PRESIDENT’S  STATEMENT

Wharton County Junior College was founded in 1946 to serve the needs of an ethnically diverse but sparsely populated rural area of southeast Texas. During the past 60 years, the college has served thousands of students who came here for a college education or for training in technical and occupational fields. Given the rapid economic development this region has experienced, we are looking forward to serving even more thousands of students in the future.

To position WCJC to respond to the needs of new generations of students, we undertook a critical self-study of our facilities and the needs of students. This study resulted in the Wharton County Junior College Facilities Master Plan, which I am pleased to present to you today.

We believe that this new Facilities Master Plan will contribute significantly to achieving the mission of the college to make higher education accessible and affordable for all the communities served by the college. The Facilities Master Plan is truly a blueprint for WCJC’s future and a complement to the college’s Strategic Planning Process with its strong focus on students.

Through the hard work of a team of professionals that included both college staff and experts in the field of master plan development, the new WCJC Facilities Master Plan was finalized. The research effort included quantitative research (i.e., surveys and statistical analyses) and qualitative research (i.e., interviews, focus groups, and reviews of documents). This research enabled the team to address all of the college’s current facilities needs and to plan for an orderly and informed response to future needs. The process of analyzing and synthesizing the research data involved a series of steps that allowed the team to reach rational, supportable conclusions.

We see master planning as a continual process that must be responsive to changes in the higher education environment. This includes new insights and developments in instructional philosophy and techniques, education delivery systems, curricula, learning environments, technology, and laboratories, all with the goal of meeting student learning needs. The practice of master planning allows us to enhance communications between and among the key stakeholders in the educational environment and to bridge the gap between academic, facilities, and budgetary planning.

We want the WCJC Facilities Master Plan to be a “living document” capable of changing with the times to meet the needs of successive generations of students. The conclusions and recommendations in the plan will, therefore, be updated annually. We at WCJC are committed to making sure that the WCJC Facilities Master Plan is aligned with the academic, economic, and social needs and interests of our region’s diverse and rapidly growing communities.

 

Sincerely,

Betty A. McCrohan