Through the use of HACC Experience Days and strategic partnerships with high school associates, we have increased our collegewide population by 8.85% between the spring 2018 and spring 2019 semesters. These innovative strategies positively impacted enrollment, retention, graduation, transfer and placement rates.

These changes reflect a success for HACC, because we gained more students. Dual Enrollment and College in the High School (DEHS) students are a vital part of HACC’s enrollment. Classes offered through DEHS give high school students exposure to the College, increasing the likelihood that the dual enrollment students will become regular HACC students, guest students or individuals who return to HACC if their studies at four-year institutions go awry.

The value of DEHS programs is articulated well by student Madison Lucey:

“Dual enrollment at HACC has been an incredible benefit to me because it serves as a bridge between high school and college. It gives me the opportunity to get a head start with college. Not only will it take me less time now to finish my college degree, but it will also save me money on tuition. This is because dual enrollment courses are offered at a discount and my high school pays a portion of my tuition. Through dual enrollment, I have already taken 22 college credits and I will accumulate more before my high school graduation. Additionally, some of the classes count for both my high school and college requirements. With that, it’s as if one class is providing me with double credit.

With the incredible library of resources, it is easy to navigate and obtain information for completing assignments. The instructors are friendly and easy to talk to. If a student is unsure as to what they want to major in, that’s okay because general education classes can be taken even if a student doesn’t know what major they want to pursue. Dual enrollment also provides the opportunity to take classes that aren’t available in high school. Students can explore various fields of study that would help making a decision and choosing a major later. A student can obtain an associate degree at HACC or even transfer the credits to a four-year school. My grades have become part of my official transcript of which I am proud.

When I first started, one of my main concerns was if I would be treated differently by my peers and professors because I was a high school student. What I quickly learned is that didn’t matter, and I was fully accepted as a college student. I have found the other students to be friendly and have worked on several team projects where I not only participated but my voice and opinion was appreciated and respected.

I am grateful for having this opportunity and highly recommend it to anyone who is giving it consideration because I feel confident that their experience would be as positive as mine. It is definitely a wonderful opportunity that I feel very fortunate to be able to participate in. I think that if more students were aware the benefits then they too would join in. Attending HACC has been the smartest decision that I have made regarding my future career and education.”

HACC implemented significant changes to positively benefit our students. These changes have improved how we place new students into college-level English and math courses or into developmental courses. Developmental courses provide additional instruction and practice in skills to ensure students are college-ready.

HACC’s developmental courses were designed to help students gain skills to succeed in college-level courses. However, we discovered that too often students who started in developmental courses did not continue through to college-level courses. This trend occurs in community colleges across the country, so we turned to best practices in placement and developmental education to improve the placement and success rates of our students. Last year, two changes made significant improvements in our placement:

• Accuplacer, our placement testing tool, issued a revision, and faculty used it to adjust scores to place more students at the college level. As a result of this change, placement of new students in developmental math decreased from 85% to 58%, bringing HACC more in line with placements at other community colleges.
• English eliminated the lowest level of reading, providing a pathway to college English in one year.

The immediate impact is that students are now spending their education dollars on college-level courses instead of developmental courses. We will track the success of these changes by noting the success and completion of the students who are placed initially in college-level courses and those who are now taking fewer developmental courses.

HACC is not exempt from the racial problems that are plaguing many of our sister institutions of higher education. According to the Pew Research Center (2019), race relations continue to be a significant contributor to the social divide in America, with approximately 70% saying that race relations in this country are getting worse.

To ensure HACC remains a welcoming and safe academic environment for students and employees, the College offered two three-day racial consciousness workshops to deconstruct the notion of racial supremacy in the United States. The Veridical, designed to raise the racial consciousness of those who identify as White or Caucasian, occurred Oct. 12-14, 2018. The following week, The Awakening, designed to raise the racial consciousness of those individuals who identify as Black or African-American, was held on Oct. 19-21.

Each attendee of these weekend-long workshops saw the dialogue enhance their self-identity and shed light on some of their long-held beliefs, biases and roles in transforming society. The passion of these individuals has not dimmed after the workshops. They have been vocal advocates, and participants remain engaged with activities that push the College toward a more inclusive culture. Because of the generous funding from the HACC Foundation, this initiative has the potential to change the course of HACC for generations to come.

