Hi, folks. Darren Otten, Superintendent/President here at Copper Mountain College with your recap from Thursday, September 10, 2026 Board of Trustees meeting.
Obviously, there was a lot of things going on at last month’s or this month’s meeting, I should say. And it really led off with the budget conversation. And so there’s processes, both with the budget discussion and how that works, both from a public hearing standpoint and the disclosure. And obviously, Jared and Meredith presented that budget. And there’s a couple of things I want to highlight there and also just kind of generally address.
So first and foremost, as is expected by our board, a balanced budget was presented to the board. And so we continue to ensure that our finances, revenue and expenses are in alignment with each other. Having said those particular things, we also are currently budgeted to be within compliance of the 50% law. And many of you are aware of the fact that the 50% law specifically states that 50% of our general fund allocation must be spent on direct student engagement classrooms, instructional aids, etc. anything that is not on the 50% loss.
So what does that mean? That means all administrative salaries, classified salaries for the most part, unless they’re direct lab instruction or lab support, software, computers, technology, all those things are what we say on the wrong side of the 50% law when it comes down to trying to make sure that those things balance.
But again, I am happy to suggest and report we are within compliance both on our budget and our ongoing. However, that is something we have to navigate throughout the year. And, you know, depending on exactly where expenditures come and where they don’t, ultimately, we have to we have to balance those particular things. It is always a little bit of a challenge when you deal with those things, because anytime you spend dollars on one side, you have to equal those dollars on the other. And so essentially what you’re looking at is doubling expenditures when you’re working in those balancing metrics. But again, bottom line, I just want to share with everybody that again, we are in a balanced budget situation. Our finances remain strong and stable and allow us to to move forward here in very productive ways in support of all of our students. So that’s where that budget particular item is. If there’s specific questions anyone has. I’m going to refer you all to Meredith Plummer specifically to go from there.
A couple of other things I just want to also mention that we’re this last meeting, the Board of Trustees approved both their board goals and the superintendent/president goals. And as you all know, we’ve been working on this really since last April when the first study session was held, subsequent study session, then in July, and now two months of ongoing conversations. And really, I think everybody’s aware that this is a year that the board is now kind of shifting focus. And one of the things that I’ve recently kind of embraced, engaged with several of my mentors, former presidents, current presidents, those sort of things is this idea of different phases of, in my case, presidencies. But in the case of all of our administrators, very, you know, different phases that each one of us are in specific to what is the priority for the institution. And so for me, particularly as I look over the last seven years, was tasked specifically from our board about trying to address accreditation concerns, stabilizing our finances and our budget. All of these things were priorities of the board that helped build a very solid foundation for the institution.
What that does is it allows me now as using the terms that I’ve recently become aware of, of entering my second presidency here at Copper Mountain College to address the next level of priorities. And we’ve started talking about a lot of those things around this construct of Community College 3.0, specifically moving towards outcomes. And those things are all aligned with the board of trustees and my goals that they were aligned. I want to be very clear, the board has essentially embraced this idea of radical data transparency. What does that really mean and how does this apply to things?
So they are ultimately expecting us to be able to answer a couple of very key questions when it specifically comes to our programs, our students, those sort of things. And so what I ask folks to kind of think about from the programmatic standpoint is that our community members, our students, etc., should be able to answer explicitly. Where does this specific program lead? What’s it do? Does it align with workforce or does it align with transfer? Those two things need to be very clear answerable.
The second part of that is how long is it going to take me and what’s it going to cost me? And so that is something that the board ultimately expects us to be able to, to very clearly answer. And then what outcomes have the previous students achieved? And so what does that mean? Is it means how long did it take them to graduate? For sure. How long did it take them to transfer? For sure. What does it look like into the workforce? And we’ve started talking about this workforce part, regardless of if it’s either post associate’s or post-baccalaureate, the data sets out there are challenging to get. However, there are finally now some national data sets that are tracking students by Social Security number, ultimately by degree, program, by the college that they graduated. So that we are going to be able to get the information that specifically drills down to these things so that we can answer those questions and the expectations that our boards are going to have. And frankly, federal financial aid is going to have, accreditation is going to have, are all about answering these questions.
