Fall 2025
- SFCC launched the first year of its new Strategic Plan 2025-2030 this fall. Eleven initiatives have been identified to support the three priorities established for the next five years. The initiatives were shaped by broad engagement and are aligned with our Vision Statement or NorthStar of creating “multi-generational change toward economic and social prosperity.”
- Core institutional projects such as CHESS/Workday and Mosaica non-profit implementations continue while a renewed focus on completion and providing students with economic mobility permeates the other projects. For example, to support student success and economic mobility, the College is:
- Expanding flexible course offerings (primarily 8-week courses) that allow students to progress more quickly or balance their studies with work and family responsibilities;
- Focusing recruitment efforts are on reaching new and underserved populations, ensuring more students have access to life-changing educational opportunities;
- Improving the use of Canvas, the College’s learning management system, and tools like Dropout Detective, to guide faculty and staff in identifying and supporting students who may be at risk to provide timely interventions to keep them on track to completion;
- Realigning and enhancing academic to meet the needs of jobs with strong economic potential while also creating clear transfer pathways to four-year colleges;
- Establishing a Center for Professional Learning to provide faculty and staff with ongoing training, resources, and support that foster innovation, collaboration, and excellence in teaching and student services;
- Together, these strategies help students’ complete credentials that open doors to stable, well-paid careers or continued education.
Summer 2025
- Action Plans for the Academic Year 2024-2025 (final year of the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan) were reviewed and closed. The significant progress made over the past year specifically, and the previous five years more generally informed the design of priorities identified above. Much has been accomplished, and we are excited to launch the next plan in SFCC’s ongoing development under the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to continuous quality improvement.
- After capturing extensive input from SFCC students, faculty, staff, the SFCC Governing Board, and members of the SFCC Business Community, the next five-year Strategic Plan 2025-2030 was approved by the Governing Board in July 2025. The SFCC Community overwhelmingly encouraged the preservation of the existing Mission Statement (Empower Students, Strengthen Community) and created new a new Vision Statement (Multi-generational change toward economic and social prosperity) and updated Values (Student-centeredness, Innovation, and Equity) for the organization. Three new priorities were identified for the next five-year Strategic Plan:
- Priority 1: Creating Systems for Student Success – We will remove barriers and create systems that empower students (first-generation, low-income, underserved, and student-parents) by enhancing recruitment and community outreach efforts, and designing and implementing seamless, student-centered systems that guide every learner from enrollment to graduation.
- Priority 2: Career Readiness and Economic Alignment – We will transform our academic and workforce training programs – aligning them with regional employment needs that offer economic mobility – to ensure every student leaves SFCC career or four-year college transfer ready.
- Priority 3: Build Institutional Excellence Through People, Processes, and Innovation – We will foster institutional excellence by empowering our people, streamlining internal processes, and cultivating a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and leadership, that ensures SFCC remains agile, effective, and future-ready.
Spring 2025
- The mid-year review of Santa Fe Community College’s Strategic Plan for 2024-2025 highlights the institution’s commitment to its three strategic priorities: Supporting Our Students, Partnering with Our Community, and Building Our College Capacity. This comprehensive report outlines progress made during the Fall 2024 semester and reflects the College’s adaptive strategies to address the evolving landscape of higher education.
- Key achievements include restructuring program maps to ensure clear academic pathways, improving retention through wholistic student support, and expanding professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. Community partnerships were strengthened through transfer fairs, internships, and recruitment initiatives targeting underserved groups and exploring dual credit opportunities with Santa Fe Public Schools. Efforts to build institutional capacity included professional development programs, the launch of a new student hub project, and the implementation of the Workday Student Information Services modules. These milestones demonstrate SFCC’s dedication to fostering a student-centered culture, expanding access and equity, and building a vibrant, future-ready college environment.
Fall 2024
- Developed during the summer, 17 initiatives were launched in Fall 2024 to support the last year of the 2020-25 Strategic Plan building on the accomplishments and lessons learned from the previous years. In addition, work continued on the 2025-30 Strategic Plan with a focus on incorporating student, faculty, and staff input on the new vision statement and values, building out the environmental scan to support the development of Wildly Important Goals in the next strategic plan, and collecting input from the community and students through surveys (on Workforce, New Student and Post-Graduation) to further refine the approach to the next five years.
Summer 2024
- This summer was spent reviewing the initiatives in the academic year 2023-2024 plan, closing out completed projects, identifying new initiatives to support student success and developing action plans for the upcoming academic year. In addition, work began on the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan by reviewing the mission statement through an all employee and student survey, drafting new vision statements and values through a senior leadership retreat, and developing a preliminary outline for an environmental scan to be conducted during the Fall 2024. Focus groups and surveys will be utilized during the fall semester to obtain feedback from all employees and students before finalizing and communicating to the campus community.
