ERIE COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE APPLICATION EXPERT REPORT. DR. ROY A. CHURCH INTRODUCTION: ‘have been requested to provide an expert report on behalf of the County of Erie, as relates to its currently-pending Application before the Board of Education for approval of a community college. | was actively involved in the development of the project, undertook substantial investigation and inquiry, interfaced with other consultants and was part of the process which resulted in the filing of the County's Application. | have been asked to give a professional opinion as to whether the Erie County Community College plan is based on a careful analysis of the documented needs ofthe County for a well-educated work force prepared for the jobs of today and into the future. I have also been asked to opine as to whether this plan is comprehensive and inspiring to potential students, employers, and the community as a whole. Finally, I have been asked to opine as to whether the plan, if implemented as proposed, would be successful. | am prepared to render such opinions to a reasonable degree of certainty in my field of expertise. By way of background, | am currently serving as President Emeritus of Lorain County ‘Community College in the state of Ohio and have been serving in that capacity since 2016. Prior thereto, from 1987-2026, | served as President of this same fine institution, Preceding that, between 1981 and 1987, | served as the Vice-President of Academic Affairs and Student Services at St. Petersburg Junior College in Pinellas County, Florida. Between 1973 and 1984, | served as first the Assistant to the President, then Dean of Academic Affairs of the North ‘Campus, and finally as Provost at the Judson A. Samuels (So.) Campus, all part of Broward ‘Community College in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, From 1969 to 1972, | was first an Assistant Professor and then Dean of Students at St. Joseph College of Florida, Jenson Beach, Florida, Finally, from 1968-1969, | served as a Junior High School teacher at the Rome Public Schoois in Rome, New York. By way of formal education, | received a Bachelor of Science Degree from the State University of New York in Cortland, New York, with an emphasis in Health and Physical Education, and with a further emphasis in Anatomy and Physiology. { then secured my Master of Education in Administration and Supervision, with an emphasis in Higher Education. Finally, from 1969- 1973, | was enrolled at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where | received a Doctor of Education in “High Education Administration and Supervision,” with a second cognate field in Economics. tn summary, | have served 45 years as a leader in Higher Education. I have been recognized for leadership in creating innovative models to fulfill the four cornerstones of the comprehensive‘community college mission-educational, economic, community and cultural development. Notable among these are the nationally recognized University Partnership Program, an Early College High School and a Public Service institute with its Joint Center for Policy Research. 1 have also worked to build collaborative initiatives with business, organized labor and government to enhance workforce education, economic development and entrepreneurial activity in Northeast Ohio. Among some of the accomplishments, my work has led to the creation of "GLIDE,” which Is recognized by the state of Ohio as a highly successful Technology Incubator; the Innovation Fund, a $20 million pre-seed fund for regional technology start-ups; a 46,000 square foot commercialization center for sensors and microsystems; and a 75,000 square foot Advanced Technologies Center supporting advanced manufacturing and containing a National Science Foundation Weld-Ed Center and a digital rapid prototyping center. Additionally, during my Presidency of Lorain County Community College, | was active serving as Co-Chair of the Ohio Department of Higher Education Articulation and Transfer Advisor Council; a member of the Governor's Executive Workforce Board; Advisory Board Member of the Ohio Third Frontier; Vice Chair of the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education and served as a member of the Ohio Department of Higher Education Commercialization Task Force. On a national level, | have served as a member of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Board (MEP), and have also served as a board member for several regional workforce and economic initiatives, including the Regional Competitiveness Council, MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network}, Fund for our Economic Future, and Entrepreneur's EDGE. Locally, | have served on the Boards of the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, Team Lorain County, the Workforce Institute, the Workforce Investment Board and the Lorain County Port Authority. Even as of today, | continue to serve on the Board of Directors of Team NEO, a business and economic development organization focused on accelerating economic growth and job creation throughout the 18 counties of Northeastern Ohio. i Iwas honored