During this month’s Grand Rapids Community College Board of Trustee meeting, members of the GRCC volleyball and cross country teams were acknowledged for their efforts during their regional competitions.
Associate Provost and Dean of Student Affairs, Tina Hoxie, introduced the members of both teams and announced titles and names of some of the outstanding players.
“The Raiders Volleyball team ranked third in the country with an overall record of 27-3,” Hoxie said. “Now, third in the country the entire season, they never lost that ground and that’s pretty impressive to be able to do that.”
Hoxie went on to recognize volleyball players, Hannah Stearns, Lauren Helsen and Kendra DeJonge for the All-Region Team award as well as Stearns and DeJonge for the All Michigan Community College Athletic Association (MCCAA) award along with many others.
The 11-year volleyball coach, Chip Will was also awarded the MCCAA Coach of the Year.
Next, the cross country team members were called up and recognized for their accomplishments and outstanding awards. During their competition at Nationals, the men’s team finished in 24th place and the three women runners finished in the top 120 runners.
One of the outstanding awards was to Chris Santana as the fastest runner for the men’s team. Read more about the team’s other accomplishments in the recap.
In other news, GRCC’s Director of Budget and Business Services, Nathaniel Lloyd, was appointed to fill a spot as a trustee to the Middle Cities Risk Management Pool of Trust Organization.
“Middle Cities is a separate entity that we work with to provide for us our general liability and other insurances,” said Lisa Freiburger, Vice President of Finance and Administration. “It’s a pooled risk concept and we’ve been with them since I believe 1991.”
John Cowles, Dean of Student Success and Retention, provided the student success pathways update report with the help of Sophia Brewer, Assistant Professor of the Learning Commons and Tamara Bustance, Inclusion Services Manager for the Bob and Aleicia Woodrick Center for Equity and Inclusion.
Brewer and Bustance spoke about the current College Action Projects (CAP).
“This was the first year that our CAP team had presentations in every single one of the CLS (College Learning Studies) 100 courses,” Bustance said. “We created a curriculum, curriculum notes and trained 19 facilitators cross-departmentally and they went into the CLS sections and presented what we call “thriving in diverse environments in the classroom”.”
Cowles also gave statistics of the overall success rate of the students by presenting the total graduation yield with an 8.2 percent for the 2016-17 year.
“These are fairly level trends so we’re very happy with the trends,” Cowles said.
Freiburger also provided a financial update which presented the status of both the Ford Fieldhouse and Applied Technology Center construction.
Both of the projects are running on time with the fieldhouse roof repair finished and the schematic designs for the ATC building underway.
“We plan on starting construction of the ACT in May of 2018 and concluding work in January of 2019,” Freiburger said.
The next GRCC Board meeting will be held on Dec. 18 at 4:15 p.m.