Spring 2024
- Biannually, the Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness (OPIE) conducts a comprehensive review of the College’s Strategic Plan to provide the Governing Board with a mid-year update on progress made during the Fall Semester. The Strategic Plan continues to track three overarching strategic priorities that were identified as a part of the 2020-25 planning process: 1) Support our Students; 2) Partner with our Community, and 3) Build our College Capacity, with the accompanying nine goals. A number of course corrections to the Plan’s 20 initiatives were enacted in August 2023 to address the evolving landscape of higher education at SFCC, and incorporate deliverables associated with the award of the Title V Exito grant which will build upon the many accomplishments of the Title V MAPS grant.
- The 2023 Updates included:
- Expanding the fund-raising goal for the SFCC Foundation to include support for student parents.
- Enhancing the approach from identifying struggling students, to a focus on early intervention.
- Including career opportunities in the effort by Career and Transfer Services to develop pathway linkages.
- Adding a new initiative on outreach to high school students to encourage a college-going culture supported by the new Title V Exito grant.
- Focusing the redesign of course placement on Math courses and their associated pre-requisites.
- Focusing on the implementation of employee classification and compensation study.
- Removing disaster recovery component of emergency preparedness as this deliverable had become operational with the Office of Information Technology.
Fall 2023
- The Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness (OPIE) conducted a comprehensive review of the Santa Fe Community College’s Strategic Plan to provide to the Governing Board. The Strategic Plan continues to track three overarching strategic priorities that were identified as part of the 2020 – 2025 planning process: 1) Support our Students; 2) Partner with our Community, and 3) Build our College Capacity, with the accompanying nine goals and twenty initiatives.
- Through a collaborative process utilizing the Plan-Do-Check-Act model for continuous quality improvement, initiatives are developed with key stakeholders throughout the College to support each of the strategic priorities in alignment with the goals the Governing Board identifies for the President each year. Additionally, each initiative is designed to build on and solidify the progress made over the previous three years of the current five-year planning cycle.
- Where appropriate, initiatives were supported by funding from two Title V Grants: 1) Minority Academic Pathways to Success (MAPS) and 2) EXITO en SFCC (Succeed at SFCC). The MAPS grant is reaching the end of its five-year funding cycle, while the EXITO grant was awarded in October 2023 and continues through September 2028. Like the initiatives in the strategic plan, the EXITO grant builds on the foundation provided by MAPS through funding outreach to high school students, improving practices and support for incoming students, and developing innovative new professional development activities.
Summer 2023
- Strategic planning is an iterative process that must adapt and overcome substantive change to the environment in which it takes place while maintaining a commitment to setting goals, crafting actionable strategies, tracking progress, and making further updates based on new information. While the process adheres to a five-year cycle, the assessment and identification of new initiatives propels the college’s advancement on an annual basis. Informed by campus stakeholders, the Governing Board’s annual retreat, and alignment with the President’s yearly objectives, the following updates were incorporated this summer:
- Student parents were added into fund-raising goals
- Development of pathway linkages to 4-year degrees and Career Opportunities were incorporated into the plan in order to build on progress already made in these areas
- Non-credit courses were included in the initiative to expand workforce training opportunities
- Identified need to increase outreach to high school students to encourage a college-going culture
- Based on significant progress in course redesign, the focus on Math course placement and pre-requisites was expanded
- Sustainability of long-term college operations included the initiation of a salary study for employees
Spring 2023
- Following SFCC’s return to regular implementation of the strategic plan in the fall 2022, the Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness (OPIE) provided updates to the Governing Board on the progress made on each of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the plan’s 20 initiatives to ensure alignment with the Board’s goals set for the president. A common thread over the past few years are initiatives that address objectives of our current Title V Grants. As a result, many of our KPIs are focused on building systemic institutional capacity to remove barriers that Hispanic and low-income students face in achieving post-secondary success. This helps ensure equity principles are embedded throughout our strategic plan. Considerable progress has been made on most of the initiatives in the 2022-2023 Strategic Plan, particularly considering the vast commitment of time and resources that has been required by the CHESS Shared Services project. See our mid-year report for 2023 for details.
Fall 2022
- SFCC has officially entered the 2022-2023 planning cycle with three overriding goals, nine sub-goals and twenty initiatives that we are tracking through new month by month action plans. The previous year was focused on re-engaging the campus in the planning process and being innovative, while understanding that pandemic metrics were going to continue to look very different from the past. This year we are working to re-establish achievable targets and a rigorous process.
Summer 2022
- This summer was spent revisiting the initiatives in the 2021-2022 plan and making adjustments to prepare for 2022-2023. There continues to be a very strong focus on our Title V Initiatives as well as the CHESS Shared Services project that SFCC is engaged in. Adjustments were made to ensure a strong alignment with the President’s priorities as well. Work began to establish new action plans and planning began for a fall retreat for the Governing Board to discuss the future of Higher Education in the United States and SFCC’s place in that future.