when requested to assist Erie County with performing the necessary research, investigation, and analysis necessary before submitting its Application for the subject junior college application. in this regard, my experience at Lorain is particularly apropos the needs of Erie County, Pennsylvania for many reasons. First, both counties have populations of approximately 300,000 with large urban centers surrounded by suburbs and farmland. Second, both have manufacturing-based economies, which have and are undergoing major transformation in this digital age. Lorain County Community College (LCCC) was established at the beginning of the community college movement nationally in 1962-63, around the time that the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s (DOE) original community college application guidelines were developed in 1965. Consequently, Lorain has been a helpful comparative to Erie and its potential for developing a comprehensive community college. Today LCCC serves approximately 12,000 students headcount and 8,500 full-time equivalents (FTE). Further, LCCC’s campus and satellite locationshost a partnership with 12 universities who deliver 40 bachelor’s and master’s degree on its sites serving over 3,000 students annually. Community colleges are a uniquely American higher education innovation designed initially to serve the generation of GI's returning from WW Il in their mid-twenties and who needed further education to be productive in the manufacturing economy. They needed access to. higher education that was flexible, affordable and focused on the evolving careers of a new age, The Truman Commission articulated a vision of a comprehensive community college that would be focused specifically on the unique needs of the communities served and would be accountable for meeting thase needs. ‘The funding structure reflected the notion that there would equal interests served for potential students, the States charged with funding education and the local communities most directly benefitting. Consequently, it was envisioned that each sector of interest would provide a third of the resources. This model was eminently successful in providing enough resources to deliver comprehensive programs and services at affordable costs to students, the States and local communities. This 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 model was built into the Pennsylvania DOE guidelines and has served effectively in establishing and supporting the 14 comprehensive community colleges across the State, however, none of which are proximate to the residents of Erie County. While t generally refrain from professing to be an expert, | have a vast amount of experience of serving on national, state and local commissions and bodies dealing with the mission, direction and operations of community colleges. Further, led the creation and start-up of the Judson A. Samuels Campus of Broward Community College in Florida and Eastern Gateway Community College in Youngstown, Ohio. A staff member of the Erie Community Foundation, who had extensive experience in Lorain County and the State of Ohio before retiring back home to Erie, enlisted my assistance in helping to guide the development of the ECCC Plan, because of my breadth and depth of experience in the field of community college development. My role has been to head the curriculum and program development process for the ECCC Plan. ‘The Pennsylvania DOE review of the proposed ECCC Plan evaluated it vis-a-vis the three statutory criteria which must be met to authorize a new community college. Section | through {of this report comment on how the ECCC Plan addresses the criteria and should lead to its approval. |. Criteria 4: Sufficient population to sustain at least minimum enrollment; In the introduction above, | shared one reference which | brought with me and which helps address the criteria. Lorain County, Ohio is such a good comparative service district to Erie County that its experience over a long period of developing its community college is useful as a harbinger of what can come. It has a similar population base, with similar economic and demographic characteristics and it currently is serving about 12,000 students headcount and over 8,000 full-time equivalents.Further evidence is provided in the Pennsylvania DOE’s Review of the ECC Plan application. They concluded that the need is sufficient and delineated three methods of projecting probable enrollments, based on formulas used with other applications. While the assumptions differed, they concluded that the annual enrollment could be sustained at between 263 and 3,093 FTE. | suggest another alternative derived from their data. They provided a comparison group of four Pennsylvania Counties (Beaver, Butler, Cambria and Northampton). If you average their populations and compare them with their average FTE enrollments, we can extrapolate their experience to Erie County. The results indicate that Erie should expect to eventually serve 5,191 FTE, which clearly satisfies this criteria. How large is the population from which these students can be recruited? Again, in the DOE Review, they calculate that 