Strategic Plan 2024-2029

• I. Introduction
• II. Mission, Vision, Values, Institutional Learning Outcomes
• III. Challenges and Opportunities
• IV. Strategic Themes, Goals, Strategies, Metrics
• V. Planning Philosophy and Process
• VI. Assessment
• VII. Acknowledgements and Appreciations

Fifty Years of Service and Innovation

Welcome to the Bunker Hill Community College Strategic Plan (BHCC), 2024-2029. The college celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2023, at the same time that it emerged successfully from the worst of the COVID pandemic crisis. This Plan is shaped by a sense of history and pride in recent accomplishments, but it is most strongly informed by our understanding of what the future will be for our students and communities, and how BHCC can best contribute to their growth and success.

During its first fifty years, BHCC has become the largest community college in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and one of the most diverse higher education institutions in the state. We serve an average of 16,000 students annually and do so with one of the lowest tuition and fee costs among the state’s community colleges.

Given its mission as an urban institution of higher education, BHCC offers a diverse range of programs that prepare students for jobs, for transfer to four-year institutions, or both. There are over 100 associate degrees and certificate programs that students can choose from to prepare them for work and more advanced education at senior institutions.

Among the many of BHCC’s accomplishments charted by our previous Strategic Plan are exemplary responses to student food insecurity, college-wide equity commitments, successful retention initiatives, grounded in the curriculum and inclusive pedagogies, significant increase in Early College enrollments, three-fold growth in employer demand for our workforce development programming, and an innovative public-private partnership (the Vision Project) which aims to provide the college with new facilities, as well as workforce development opportunities.

BHCC is nationally recognized for being at the forefront of teaching and learning, and the future of work. Indeed, despite decreases in the state budget, increasingly unpredictable state funding, the limitations of physical space, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the College continues to thrive by balancing stability with innovation. Each year, we put aside $1.5 million of innovation funds from our general fund budget, and College faculty and staff make proposals to use these funds for new programs and continuous improvements.

At BHCC, we understand that innovation grows out of organizational stability, and that organizational stability is rooted in sound operations and finances, shared and enduring organizational values, and internal and external relationships. This web of support sustains programmatic and structural excellence over time. The measure of this stability is the College’s capacity to weather the unexpected and achieve the seemingly impossible – which is exactly what we were called to do during the Spring semester of 2020.

COVID-19 and its Challenges

Without warning, COVID-19 created challenges unlike any seen before in our fifty-year history. The heroic efforts of faculty and staff at BHCC, and community colleges generally, is a story that needs to be told in greater detail, but that is not our purpose here. Suffice it to say that BHCC was able to meet the occasion because of the decision-making of leadership; the dedication, creativity, and flexibility of faculty and staff; and the courage and persistence of our students. In a matter of weeks, BHCC:

• Developed a collaborative emergency management workgroup that monitored and guided the campus through COVID safely.
• Flipped 2,500 sections to remote delivery in two weeks. Instructional design support for faculty and remote access to tutoring and advising for students went into place in record time. Instruction was never disrupted despite physical limitations.
• Recognized and mitigated the most critical supports, including home-delivery from the food pantry, laptop and internet access, academic advising and tutoring support, and mental health counseling.
• Amended academic policies to help students to complete despite health and employment challenges, and amended financial policies to allow for balance forgiveness and emergency cash provision using HEEF (Higher Education Emergency Fund) and BHCC Foundation funding.

While the COVID years were trying ones, the College was stable and resilient enough to counter the crisis. We emerged with a good deal of new knowledge about flexibility, the depth of student needs, and how to build new pathways to guide students regardless of where they start. The previous eight years of building enduring physical, academic, and financial foundations served us well, and helped us weather the storm.

Strategic Thinking and Foreseeing Trends

Our Strategic Plans are implemented through Annual Strategic Planning (ASP) and within the greater context of a culture of assessment. Strategic thinking has become a habit of mind at the College. This habit enhances the college’s ability to do “signal spotting”1. We have learned to quickly recognize signs in the environment that forecast the socio-economic trends of community, region, and beyond, and to incorporate them into strategic planning. Some signals that inform this current plan are: the demographic changes and diversity of students; the growing vibrancy and talent pool in our Gateway Cities; workforce pressure in a tight labor market and the need for middle-skills trained employees; the need to educate citizens in a divisive environment; and the pivotal role community colleges will continue to play in providing pathways to multiple destinations.

The themes, goals, and strategies outlined below are the result of a year and a half of engaged conversations through convenings, surveys and feedback from external and internal BHCC stakeholders and partners.