Spring 2022
- As part of our recovery from the pandemic, our focus this year has been to move out of an emergency planning mode and to re-engage the campus in the annual SFCC planning process. The following components, which have been key to our past success were put back into practice during the fall semester and will continue throughout the spring.
- Establishing month-to-month action plans for each KPI
- Assigning “leads” and “executive team sponsors” to ensure accountability
- Creating cross-departmental teams, when needed, to carry out of the work of the month-to-month action plans
- Scheduling each KPI for regular review at Executive Team to give updates on progress toward SFCC goals and to get support and resources from Administration when needed
This allows us to maintain a focus on the most important goals for the college and re-connect faculty, staff, students and administrators in the work of planning.
Fall 2021
- In the fall of 2021, SFCC returned to our regular planning cycle focused on three overarching goals: Support Our Students; Partner with Our Community; and Build Our College Capacity. The plan also contains nine sub-goals and twenty initiatives designed to move those overarching institutional goals forward. The revised plan continues to address the objectives of our current Title V Hispanic Serving Institution grant as well as aligning with the President’s high priority goals for this academic year. The Title V MAPS (Minority Academic Pathways to Success) project seeks to build systemic institutional capacity that removes barriers Hispanic and low-income students face in achieving post-secondary success. The Strategic Plan initiatives derived from the SFCC Title V project have been timely in helping us to address the challenges underserved students face in higher education, particularly during the pandemic.
Summer 2021
- Typically in summer we are preparing action plans that will kick off the implementation cycle in August. Because of the ongoing COVID emergency planning work, the implementation process is continuing through the summer. Plans are being made to return to our regular annual planning cycle in academic year 2021-2022.
Spring 2021
- In Spring 2021 we revisited our 2020 Blueprint and made minor adjustments to continue through 2021 to address the still very active COVID crisis. As we have adapted to the remote environment, we have begun to make plans to return to our planning process. Due to the workload involved with institution-wide projects, such as the Enterprise Resource System, there was a need to further reduce the scope of the plan to ensure that we are focusing our resources on addressing the needs of our most vulnerable students as well as addressing systemic barriers to their success. the Spring 2021 plan was greatly streamlined to address the highest priorities during the pandemic- financial and other support for students, online teaching improvements, COVID safety measures, financial solvency, etc- and to take into the consideration the limited bandwidth of faculty and staff who had shifted to a remote format. At the same time, we have redoubled our efforts to address the student success inequities that exists within our system.
Fall 2020
- The 2019-2020 planning cycle was a test of our institutional agility. Originally, we had expected to complete a new five-year strategic plan and begin implementation in August of 2020. Instead, due to COVID-19, our planning cycle was disrupted and SFCC switched to a short-term emergency planning mode to address the immediate challenges. Though progress on many KPIs was impacted by COVID-19, for the most part SFCC was able to pivot to meet the crisis, while still continuing to address many of our longer-term initiatives. In addition to addressing the challenges of COVID-19, another shift has become pronounced in the past few months. The need to address issues of equity and systemic racism are more pressing than ever. SFCC has always had a strategic priority related to equity, but now it is clear that equity issues need to be woven throughout all the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to truly make systemic change. This is timely as we have been implementing the COVID 2020 plan, we have begun to think about the next longer-term planning initiative that will carry us forward.
Summer 2020
- In early 2020 we initiated the process of creating a new five year strategic plan for SFCC, but in March when the pandemic forced a campus closure, the timeframe for planning of any sort shrank from five years to the immediate future. Our planning consultant worked with SFCC’s leadership to develop a Blueprint for 2020. The Blueprint was designed to help the college manage the crisis and plan for probable scenarios for 2020. This summary was completed on June 22, 2020 and presented to the SFCC Governing Board on June 24th. Through this process three overarching goals were identified: Support Our Students; Partner with Our Community; and Build Our College Capacity. Based on these overarching goals, OPIE worked with stakeholders from leadership and other key stakeholders to identify twenty initiatives and associated Key Performance Indicators centered around meeting our students needs during these challenging times and beyond.
Spring 2020
- Because SFCC is developing a new five-year strategic plan, some of our usual annual processes have been modified for this one year. For example, KPI Leads and Sponsors would typically submit budget requests in early spring. This year, OPIE has requested that a portion of the budget be held aside for strategic priorities until the new plan is completed and resources can be committed to newly identified KPIs. We will also be foregoing our annual spring planning retreat where we make revisions to our short-term goals. Instead, we will continue our efforts to get input from the campus and the community on the mission, vision and values of SFCC, as well as future long-term and short-term goals.