53.9% of the college going age population with high schoo! diplomas and no college degrees would be eligible candidates for the community college, which is a pool of 93,759 from which to draw the projected enrollment. In short, the population is indeed sufficient to sustain at least mi enrollment. Wi. Criteria 2: Sufficient wealth to financially support such college; Other members of the Empower Erie and County of Erie Team have developed the financial viability section of this plan; however, | want to offer one insight from my experience. The requirement that the local sponsor provide for approximately a third of the financial support ‘may be seen by some as a barrier to development. | believe that having local “skin in the game” has been an ingenious and critical concept behind the comprehensive community college movement, It causes communities to “own” their colleges, support them, rely on them to meet their needs and hold them accountable for the results. With local support comes local control and focus on the unique needs of the local communities served. Itis a critical contribution to keep costs down for students and the communities served, and for meeting the unique needs of the diversity of students to be served, It, also, helps create the “critical mass” to get the job done for the communities. in some ways, It is version of "you get what you pay for” in terms of impact and return on investment. The financial information | have reviewed strongly support adequacy of wealth to support this community college. Ill, Criteria 3: ts not adequately served by established Institutions of higher learning; In many ways, this appears to be the most critical criteria in the Erie County case. We have established that, cleerly, from the population perspective there is enough potential enrollment. The real question is what are the needs versus the current status quo? If we start from the analysis of higher education attainment, the answer becomes apparent, as well. A. “The Missing Level” of Higher Education in Erie County: The Pennsylvania DOE report references the U.S. Census, 2017 American Community Survey, 1-year estimates. If you add the Some College/No Degree, Associate Degree andBachelor's Degree or Higher, the U.S. average Is 60.75% versus Erie County at 52.28% or 14% below the national average (and, also, behind PA). If Erie County was just at the national average for higher education attainment, it would have another 14,728 residents with Some College, Associate, Bachelor's or higher. So, the overarching take-away is that with everything already being done, Erie County has a deficit of over 14,000 residents with higher education just to reach average. The missing level of education in the Erie County mix is the community college. As noted earlier under “sustaining enrollment,” if Erie served the same average part of its population as the other four counties referenced by the Pennsylvania DOE, it would add an average of 5,191 FTE per year to the mix. The proposed ECC will not solve the problem totally. However, it will make a major beneficial impact, One anomaly that has been raised to suggest that more Associate degrees may not be needed is that this is the one level where Erie County exceeds the national and state averages. However, the overarching answer is in the higher education continuum. We know that overall there is a major deficit, which | have argued, and therefore submit, should be filled with the “Missing Level” of a comprehensive community college. Without ECC, there is not enough draw to pull the part of the population with some college/no degree back into the system or to push enough baccalaureate bound students up the continuum to achieve Bachelor's degrees. National data indicates that approximately 55% (in Ohio it is 665%) of all Bachelor's degree bound students are in community colleges (which is the missing level in Erie). In the ECCC Plan, 60% of the enrollment will be in transfer curricula designed to be equivalent to the first two years of the baccalaureate degree programs (the 2+ 2 degree pathway). Many students whose goal is to get a Bachelor's degree often by- pass applying for the Associate degree, even if they meet the requirements. So, nationally Associate degrees tend to be a bit understated; but, are parlayed up into the Bachelor's degree attainment numbers. That is why community college success rates include Associate, degree, certificates and transfer, because the transfer function is a major component of the mission of community colleges. Duplication Issues: One of the major problems relating to perceived duplication is getting lost in the language of higher education curriculum. Courses are slice of content that can generally be taught and learned in the unit of a semester credit hour (a one-hour class/week for 15 weeks, or the equivalent). Associate degrees generally are 60 ~ 64 credit hours over two years, or equivalent, and Bachelor's degrees are 120 ~128 credit hours, or equivalent. Associate degrees and Bachelor's degree are generally referred to as programs of study. There may be many programs of study in a career field, i. e. health