Additional data sources included BHCC’s 2020 NECHE Accreditation Self-Study, MA Department of Higher Education’s Performance Measurement Reporting System data (DHE PMRS data), 2023 BHCC Achieving The Dream Institutional Capacity Framework and Assessment Tool (ICAT) results, Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) survey results, data from the Volunteer Framework of Accountability (VFA), and data provided by the BHCC Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Planning.

This plan reflects our best thinking at this juncture. Yet, we know that changes, sometimes foundational changes, can happen quickly. The plan will be reviewed annually and adjusted as needed.

Mission of Bunker Hill Community College

Vision of Bunker Hill Community College

BHCC Institutional Values

BHCC’s Institutional Learning Outcomes

View these on our Mission, Vision and Goals website.

Challenges

There are certain challenges that all community colleges face in terms of retention and completion, equitable access, and rising programmatic costs. We have made progress in these areas during the past five years – even while coping with an unprecedented epidemic. The need to continue to refine those efforts and initiatives is reflected in this Strategic Plan, but new challenges have emerged in enrollment, workforce development, and funding that also require strategic and sustained responses.

Enrollment

It is well documented that the number of high school graduates will decrease significantly over the next five to eight years. In addition, the high cost of living in Greater Boston is forcing many of the working age population to live and work elsewhere. We know that in order to maintain a healthy enrollment, we must increasingly draw on the working adult population, and, in particular, from our immigrant population in our Gateway Cities of Chelsea, Revere, Malden, and Everett. The lack of resources to support immigrant community development and higher education affordability can make recruitment difficult.

Within BHCC’s service area, many families have been devastated economically by COVID and work is paramount right now. There are jobs to be had, but they are often entry-level jobs with limited opportunities for advancement that are paying temporarily high wages in a low unemployment environment. Many individuals who would normally be at community colleges are working because the opportunity cost is simply too high. Yet the long-term consequence of individuals trapped in low-skills jobs is dire; we will have a further erosion of the economic future of our communities, and continued generational poverty in families.

Workforce Development

While credit enrollment has decreased, our non-degree registrations have grown three-fold. Boston and the surrounding areas have complex and shifting workforce needs. BHCC prepares students for employment in sectors as different as Health, Finance, and Information Technology. It is a continuing challenge to retain instructors with industry expertise and to provide expensive learning environments appropriate to the fields as well as emerging technology sectors such as the blue and green industries, AI, IT, and the expanding Allied Health areas.

Funding

Our public funding streams are unsteady and inadequate for colleges serving a high-financial-need population of learners. While BHCC is financially stable, the on-going effects of just getting by begin to dampen both innovation and growth. This lack of consistent public funding over the past two decades has affected the state of our physical infrastructure, as well as our ability to fully delineate and offer support services to our underserved populations. The lack of adequate teaching and learning spaces to meet current and anticipated future areas of training, as well as the existence of equity gaps in student attainment for want of supports and interventions are symptoms of this long-term challenge.

Opportunities

In developing this Strategic Plan, we found that our greatest opportunities emerged from the challenges listed above. We are rethinking enrollment by focusing on the variety of starting points our students have and how they affect their goals and progress. We are questioning the lines between credit and non-credit programming, and we are launching a competitive selection process to create the private-public partnership that will result in new facilities for the College.

Enrollment: Shifting Populations and Rethinking the Student Journey

While the enrollment decreased due the pandemic is starting to reverse itself, and the potential of Mass Reconnect is starting to emerge, neither of these factors are enough to offset the coming demographic decline in high school graduates. BHCC must shift our attention to adult learners eager for economic mobility, and the growing immigrant populations of our gateway cities. This is an opportunity to reconsider our assumptions about how students enter, progress, and exit the college – especially the assumption that non-degree and credit students are two different populations and that the programs should run on two separate tracks. A goal of this Strategic Plan is to develop a “no wrong door” mindset that considers the various starting points for students and maps new pathways from wherever students start – whether it be high school, early college, Adult Basic Education, English Language Learning, or non-credit certificates. The end goal is to ensure that from wherever a student enters, there will be a path for social and economic mobility.

Workforce Development and the “No Wrong Door” Mindset

While unemployment is low, the region’s employers are in desperate need of middle and high skill workers. Some 75% of the jobs on the market require some post-secondary training. Tens of thousands of life sciences and health sector jobs are going unfilled. The “no wrong door” approach assumes that we need post-secondary education or training for everyone, whether it is non-degree workforce development, credit certificates, associate degrees that lead to jobs or to transfer. There should be “no wrong door” by which students come to us and no predetermined end to their life-long learning. We will be questioning the habitual silos of non-degree versus credit programming to determine the fields where stackable programming can open doors of greater advancement for our students.

