her position. The spot will now be filled by Dayle Jackson, the current Director of Student Support Services at GCC. She has been working for the college for 11 years.

The board also approved Debbie Janzcak to be the Admissions & Financial Aid Counselor. Janzcak currently serves as the Bessemer Township clerk and was GCC's Admissions Administrative Assistant.

The administration also recommended that both positions left empty at the hire of Jackson and Janzcak be advertised immediately for replacement, which the board approved.

The board also heard the 2014-15 GCC Foundation Annual Campaign report from Kelly Marczak. The foundation helps to support financial aid for GCC's students.

Benchmark report

President Jim Lorenson also spoke about GCC's recent benchmark reporting numbers compared to other community colleges.

Some numbers showed that students were taking longer to finish their degrees than at other schools.

"Our students tend to take much longer," Lorenson said, which he attributed to students taking lower credit amounts.

He also said that in terms of diversity, GCC ranked fairly low.

"I believe this has to do with the communities we serve....we're not very diverse," he said. This is one thing that is hard to control, Lorenson said.

In student reporting, Lorenson said that almost 98 percent of students achieved their personal goals at GCC and just over 96 percent would recommend GCC to others.

Leadership conference

Four different board members spoke about a leadership conference they attended in Chicago in late October.

Treasurer Thomas Brown spoke about the different presentations he attended. One presentation said that our "world is getting complicated." Another followed the same idea and presented the idea that "how we educate...must change," Brown said.

Trustee Bill Malloy said he enjoyed a "Diversity on Campus" conference that said there needs to be acceptance of different lifestyles. He also said there were a couple "terrible" presentations.

Trustee Bob Burchell said the keynote speaker at the conference, Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago, said their school was implementing a "zero student debt" policy, after receiving a very large endowment. This new policy would not work at most colleges, including GCC, he joked.

Burchell also said a presentation by Chuck Underwood touched on the generation imperative, and that we currently live in a five-generation society. This presentation also said each generation thinks differently, and therefore must be taught differently, which Burchell thought was interesting.

Chairman John Lupino spoke about presentations regarding the Affordable Care Act, audits, technology, individuals in poverty and community college president shifts.

Overall, Lupino said this was "the best conference he has attended."

Other action

In other action, the board heard about road funding and tax bills that could impact GCC and other schools across the state.

A particular bill in the Michigan House, which would divert sales tax money away from schools, could have a huge impact, Lorenson said.

"The consequences of the House bill are understated...very severe," he said.

Lorenson also said that the Lindquist Center pool is currently closed because of a compressor failure. The new compressor has been ordered and he said the problem will be fixed as soon as possible.

There was also a bit of discussion about collaborations with Northern Michigan University in Marquette and Michigan Technological University in Houghton.