What a banner year it’s been for Tallahassee Community College!

In twelve short months, we became the first Florida College System institution to be approved by the Florida Department of Education to sponsor public charter schools. We then became the sponsor for Tallahassee Collegiate Academy, our community’s first STEM-focused public charter high school where students have the opportunity to earn an Associate of Science degree in a STEM field simultaneously with their high school diploma.

We added new bachelor’s degrees in Elementary Education, Exceptional Student Education, and Business Administration, which led to increased suggestions that we consider changing our name. With the new upper-level degrees, and with nearly 60% of our students now coming from outside of our service district, the Board voted in November to change our name to Tallahassee State College to better reflect our broadening impact in the state. This will now go to the Florida Legislature for approval during their 2024 session.

We significantly expanded our Associate of Science degree offerings in critical STEM-focused fields like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, Medical Office Administration, Supply Chain Management, drones, and accounting. These AS degrees will help support our local workforce and enrich our partnership with Tallahassee Collegiate Academy.

We continue to make great strides in our nursing program, which includes our RN and BSN programs. In 2019, we were enrolling 76 nursing students each year. To better meet the needs of local hospitals and other healthcare providers, we secured $1.4 million from the Legislature for our nursing program to double our capacity. In addition, we used nonrecurring funding plus local support to open a second simulation lab, and recurring funding to hire more nursing faculty. As a result of these efforts, we now enroll around 400 nursing students each year.

We made significant investments to better help our students, doubling our Counseling Services staffing and expanding food insecurity support through our on-campus food pantry, Talon’s Market. I want to commend our Student Government Association for their alignment with us in this work and their choice to dedicate significant student fees to providing mental health services.

These are just a few of our many accomplishments and successes. The list goes on!

As we close out our fall semester and prepare for our winter break, I want to thank our team for all their hard work over this past year. We truly have the best faculty and staff of any college in the nation. I am also grateful for our students who trust us with their education, the most important investment they can make in themselves, as well as our incredible community, who continue to support our College as we move into the future.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season! See you in 2024.