care; manufacturing; business; etc. When assertions have been made re: duplication, there has been often a good deal of confusion between courses, degrees, programs, fields of study and career fields. Then additionally, there are “not-for-college credit” offerings delivered on clock hour basis (vs. credit hour basis).Consequently, our approach in designing the curricular offerings was to start with data provided from the needs assessment done by Parker Philips, inc., Census data, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the State of Pennsylvania to focus on what career fields were most needed and which jobs were in greatest demand within the fields. We started with defining ten pathways within the most critical career fields and identified the specific programs of study within each of them based on the current and future job demands. Part of the comprehensive community college approach is to require intrusive career coaching and curriculum advising to connect students to employment goals early and maintain tracking of progress throughout the programs to motivate students to achieve completion of credentials. The curriculum pathways structure helps support getting students on track and sustaining focus to successful completion The number of programs, with all of their courses, will be determined based on enrollment demand and growth. So, there may be many institutions which have a course or courses within the career pathway without having the specific degree we will offer. A good example of a duplicated offering is Accounting. It is a course offering in many Business degrees or it may be a degree program on its own. This is an example of a duplicated offering that can be thought of as “warranted duplication.” Not all duplication is negative depending on where and how it fits into the higher education structure in each career field. The bottom line is that the offerings proposed within the ECCC Plan are based upon the needs of the economy and the career interests of the students. C. Northern Pennsylvania Regional College (NPRC): A special note is warranted relating to NPRC (formerly the Rural Regional College). First, | earlier addressed the needs of Erie County to catch up with higher education attainment to reach, at least, the national average. It has been difficult to obtain clear projections of €nrollment for NPRC. However, from the May 2018 Interim Report on the Establishment of the NPRC to the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, is included a table labeled “Five Year Projection for the Number of NPRC Students Enrolled.” It projects 40 Associate's degree students and 40 dual-enrollment students in 2018-19, increasing to 250 Associate's degree and 250 dual-enrallment (500 total) by 2022-23. Then in the September 12, 2019 Right-to Know Response #6 to Tim McNair, Esquire, Term Comparisons were provided indicating that al college credit students enrolled for Fall, Spring & Summer, 2018-19 equaled 99.2 FTE. If the NPRC enrollment projections for 2024-22 of 200 Associate degree and 180 dual- enrollments are realized, that will be annualized FTE of 380, It is our understanding that approximately half of the NPRC service area population is in Erie County. Therefore, 190 FTE should be attributable to Erie County. The first possible year of delivery for ECCC would be 2021-22, in which it is projected to serve 500 FTE enrollment. Together, 690 FTE would be served in Erie County, which equates to only 13.3% of the deficit need calculated in IIIA, above. The take-away Is that if both NPRC and ECC do what they propose to do, it will notmeet the needs of the County. Throughout the planning process, Empower Erie and the County of Erie have argued that whatever duplication there is at a content level can be managed through a commitment to collaboration and cooperation and everything bath colleges can do will contribute to meeting the unmet need. D. Scope and Scale: NPRC was designed and initiated to fill a niche in higher education which their founding president described as a “highly efficient model for delivering high quality instruction to rural populations.” Their primary mode of delivery appears to be interactive television (ITV) sent out from a central source to existing satellite classrooms within 30 miles of the residents of their 7,000 square mile service area spread over 9 contiguous counties (with the possibility of another 11 counties in the future). It is not designed to be a comprehensive community college and, therefore, they have proposed a far more limited program of studies and have eschewed any notion of a full-service, physical campus. Indeed, in its Strategy Development Briefing Book, 9/2/18 at p. 3, NPRC acknowledges same. Northern Pennsylvania Regional College is designed to complement, rather than compete with, the 15 ather post- secondary institutions serving the nine county region (emphasis added). ECC program offerings are extensive and respond to the breadth and depth of needs in Erie County only, with its urban core, suburban communities and agricultural settings. The urban population, in particular, requires comprehensive, intensive services to