CMC President's Board of Trustees recap and news for July 2025

Hi, folks. Daren Otten here, Superintendent/President at Copper Mountain College. This is a belated report from the July 10th general and study session meetings. Myself and our chief marketing guru, podcast guru Steve Brown, both were on some competing vacation times and so it took us a little bit of time to get through this. But there were definitely a few things that I wanted to make sure the campus community was aware of in particular.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the general board meeting, but there were two things that were approved by the board. Ultimately, the PBK proposals for both the Bell Center Community Room remodel and the Learning Center concept design and feasibility study. And so these are the design firms that we’ve contracted with specifically to do the expansion of the Bell Center. And so the intent behind that is to expand the Bell Center to better serve the community truly as a community room. Part of that vision really is about putting together an entryway ingress/egress that you don’t have to walk through a side door of the gym. Part of that plan is also going to be to ultimately build in restrooms, foyer, entryway for better utilization so that folks don’t have to wander all the way through the weight room in order to use restrooms, etc., and then ultimately provide really just more space in which to better serve our community members and users. And that includes everybody from the Marine Corps base to MUSD to obviously, our own events and programming that we have in there.

And so that’s the first program, and that’s just a, a study and design proposal that they’re going to be doing and will allow me to work with some potential funders to help make that happen. The second one is the Library Learning Center concept, which I’ve been talking to you all about now for the better part of the last year. And one of the things that came out of one of the last sessions that I held was having a design firm get involved with this, and that’s exactly what this is. They will be soliciting campus feedback from both students, employees and other concerned parties. There will be a meeting held in which to capture that information, and then they will be coming up with some design concepts. There is nothing that is going to be built without people getting a chance to see it and weigh in. There’s nothing that’s going to happen before we work through these various processes and make sure that it works for all of our campus. So I just want people to know that those things are happening and moving forward.

The second thing really I wanted to share with everyone has to do with the study session. And so this is the July goal-setting study session. And so just as a quick reminder, back in April, we hold a study session specifically to capture constituent feedback on goals, provide progress reports. Then again in July, we capture that same opportunity for feedback. And the board ultimately drafts goals and drafts goals for themselves and me. That then goes out to the constituent groups and then goes through a first read in August and assumed adoption in September.

So this is the time right now that feedback is currently being solicited. So for anybody who has is on college council, they’ve already seen those goals. I would encourage folks to reach out to me directly, or your college council constituent representative who can absolutely share those proposed goals with you all, and feel free to share that feedback with me. Feel free to share that feedback with the board at the next board meeting, wherever you’re comfortable sharing that. But what I want to make sure people are aware is that the goals themselves have been restructured a little bit for this year under the proposal, and it’s not that the board has walked away from previous goals, they’ve actually really incorporated them well. And one of the things that you’ll see in the draft, goals are something that we’re referring to as legacy goals. And so those are kind of what we’ve historically had. They’re now ramping those into some more simplistic, high level, high order things while setting some expectations for themselves and clearly for me. And so that’s kind of what you’ll see is a dramatic format change. But the intent behind the goals is not to walk away from any previous goals. It’s really just to build a framework that we feel will better represent not only the intent of the goals, but also the work that we can do to show that we are making progress to the goals.

And so while I’m not going to go over all the specific goals today, I would encourage folks again to reach out to their college council constituent representative or reach out to me directly, and I’ll gladly share those documents with you. And again, welcome feedback as we work through that process. And again, that feedback can come to me, that feedback can come to the board in person at the next board meeting. If you’re more comfortable email, you’re more comfortable sharing with anybody on the management team that can bring it forward. All those things are perfectly fine. Whatever you’re comfortable with, and myself and the board look forward to that feedback. So that’s really what I want to make sure people heard. And again, if there’s any questions, feel free to reach out. Be well and we’ll see you soon.