The outcomes of the Veridical and Awakening have been realized through the work of the campus-based diversity committees, sponsored programs and review of policies and procedures through a lens of true equity. Students are positively impacted by these changes, experiencing an easier journey to success with fewer barriers for diversity and inclusion. Whether ensuring that majority and minority students can access the educational opportunities at HACC or holding accountable those who seek to derail their individual success, students can attain an education credential that is grounded in academic excellence AND inclusive excellence.

These workshops are one example of the initiatives HACC offers to ensure our diverse student and employee populations feel valued at HACC – no matter their ages, ancestries, colors, disabilities, gender identities, marital statuses, national origins, places of birth, political affiliations or beliefs, races, religions, sexual orientations and veteran statuses.

HACC has over 30 repurposed presentation and collaboration classrooms. These classrooms enhance student learning and provide positive classroom experiences for both students and instructors.

Presentation classrooms are an update to the familiar “projection” and “SMART” classroom spaces. These rooms enhance the student learning experience by delivering high-quality video and audio, adding interactive touch technology and supporting video-sharing technology. These rooms enhance instructors’ classroom experiences through the use of user-friendly room controllers that connect all installed classroom learning technologies.

Collaboration rooms focus on flexibility and allow classes to switch quickly between presentations, small group activities and large group sharing.

With these high-tech classrooms, student learning is enhanced with high-quality video, interactive touch and video-sharing capabilities.

What would you do with a gift of nearly $1.3 million? At HACC, there is no question – we are using it to support our students!

In April 2019, the College announced a transformational gift of $1,295,305.30 from the estate of Mrs. Gloria W. Paxton to establish the John E. Paxton and Gloria W. Paxton Fund for Excellence in STEAM.

It is the largest single contribution to HACC and the HACC Foundation in the College’s 55-year history and will impact all HACC campuses, Central Pennsylvania and the world.

Mrs. Paxton left 70 percent of her estate to HACC. While the Paxtons did not have children of their own, the impact they will have on approximately 18,000 students at HACC cannot be overstated.

Because of Mrs. Paxton’s extraordinary generosity, this fund will provide access to innovative and advanced programing and technology that makes a significant difference for HACC students enrolled in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) programs. Given the right educational environment and opportunities, STEAM students are bound to make a lasting impact in their future jobs and the community.

We are grateful and touched that the Paxtons chose to support HACC – the first and largest community college in Pennsylvania – with a gift of this magnitude.

With this contribution, the College achieved the third goal of its comprehensive fundraising campaign.

After almost 20 years with the same cold beverage vendor, HACC competitively solicited vendors to provide cold beverage options through vending machines and bookstores throughout the five campuses and the student-run restaurant on the Harrisburg Campus.

An extensive process began in spring 2019 with the creation and issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) for cold beverage services at the College. After a thorough review of each proposal, PepsiCo was selected, and the College awarded a five-year contract to provide the cold beverage vending services collegewide. The committee’s decision was based on a variety of criteria, including:

• Diversity of products
• Healthy options
• Product pricing
• Campus and student engagement

The College’s partnership with PepsiCo meets these criteria and offers the opportunity to generate revenue for both the College and the HACC Foundation. The total revenue over the five-year contract period is expected to exceed $600,000.

We identified the mission, goals and creative strategies that the vendor can provide to the College during this process. The selection committee was interested in incorporating healthy options for students and employees at an affordable price, and we found a partner that will work with us to achieve these goals.

The transition to Pepsi products was completed during summer 2019 and was available collegewide at the beginning of the fall 2019 semester. After recently completing the first quarter of the contract, the College has already witnessed an increase in sales and student engagement programs.

HACC is excited about future opportunities to produce positive changes for our students, staff and community.

In January 2019, HACC announced that it new learning management system (LMS) was live!

Before the LMS, there existed no centralized repository of employee training records and no systematic way to deliver online training. With the LMS, employees can:

• Register for face-to-face and online courses
• Participate in online training
• Access resources from past professional development events

Since its launch, employees can access compliance-related training, such as sexual harassment prevention, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Clery Act. They can also view recorded trainings. The LMS is loaded with training videos and audio recordings related to leadership, employee engagement and much more. Further, the login process is seamless, and the LMS is available on wireless devices.

Between February and June 2019, 774 employees have accessed the LMS for a variety of online and instructor-led training.