Surry Community College’s Board of Trustees heard about the state of the college during Wednesday’s retreat at Cross Creek Country Club.

Dr. Deborah Friedman, the college’s president, and Tony Martin, the chief financial controller, spoke to the board about different programs at the college as well as the outlook for this year’s budget. While the programs at the college seem to be thriving, both Friedman and Martin noted that the budget will have an impact in all areas.

“Every decision we make is going to be affected by the budget,” said Friedman.

Martin spoke to the board about this year’s budget outlook as of now. The college is already anticipating some reversions and some reductions in funding from the state’s budget. Last year and this year, and Martin predicts for several more years, the state asked for a management flexibility reduction of more than $400,000. The school is also anticipating an additional three percent reversion, totaling more than $400,000. Martin said that while the management flexibility reduction is designed to allow the school some choice in where the money comes from, the way the expenditures are broken down really does not allow for many options.

“The flexibility is where I can take the funds from,” he said. “It sounds positive - well it’s positive we’re going to send it back.”

Around 90 percent of the expenditures from state funding go to payroll, meaning the more than $400,000 has to come from the remaining nine percent. Last year, that nine percent equaled $1,426,320.

“You can see how restricted we become with reversions,” he said. “We haven’t reverted funds that would prevent us from having a class.”

The college also is anticipating a reduction in the funding for north campus programming which refers to programs offered to those in the Surry County Detention Center.

Martin also noted that students at the college received more than $7 million in financial aid this past year from state and federal grants and loans and from the SCC Foundation in the form of scholarships. He also said that $5.6 million was awarded in unrestricted financial aid. This is money paid out to students after tuition, fees and books have been paid for.

One change Martin mentioned that will take place this year will affect the funding the college receives during the 2011-12 school year because each year’s funding is based on the previous year’s enrollment. High school students have been able to take online classes through the college through the Learn and Earn online program. Those students did not have to pay tuition to take those classes which earned them college credit while still in high school. The college received full-time equivalent funding for students enrolled in those classes during the regular school year.

Beginning this fall, the college will not receive FTE funding for some of those classes. Only math, science and some technology classes will apply meaning that if the college continued to offer all of the classes it would have to pay for them out of pocket. Because of this, the college will only offer the approved courses to high school students this year. It is still planning to offer the other classes online for regular students of the college but that will still decrease enrollment numbers from those high school students. This does not apply to students participating in the early college program.

Despite all of this, Martin and Friedman assured the trustees that the college has still been able to accomplish its goals this past year and will continue to do so.

“Some good things have happened this year with not a lot of money,” said Martin.

Friedman spoke to the board about the accomplishments of the college as a whole over the previous year and highlighted some of the main ones from the different divisions, including corporate and continuing education, the academics and student development. According to a January 2010 survey, 85 percent of the community has attended a class at SCC, a fact that made an impression on the board.

“We want to be better than exceptional. We’ve got to move forward,” said Friedman. “There’s a reason community is in the middle of Surry Community College.”

The corporate and continuing education division highlighted the work it did in planning and developing the Centers for Learning, Education and Retraining in Pilot Mountain and Elkin. The Pilot Center is open while the Elkin Center is well on its way to being complete.

CCE also hired a new director of industry training services which it credited with increasing the overall training value of active projects as well as increasing the number of active projects. The division also noted there were 224 GED graduates this year, the largest number of high school graduates in the service area.

In the academic division, SCC enrolled 3,549 curriculum students in the fall 2009. The college offered 678 sections or classes of which 483 were taught by full-time faculty members while 195 were taught by part-time faculty members. The medical assisting program and the automotive technology program received renewed accreditation this year while the new physical therapist assistant program received accreditation for the first time.

The academic division also submitted a proposal to start a sustainable technology program will be offered as a certificate program in fall 2010 and as a degree program in fall 2011. The division also entered into an agreement with Forsyth Technical Community College which will allow students interested in the information systems security program to complete the first year of the program and general education courses at SCC before moving to Forsyth Tech to complete.

The distance education division has also expanded to offering seven degrees completely online. Friedman noted that while this method of delivery has grown, it needs to continue to get larger to meet demands.

Student development has continued to work to make applications and registration available to students online. SCC saw a 60 percent increase in the number of applications received electronically during the past year. The college is in the final phases of preparing to allow for online registration.

The college’s testing center increased the opportunities for placement testing at off-campus centers leading to a 33 percent increase in the number of test-takers.

The existence of what is soon-to-be five sites for the college has led to an increase in the number of people served by the college.

“We want to be accessible to the community by having five different locations, providing distance education and getting out into the community and learning people’s needs,” said Friedman. “We’ve got to be flexible for meeting future needs. Given what we know at this time, we’ve got to develop a strategic plan.”

Contact Morgan Wall at mwall@mtairynews.com or 719-1929.