Students, staff and community at forefront of new SWCC strategic plan

The rest of the decade is in sight for Southwestern Community College after administration shared the FY26-29 strategic plan with the SWCC Board of Trustees Tuesday, June 10.

Dean of Student Services Kim Bishop explained since the board approved the new purpose statement last summer, administration has been working with faculty and staff to create goals for the FY26-29 strategic plan. Now with five initiatives and three groups of key performance initiatives, Bishop said she was excited to share the year’s work with the board.

The first initiative focuses on the students at Southwestern and highlights goals to assist students in achieving success, increasing engagement and bringing steady growth to enrollment.

"That is why we are here; that is why we exist, for all of our students, so we wanted to make sure our goals help them," Bishop said. “We want to give them a quality student experience.”

Bishop shared two groups of key performance indicators relating to the student initiative, one focusing on enrollment and the other on student success.

Specific goals for enrollment over the next four years include increasing credit headcount and hour enrollment by 1% annually, achieving a Region 14 service area penetration rate of 13.7% or higher and increasing direct contract sales by 5% annually.

Looking at student success, SWCC hopes to see a fall-to-spring credit student retention rate at or above 85%, a fall-to-fall retention rate at or above 74%, achieve an annual graduation placement rate at or above 95% and increase student scholarships 3% annually.

Bishop explained the second initiative focuses on those employed by the college. Goals include maintaining a departure rate of 15% or less, expanding professional development opportunities and enhancing employee satisfaction.

"This will be the first time we have a specific initiative in our plan for our employees," Bishop said. “We really feel our employees are one of our best assets and want to make sure we’re doing all we can to attract, recruit and retain and provide a great experience for our employees.”

The third initiative took a look at the larger picture for each campus.

“This is at every campus, whether it’s at Creston, Osceola, Red Oak, our career academies… We want to make sure we’re taking care of our entire footprint," Bishop said. “We have a large goal of expanding our academic and athletic programming opportunities. We know that’s how we’re going to grow our enrollment and continue growing our college. We want to make sure our campus and our centers everywhere have a great first impression.”

Initiative four takes a look at the wider community and making and keeping connections with community partners. Goals include expanding offerings to assist businesses and industries in advancing skills, leveraging community partnership opportunities to continually serve the region and maximizing public and private funding opportunities.

Connected to this initiative are the financial key performance indicators outlined in the strategic plan. Statistical goals include increasing contributions to the SWCC Education Foundation by 3% annually, maintaining a long-term reserve in the Unrestricted Fund Balance in Fund 1 of at least 8.33% of the operating revenue and maintaining a three-year federal loan cohort default rate below 18%.

The final initiative focuses on the school’s dedication to the various goals and overall purpose.

“We want to make sure we are continuing to assess our student learning, our processes, so we have a goal dedicated to that. We want to make sure we are being efficient in all our operational processes, and then we want to share our story,” Bishop said. “We have wonderful stories that go on here, both in our students and staff and community and region and want to make sure we are highlighting those and getting those out to everybody.”

Bishop said between the five initiatives and three KPI groups, the FY 26-29 plan is complete. This will serve as a guide for the college through the next four years.

“Our next goal is to finalize what we call our operational plan, and that’s really where we dig down into the details of how do we make this work and what do we need to do,” Bishop said. “We’ll continue to work on goals for our athletic and academic programs and then really put this plan to work, so how do we keep this alive, how do we keep it moving forward for those KPIs.”

In other SWCC news...

The board approved a number of personnel updates. The resignation of Maureen Weaver from her faculty position in the nursing department was accepted due to her movement upwards in the college as the new director of nursing. The resignation of Red Oak carpentry instructor Joe Nenneman was also accepted.

The contracts of SWCC President Linsday Stoaks, Vice President of Instruction Dr. John Franklin and Assistant to the Vice President of Instruction Susannah Miller were extended through June 30, 2026, along with salary increases of 3.5%.