During its Feb. 16 meeting, the Three Rivers College Board of Trustees examined the school’s progress in its five-year plan, which began in 2020.
Dr. Maribeth Payne presented a recap of TRC’s annual strategic planning meeting, which invites school leaders and planning managers together to evaluate the college’s progress towards its five-year goals — in this case, Aspire 25, a plan of renovation and improvement with a deadline of 2025. President Dr. Wesley Payne was also involved and noted planners were pleased with the progress made so far, even as they brainstormed new projects.
“It’s pretty amazing the amount of work that’s going into them (the plans). We’re highly focused on continuous improvement,” Maribeth Payne said.
Aspire 2025’s overarching goals are innovation, institutional sustainability, instructional excellence and relevance and student success. The planning priorities for fiscal year 2023, as determined at the meeting, are instructional quality, online programming and support, operations and data analysis, program expansion, student-focused culture and training and professional development.
“This is where the focus is going to be, and if you look at what they are an instructional quality is moving forward with more online programming, especially the support of the student in the online environment. Then improving general operations, expanding our programs, focusing on those career and workforce development programs, maintaining and even going further into our student focused-culture, and then training and professional development. So, bettering ourselves so we can help our students even more,” Wesley Payne summarized.
TRC hosted its 28th Annual Jazz Festival Feb. 12, featuring jazz band clinics and auditions for All-District Jazz Band, led by All-State Band director Dr. Kevin Tague. Junior high, high school and college students all participated.
“Schools represented were Poplar Bluff Junior and Senior High School, Sikeston High School, Dexter High School, Cape Central, Jackson and Three Rivers College,” said Professor of Music Buddy White, adding he received multiple compliments on the event.
The festival coincided with a performance by Coronet Chop Suey at the Tinnin Center of Fine Arts, to which music students were given tickets.
A financial report by Charlotte Eubank revealed even though enrollment is down, the college has no reason to fret. Almost all of its expense categories are under budget thanks to frugal planning and state intervention.
“We are, however, making up for a lot of that with increased state appropriations and federal grants — primarily that CARES grant is a big one there,” she explained.
The school also paid off two bond payments and restructured others.
“In January, we did restructure our bonds,” said Eubank. “So we’ve paid off two bonds series and we paid $5 million down in cash, so you see a $5 million decrease in our overall cash position there. And then we restructured the remaining part of that debt at a lower rate and shortened the payback period through 2027.”
She also reported work on the Sikeston campus roof has begun.
While discussing recent and upcoming events, Wesley Payne reported the Jan. 21 Hall of Fame Banquet saw the induction of Missy Whitney, Bill Swafford, Christy Deken and the 1992 men’s basketball team.
“It was their 30-year anniversary of winning the national championship,” he said.
Upcoming events include the Future Business Leaders of American Conference Feb. 18 and two trivia night fundraisers, one in Dexter on Thursday and the other in Poplar Bluff on Feb. 24. The next Patrons of the Arts concert, hosted in partnership with the Rodgers Theatre, is the bluegrass group Finley River Boys Feb. 26. Details are available at trcc.edu.