So, you know, I think that this is an interesting time to be focused on this work. I think it’s going to lead to a lot of really good conversations about how can we serve students in our community better, but it’s also going to lead to some challenging conversations about how do we potentially reinvent some specific programs or some specific pathways to ensure that they are meeting outcomes metrics that, again, federal financial aid is expecting, accreditation is ultimately going to expect, and to be honest, that our community expects. We want to make sure that there’s a value proposition around the time and treasure and talent that students put into coming to Copper Mountain College.
Ultimately, we want to see those particular outcomes come out very strong in that same way. I think there’s going to be, and this is all tied back to the goals, conversations, discussions about as we’ve talked about, you know, the liberal arts and science degrees that we currently offer, fully understanding who those students are, what are they trying to do? And then ultimately, are there cleaner or clearer pathways that we can potentially address? And so one of the things that we’ve learned specifically digging through the data as we’ve kind of navigated some of these initial conversations, is that roughly 25% of our students here at Copper Mountain College are aligned with these kind of liberal arts and science degrees. Many of them fulfilling prerequisites to apply to nursing programs.
We know that not all these students are going to get into nursing programs. And so one of the things that we’re going to have to start talking about is what other pathways, either here at Copper Mountain College do we need to create, or do we want to make sure that our prerequisites align with other regional colleges so that those students can seamlessly move from, you know, a nursing program perhaps that they don’t get into, maybe into a respiratory therapy program or occupational therapy program or a rad tech program or whatever those other things are that we can potentially offer for them. And so I think that that’s an exciting thing.
The other area that captures a lot of our liberal arts and science students tends to be our STEM transfer students, where we don’t have an existing ADT in something. And so again, we’re going to be explicitly looking at where are our students trying to go? Where have they gone? And trying to make sure we can clarify those particular pathways. So more to come around.
All of these kind of conversations align with both the board goals and this idea of data transparency, because as we move forward, there’s a couple of things I’m going to be asking for help for that are also aligned with these goals. One is a mission statement, right? And so we’re going to be tasked with doing a mission statement update. And I’m going to be engaging with College Council specifically to look at the pathway forward for that. I fully expect it’s going to take the better part of the year.
And then we’ve also got to ultimately kind of navigate what will the goals look like next year? And part of this conversation around data becomes, okay, what percentage of our students are graduating in three years? Six years? Are they graduating into these various situations that improve their economic, socioeconomic mobility and outcomes? And I do expect that that starting next year, very clearly, our board is going to be asking us to expand or increase specific metrics around student success. And this really kind of comes back to us also having to start moving in a direction of capturing data around what interventions are we applying to students, and how is that ultimately helping them?
So we are really, really good at counting participation. And that is something that is very, very important. But participation doesn’t actually relate to causation or correlation in some cases about student outcomes. And so one of the things that we’re going to have to start doing, and we’re working on some both software solutions and some process solutions that will allow us to determine what student groups took advantage of, what specific support services that we offer, and can we then connect that to specific outcomes, because we are going to have to measure those particular things going forward.
So all that being said is tied back to board goals where we’re going as an institution. And ultimately the mission statement.
Update, a couple of other things that I’ll just briefly mention. Obviously, we had lots of the normal things associated with human resource activities and actions last month, some salary adjustments specifically for confidential employees and all management employees except for me. And then we started talking about what we’re going to be looking forward to in the next coming months, one of which is going to specifically be our joint meeting in October with the joint board meeting between MUSD and CMC trustees annual Institutional Effectiveness Report, and then moving into December, we’re going to be specifically addressing a board reorganization and talking about next year’s board meetings. So, I appreciate everybody’s time listening to this particular update, and I hope to see you at the October board meeting.
