Thursday night Allen Community College took another step toward getting itself ready for the coming school year. The Board of Trustees covered ground in a variety of areas from reorganizing the officers of the board to new hires to getting updates on housing for the coming school year.
Starting from Thursday until July of 2013, Neal Barclay will serve as chairman of the board. The outgoing chairman, Spencer Ambler, was voted to take over as treasurer for the coming year. Other board positions remained unchanged.
John Marshall, vice president for academic affairs, reported to the board on several different issues he has been working on. Among those were amendments to the student handbooks and employee handbooks. Another topic was continuing to support the academics advisor program to help students who are struggling in school get back on track. A more robust system of contacting students, especially online ones, was a facet of the advising program that Marshall focused on in particular.
“We’ve been doing better at reaching out to these students to let them know the things we offer to help them out,” Marshall said. “We’ll continue to do whatever we can to make sure we are providing every opportunity for our students.”
Steve Troxel, vice president for finance and operations, said he has been in talks with City of Iola officials, attempting to coordinate a replacement of the electric transformer to a time when services would be least affected. Due to the increase in online students, losing power to the email servers and other internet capable services was a point of concern of Bob Reavis, dean of the Burlingame campus.
“We just need to make sure we are going to be OK,” Reavis said. “We would be in the dark a little bit if that isn’t handled right.”
The annual audit process is also coming up. Troxel didn’t forsee any issue with the process. The only issue mentioned at all was a grant that was accidently sent to the college with $15 more than it should have had. Due to state and federal regulations, the item will appear as a note in the audit. According to Troxel it isn’t an issue of concern.
“We try and build enough of a cushion into the budget where we don’t have any major problems,” Troxel said. “Other than a really minor thing that is commonplace for these types of things, we aren’t expecting anything out of this that we don’t usually see.”
John Masterson, president of ACC, has been serving as interim athletics director. He made a report on the job search which continues. According to Masterson the coaches are doing well on the recruitment trail, hitting their quotas and reporting back positively.
From a facilities standpoint, recent work to the baseball field has been completed. American Legion teams have been playing on the field this summer. In addition, the basketball court was coated with a new layer of protective surfacing. The court will be ready for the season. Due to the prolonged lack of rain and continuous heat, the soccer field is currently experiencing some issues. Larry Manes, trustee member, commented on the attempts to lay new sod on the field to remedy the parched playing surface.
“Right now it’s a real bumpy surface when you walk across it,” Manes said. “It’s hard right now because you can’t really do anything about the conditions but it’s going to need some help.”
Tosca Harris, dean of the Iola campus, spoke about a service that the college might be providing in the near future. Working with the AARP Foundation and the IRS, ACC would be the site of a program dedicated toward assisting low income individuals and families with filing their taxes during a window from February to April 15. The board received this news positively and discussed possibly expanding on the idea to give students who take a tax preparation class an opportunity to do something similar.
