The Executive Leadership Team at Grand Rapids Community College held its second listening session of the semester on Thursday, April 10. Serving as a follow-up from their March 24 listening session, the ELT reviewed questions they did not have the chance to answer at the first meeting and provided more information as to how recent executive orders may impact the campus.
The conversation was centered around a print out of questions from last month’s listening session, and facilitated by the ELT, which is made up of Vice President of Finance and Administration Lisa Freiburger, who has been serving as acting president of GRCC for one month due to the paid administrative leave of Charles Lepper, along with Provost Sheila Jones, Vice President of People, Culture and Equity Nygil Likely, Vice President of College Advancement and Executive Director of the GRCC Foundation Erin Van Egmond and Chief Information Officer Debra Hintz.
It was acknowledged that hundreds of degree-seeking international students throughout the United States have experienced sudden visa revocation, including over 70 students based in Michigan. This comes as a result of the Trump Administration’s aggressive stance on immigration, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying students may lose their visas if they’re caught participating in “destabilizing” acts.
GRCC is home to 58 international students this semester, and according to Freiburger, the college is aware of zero visa revocations for those students.
“We are aware and monitoring and doing our very best, particularly our student services team, to support those students,” Frieburger said.
Likewise, Freiburger shared that GRCC has been taking a “slow and thoughtful” approach to the Dear Colleague letter that went out in February, which urged institutions of higher education to end Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives or lose their federal funding.
“We do not have an interest in being an institution that jumps to a conclusion and starts dismantling or stopping programming that we are doing specifically for students,” Freiburger said, noting that many schools across the country have begun to make changes as a result of this directive.
“There are likely changes we are going to need to make, but we are really looking at it as how we can enhance what we’re doing, how we can open up and expand what we’re doing, particularly when we talk about student programming, rather than dismantling and taking away,” Freiburger said. “Again, I want to say we will likely need to make some changes. I don’t want to sugarcoat that and I don’t want to at all pretend that that is going to be easy. Because it’s not”
Jones shared that colleges across the country have had mixed reactions to the DEI-ending directive.
“Our intention… to maintain continuity and not roll anything back is what we’re seeing most commonly and being very intentional in how we talk about this in order to support our students, faculty and staff according to … our open access mission,” Jones said.
The last question of Thursday’s meeting asked if the college had seen a pause in federal payments to the college, to which Freiburger replied “yes and no,” sharing that there was a temporary pause months prior.
“On January 28, the portal we use to request federal grant reimbursement for our Department of Labor grants was temporarily shut down,” Freiburger shared in an email to The Collegiate. “At that time, there was significant concern that change might have been the beginning of a larger shutdown of federal grant reimbursements. Thankfully, the portal was brought back up, and we did not experience any additional issues.”
Freiburger explained that “99%” of GRCC’s grants are paid by the college, then submitted for reimbursement. Currently, the college is experiencing no turmoil with its federal funding, but administrators are continuing to monitor the situation.
“I am confident that in the short term, we would be fine,” said Freiburger. “And in the longer term, we are watching the grants… that we are worried about… So I think we’re in the best spot that we can be in, given the uncertainty that we are dealing with.”
