Derr unveils MHCC’s strategic plan

Mt. Hood Community College is planning to become more recognized in the greater Portland area and across the state.

On Friday, April 10, President Debbie Derr presented the college’s updated strategic plan during an all-staff forum.

According to Derr, the question that MHCC asked in a recent community survey was, “ ‘What if we were to be recognized as the best community college in the country? What would we have to do to get there?’

“That generated the ideas of how we could make Mt. Hood a great college,” said Derr.

Created by MHCC faculty and staff members that were on the formal Strategic Plan Task Force, the plan outlines ways that Mt. Hood will try to achieve its maximum academic potential by focusing on three key areas: “learners’ success,” “community pride,” and “partner innovation.”

“These are the big, audacious goals. This is the basis of the plan,” said Derr, commenting on the key goal statements that were taken from stakeholders’ input.

From here, the three pillars of the plan are broken up into more specific categories on what the college will do to achieve the objective. Learners’ success is broken up into nine sub-categories, the community is discussed in five sub-categories, and the partners are covered in nine sub-categories.

“How we get those done is through individual departments and divisions of the college saying ‘How can we interact with learner success?’ ” said Derr.

Now that the strategic plan has been presented to the school’s staff, the next step is to go before MHCC’s board of education for approval before the Strategic Plan Task Force can move forward with pursuing the outcomes.

“We are working on a continuous improvement cycle, so they’ll plan, and they’ll have to check and report how they are doing, they’ll have to make adjustments, and then they’ll have to report their results,” said Derr.

Contingent on the board’s approval in June, the plan will take effect this fall, she said.

Derr said the plan should be a blueprint for success. “If we talk about our vision for the future, it is really about improving the quality of life of the people in our district, and it’s about serving our students in the best way we possibly can,” she said.