3 min read April 2023 — The greatest challenge for Hudson County Community College is also one of our greatest opportunities – removing the barriers to student success and student completion for the diverse communities we serve.
What are the key highlights and milestones for your institution over the last year?
We have achieved quite a few milestones. We were the only community college in the nation that was a finalist in all three categories for the nationally competitive Bellwether Awards. Each year, the Bellwether College Consortium encourages community colleges to submit examples of cutting-edge programs worthy of replication. We won the National Award in the Instructional Programs and Services category for our groundbreaking “Hudson Scholars” program. This was especially rewarding as it reflects our entire college community’s collective commitment to our students’ success.
Our “Gateway to Innovation” program, in partnership with JPMorgan Chase, was recognized as one of the top national programs in the Bellwether Awards workforce development category. Our “Building an Inclusive and Engaged Workforce” program was also a top-10 finalist in the the governance and finance category.
Beyond the Bellwether Awards, we are also thrilled to have six of our dedicated and talented students rank among the national semifinalists for the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship. This intensely competitive scholarship is awarded annually to the nation’s top community college students as they continue their education and pursue their four-year degrees. This scholarship is a gamechanger for these brilliant but economically-disadvantaged students because it pays the full tuition for their four-year degrees, and for continuing graduate studies.
Additionally, HCCC was named an “Achieving the Dream Leader College,” indicating that each member of our community is dedicated to ensuring access, belonging and success for all of our students. We were also recognized as one of the best colleges in the nation to work for by the “Great Colleges to Work For Program”. This accolade will help us attract and retain the talent that will take our growth to the next level. We also won Insight Into Diversity’s “Higher Education Excellence in Diversity” (HEED) Award, naming HCCC a “Top College for Diversity.” This is a point of pride as commitment to DEI is one of our core values.
What is unique about the Gateway to Innovation/Hudson Scholars programs?
One of the unique elements of the Gateway to Innovation program is the Employer’s Advisory Board through which we consider best practices and models for partnering with the private sector. It is driven by the market. This is a program that’s been designed to be flexible and to have private partners. Even through the height of the pandemic, we have seen significant growth year over year in the number of students and community members who are involved in the program.
Hudson Scholars is a mission-centric student support program that helps remove the barriers that often accompany the transition to college life for new students. Many HCCC students contend with additional challenges such as economic hardship, family responsibilities, language barriers and more, so we recognized that a new approach was needed to ensure that these students have every opportunity to succeed in the collegiate environment. Hudson Scholars achieves this goal by combining high-touch support from dedicated academic advisors with the ability to earn stipends for achieving specific academic milestones.
The investment in Hudson Scholars is already bearing fruit as the program was the primary driver for a 14% increase in fall-to-fall student persistence, while Hispanic or Latino/a participants were 46% more likely to persist fall to fall and black or African American participants were 83% more likely to persist. Additionally, the program is economically sustainable thanks to increased institutional revenue due to improved retention, so we are scaling it to even more HCCC students going forward.
Empowering more students to earn a degree impacts the success of students at HCCC while simultaneously benefiting the community as a whole.
How would you characterize the current strength of New Jersey’s academic ecosystem?
We are possibly the most dynamic metropolitan area in the world, which provides access to a wealth of opportunities. In this part of the state, there is an unprecedented opportunity associated with the many different institutions of higher education that are part of the metropolitan region. We are working together to create pathways for students that are aligned with key priorities like student success, workforce readiness, and technological best practices.
All sectors of higher education, from community colleges, to private and public liberal arts colleges, to research universities, Ivy League schools, and other institutions, have an important and useful role to play in helping students achieve their goals. When we all work together, the outcomes are greater than the sum of their parts for the students and communities we serve.
Can you comment on the Tower Project and how it will impact student needs?
We’re focused on providing state-of-the-art technology, instructional tools, and support services to help even more students succeed. The new Tower will provide high-quality classrooms with immersive telepresence video technology that will make more degrees and certificates accessible to more students than ever before. We are eliminating 19 older classrooms and replacing them with 24 modern ones. We’re also creating an expanded home for the School of Continuing Education and Workforce Development to offer best-practice, cutting-edge workforce development programs. Our new Black Box Theatre will host classes and comprehensive performances for HCCC’s emerging actors and playwrights. We’re also adding a new gymnasium, Fitness/Wellness Center and welcoming student spaces to our growing campus.
We’re going to deliver more of what our students need in order for them be successful. We’re excited about these projects.
What are the biggest challenges your institution is facing?
Our greatest challenge is also our greatest point of pride. Our student population is one of the most diverse in the nation. But with that diversity also comes many life barriers that can get in the way of students finishing their college degrees. For example, out of the 18 community colleges in New Jersey, our students come from the lowest average household family incomes. Our mission requires us to assiduously focus on removing the barriers and challenges that keep students from achieving their goals and realizing their dreams. We have partnered with a movement called “Achieving the Dream,” which is a network of 300 high-achieving community colleges that are using data-driven approaches and best practices to get more students to the finish line, including degree completion, four-year college transfer, and gainful employment.
In New Jersey, we have just shy of 200,000 college students, but we have 800,000 individuals who have a college education but no degree. That is also a real challenge and opportunity for all of us.
What is your outlook for the next two to three years?
Over the next three years, we will move fully into the “new normal.” It will include continued collaboration and development of seamless pathways from K-12 through our college and on to four-year colleges and universities. These pathways will be increasingly resilient; they’re going to be multifaceted and include the opportunities for short-term, industry-recognized, credentialed training that will develop the skilled workforce needed for the future.
We’re focusing on adding value in terms of credentials and training, and creating skill sets that are increasingly needed for the economy and for building tomorrow’s workforce. We’re continuing to drive program growth in dynamic areas like Nursing, Health Sciences, Business Administration, Supply Chain Management, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Construction Management Technology, and more. These programs have the power to lead students to careers with family-sustaining wages. We’re going to serve even more students and collaborate at even higher levels of engagement with the business, industrial and other community sectors — always in partnership with other two- and four-year institutions — to help us collectively serve our students and communities with cutting-edge, transformational opportunities.
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