Funding: Innovative Public-private Partnership

The Vision Project proposes to leverage the College’s land assets in a public-private partnership that will return revenue to build a new campus in place of many of the current structures. This process will take at least a decade, with the building of the new campus occurring as early as is feasible. The revenue will support the construction of new facilities for BHCC at little or no cost to the Commonwealth, and in the process, relieve the state of approximately $150 million of deferred maintenance in the existing, outdated campus facilities. The Vision Project will define, in large part, the physical environment for Bunker Hill Community College in the next half century.

The ambitions of the Vision Project go beyond the five years of this Strategic Plan. The preparation and execution will span two generations of leadership at the College, as well as the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM). Started two years ago, the Project has cleared the hurdle of the State’s Asset Management Board and has entered the next phase of RFP preparation and invitation to developers. The goal for the duration of this Strategic Plan is to keep the project moving forward through partner solicitation and selection, planning and design, and permitting and ground-breaking in 2029.

Theme 1: Institutional Culture of Student Learning and Success

Create inclusive and equity-minded teaching and learning environments that promote student success through an asset-based learning culture and inclusive pedagogical approaches. Adopt a “no wrong door” mindset that charts seamless, integrated pathways from non-degree through credit programming and that addresses the needs of adult students. Embrace our Minority Serving Institution identity and our commitment to racial justice to enhance student learning, belonging, and academic success.

Planning Philosophy and Process

Strategic thinking is a habit of mind at BHCC and is informed by on-going assessment and the careful interpretation of evidence. It is also animated by our belief in the collective and iterative nature of our work. We know there are no silver bullets for the challenges community colleges face because of their complexity and interdependencies with social and economic challenges. Thus, our strategic planning process was designed to ensure broad engagement with internal and external stakeholders, and all considerations were grounded in the student experience and student success outcomes as reflected in access, retention, persistence, completion, and belonging.

Strategic planning began in fall of 2022 with the formation of a Steering Committee, MA Department of Higher Education (DHE) Touch Point #1, a campus-wide listening session, and administration of the Current Goals Feedback Survey. The Steering Committee was comprised of administrators, faculty, professional staff, support staff, and students. The committee would be responsible for drafting and revising the plan’s themes, goals, and strategies throughout an 18-month process that included surveys, convenings, and retreats. Each event provided feedback that the committee used to revise and refine the plan’s themes, goals, strategies, and metrics.

Early in the planning process, a data consultant was hired to review, organize, and summarize the many available documents and data sources for use in the 2024-2029 strategic planning and to advise the college of any gaps in their data resources.

As already stated, this Plan aligns with BHCC’s mission, vision, values, and ILOs. In addition, the frameworks listed below informed our discussions throughout the process.

• Department of Education Higher Education: The New Undergraduate Experience (DHE NUE)
• Department of Education Higher Education: Strategic Plan for Racial Equity (DHE SPRE)
• Department of Education Higher Education: Student Success Framework (DHE SSF)
• Achieving the Dream (ATD): Institutional Capacity Framework and Assessment Tool (ICAT)
• New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)

March 2023: Community Convening for Strategic Planning

In order to ensure significant input from the community, BHCC invited external stakeholders and partners to attend a Community Convening in March 2023. Over two hundred people participated representing more than fifty organizations and institutions. The dialogue focused on the following guiding questions:

1. What do students need to thrive in the workplace?
2. Which opportunities can BHCC leverage to reduce barriers?
3. What collaborations should BHCC pursue to address the most pressing needs of Boston’s diverse communities?
4. How can BHCC’s Vision Project contribute to the education and workforce landscape while ensuring that benefits are shared equitably among all community members?

April 2023: BHCC Faculty and Staff Professional Day

While the March Community Convening reached outward to the College’s partners and communities, the spring 2023 professional day turned the focus inward to ensure broad-based input from faculty and staff. All received a pre-workshop data packet. Session topics were: Student Success; Career, Transfer, and Workforce Readiness; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Partnerships and Pathways; College Infrastructure.

June 2023: Achieving the Dream (ATD) facilitated ICAT Capacity Café

The online ICAT survey was administered in Spring 2023 and completed by to a broad group of administrators, faculty, and staff who represented all areas of the college. It is an institutional self- assessment with seven key areas: leadership and vision, strategy and planning, data and technology, engagement and communication, equity, policies and practices, and teaching and learning. An ATD consultant reviewed the results with the college at the annual Academic and Student Affairs Retreat in June, 2023. Members of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee and members of Administration and Finance division also participated in this discussion of the assessment results.

October 2023: BHCC College Retreat for Strategic Planning

Between June and October, the Strategic Planning Committee reviewed reports and data that had been gathered including detailed reports from the Community Convening and Professional Day, the ICAT survey, and a recent student survey. The committee drafted strategic themes, goals, and strategies. This document was the center of group discussions at the College Retreat.