meet the learning needs of a diverse population including an at-risk core living below the poverty level. This group responds most effectively to a full-service campus environment with intensive and intrusive career coaching, program advisement, success tracking and instruction with a core of highly trained, full-time faculty engaged in and outside of the formal classroom creating a culture of success. Many in this population require developmental education support embedded within the content areas of their career choices in order to succeed with college level education, Contextual learning and “hands on” educational strategies have been most successful in getting these students to program completion, credential attainment and job placement. CONCLUSION: The ECCC Plan is based on a careful analysis of the documented needs of Erie County for a well-educated workforce prepared for the jobs of today and into the future. The educational plan is comprehensive and inspiring to potential students, employers and the ‘community, as a whole. In my opinion, as a program expert, | believe the Plan is ready for . implementation, should be successful, and the Application, as modified at the request of ‘the Department of Education, should be granted as all statutory prongs for approval aremet. Each of the opinions contained herein is to a reasonable degree of certainty in my field of expertise. ch, President Emeritus, inty Community College February 6, 2020RESUME Dr. Roy A. Church President Emeritus of Lorain County Community College Or. Church has served 45 years as a leader in higher education and served as president of Lorain County Community College for 30 years, retiring June 30, 2016. At that time the District Board of Trustees awarded him the honorary title of President Emeritus of the College. Or. Church is recognized for his leadership in creating innovative models to fulfil the four comerstones of the comprehensive community college mission-educational, economic, community and cultural development. Notable among these are the nationally recognized University Partnership Program, an Early College High School and a Public Service Institute with its Joint Center for Policy Research. In addition, Dr. Church has worked to build collaborative initiatives with business, organized labor and government to enhance workforce education, economic development and entrepreneurial activity in Northeast Ohio, His work in economic development has led to the creation of GLIDE, which is recognized by the State of Ohio as a highly successful Technology Incubator; the Innovation Fund, a $20 million pre-seed fund for regional technology start-ups; a 48,000 square foot commercialization center for sensors and microsystems; and a 75,000 square foot Advanced Technologies Center n Weld-Ed supporting advanced manufacturing and containing a National Science Found Center and a digital rapid prototyping center. During his Presidency, he was active professionally serving as Co-Chair of the Ohio Department of Higher Education Articulation and Transfer Advisory Council; a member of the Governor's Executive Workforce Board; Advisory Board Member of the Ohio Third Frontier; Vice Chair of the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education and served as a member of the Ohio Department of Higher Education Commercialization Task Force. Nationally, he was a member of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Board (MEP); he also served as a board member for several regional workforce and economic initiatives, including the Regional Competitiveness Council, MAGNET (Manufacturing Advocacy and Growth Network), Fund for our Economic Future, and Entrepreneur's EDGE. Locally, he served on the boards of the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, Team Lorain County, the Workforce Institute, the Workforce Investment Board and the Lorain County Port Authority.Dr. Church continues to serve on the Board of Directors for Team NEO, a business and economic development organization focused on accelerating economic growth and job creation throughout the 18 counties of Northeast Ohio. Education: 1969-1973 Florida Atlantic University, 8oca Raton, FL Doctor of Education: Higher Education Administration and Supervision. Second cognate field was Economics Master of Education: Administration and supervision—emphasis in higher education 1964-68 State University of New York, Cortland, New York. Bachelor of Science—Health and Phys. Ed with emphasis in Anatomy and Physiology Positions: 2016 - Present 1987 ~ 2016 1981-1987 1973-1981 1969-72 1968-69, President Emeritus, Lorain County Community College President, Lorain County Community College, Elyria, OH Vice Pres., Academic Affairs and Student Services, St. Petersburg Junior College, Pinellas County, FL Broward Community College, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 76-81; Provost, Judson A, Samuels (So.) Campus 74-77: Dean of Academic Affairs, North Campus 73-74: Assistant to the President St. Joseph College of Florida, Jensen Beach, FL 71-72: Dean of Students 69-72: Assistant Professor Rome Public Schools, Rome, New York Junior high school teacher