February 2024: Final Campus Review and DHE Touch Point #2

Following the College Retreat, final changes were made to
the plan’s themes, goals, and strategies. Metrics were developed and the full plan prepared for a final review by the campus. In Spring 2024, copies of this draft were sent to the college community in Spring 2024 for feedback, as well as to the DHE for Touch Point #2.

April 2024: BHCC Board of Trustees Approval

At its April meeting, the BHCC Board of Trustees approved the plan following their review and discussion the final draft of the plan.

At BHCC, the Strategic Plan serves as a framework for strategic thinking, decision-making, and resource allocation. It provides direction for program development, annual unit planning, and a number of overarching plans that translate strategic goals to the operational and tactical levels (equity, facilities, information technology, enrollment, marketing communications, and the Chelsea campus).

The College assesses progress toward strategic goals at the program and initiative level through Annual Unit Planning. Departments across the College report on progress toward yearly goals and demonstrate how they align with the Strategic Plan. Additionally, academic departments undergo regular program review and new curricular proposals are expected to reflect current strategic goals.

BHCC is a complex institution that exists in a changing landscape, and the Strategic Plan covers five years. In order to guarantee comprehensive progress toward strategic goals, each year the President and leadership team assess global progress and determine whether adjustments need to be made to the Plan. Adjustments are integrated into the President’s goals, and reported annually to the Board of Trustees.

The President and leadership team also ensure that the Strategic Plan aligns with the standards set out by the College’s accrediting body, New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE) and the Department of Higher Education’s NUE, Equity Agenda and major initiatives.

Thank you to the community college faculty and staff, students, businesses, and partners who contributed to the development of the 2024-2029 Bunker Hill Community College Strategic Plan. The successful implementation of this plan will lean on the participation of each member of BHCC’s internal and external community. In addition to the names listed below, numerous members of the BHCC community, including college employees, students, trustees, partners, and industries gave input and/or provided vital recommendations for the creation of this Strategic Plan. A special thanks to Rhonda Gabovitch Ed.D. and Barbara McCarthy Ph.D., consultants who shared their expertise and invaluable knowledge of the MA community college system throughout this process, and towards the development of this plan.

Strategic Planning Leadership Taskforce

• Pam Eddinger , Ph.D., President
• Jim Canniff , Ed.D., Provost and Vice President, Academic and Student Affairs
• John Pitcher , M.B.A., Vice President, Administration and Finance
• Nahomi Carlisle, J.D., Associate Vice President and Chief Equity and Compliance Officer
• R. Arlene Vallie , Dean, Academic Affairs, Research, Assessment and Planning, and Strategic Planning
• Project Lead
• Wissal Nouchrif , Ed.D., Professor, Business Administration and College Forum Moderator
• Miguel Zepada-Torres , Ph.D., Associate Dean, Chelsea Campus
• Karen Norton, Executive Director, Integrated Marketing and Communications
• Kevin Wery , Senior Director, College Events and Cultural Planning

Strategic Planning Steering Committee

• R. Arlene Vallie, Co-Chair, Dean, Academic Affairs, Research, Assessment and Planning, and Strategic Planning Project Lead
• Wissal Nouchrif, Ed.D. Co-Chair, Professor, Business Administration and College Forum Moderator
• Robert Barrows, Executive Director of Public Safety and Chief
  of Police
• Nahomi Carlisle, J.D., Associate Vice President and Chief Equity and Compliance Officer
• Nuri Chandler-Smith, Dean, Academic Support and College Pathways Programs
• John Chirichiello, Director, Facilities Management
• Aanchal-Annalee Deprince, Student, ‘23
• Christina Hannon, Academic Coordinator, Advising and LifeMap
• Melissa Holster, Executive Director, Student Financial Services
• Maria Leite, Director of Information Technology Project Management
• Katherine Lopez, Senior Special Programs Coordinator, Learning Communities
• Jayne MacPherson, Ph.D., Professor and Chairperson, Surgical Technology Certificate Program
• Carlos Maynard, Professor, Behavioral Science Department
• Edward N Morgan, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Institutional Research, Assessment and Planning
• Tahmina Munmun, Administrative Assistant II, Disability Support Services
• Karen Norton, Executive Director, Integrated Marketing and Communications
• Donica C O’Malley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Chairperson, Communication Department
• Laura Rubin, Ph.D., Dean, Science, Engineering and Mathematics
• Kevin Wery, Senior Director, College Events and Cultural Planning
• Miguel Zepeda Torres, Ph.D., Associate Dean, Chelsea Campus