The Cleveland Daily Banner Sunday, January 10, 2016 | Page 5

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Cleveland Daily Banner—Sunday, January 10, 2016—5

Cleveland State’s 2015 highlights show pathways to success
By CHRISTY ARMSTRONG
Banner Staff Writer

Cleveland State Community
College’s most recent calendar
year was one full of highlights.
Faculty and staff found themselves enjoying everything from a
reaffirmation of the college’s
accreditation to a new influx of
students in the fall, thanks to a
statewide scholarship program.
In the early part of the year,
Cleveland State officials signed
more dual admission agreements
with area universities.
Under these agreements, students can apply for admission to
CSCC and a four-year college at
the same time to make the transfer process easier later.
Jan. 29 saw the local college
partnering with Tennessee
Wesleyan College in Athens, and
it signed an agreement with the
University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga on March 20.
“We see this as a win-win. ...
We definitely have an interest in
more agreements of this kind,”
CSCC President Dr. Bill Seymour
said in January.
Partnering with other colleges
to make transferring easier for
students wasn’t a new concept,

but it was an idea that got a
boost after the announcement of
Tennessee Promise.
In 2014, Gov. Bill Haslam had
proposed Tennessee Promise, a
scholarship and mentoring program which would later be
embraced by state legislators.
The measure was to provide lastdollar scholarships so recent
high school graduates could
attend two-year colleges at no
cost to them.
Before the first class of
Tennessee Promise students was
to start in the fall of 2015, twoyear and four-year institutions
alike waited to see what enrollment would look like. They
worked while they waited.
Cleveland State made numerous preparations for its
Tennessee Promise students over
the spring and summer. Those
included starting a new honors
program and starting the Adult
Promise scholarship, which provided funds to students ineligible
for the Tennessee Promise program.
“This is a great example of us
anticipating the changes that are
happening,” Seymour said when
Adult Promise was launched in
May.

The anticipation came to a
head in August, when 454 students began attending classes as
part of the first Tennessee
Promise class.
This marked the first time
since about 2011 the college had
seen such a large enrollment
increase, Seymour said.
Haslam visited the campus on
the first day of class to encourage
the new students as they contributed to the “Drive to 55” goal,
a goal to see more Tennesseans
earn college degrees.
The governor said it was “like
Christmas morning” to see students taking advantage of the
scholarship program.
Haslam added he was looking
forward to seeing the students
again at graduation. At the close
of his visit, he told members of
the press the real determination
of the program’s success would
be graduation rates.
“I actually thought if we could
ever find a way to pay for it and
offer it for free, we would get a
pretty good turnout,” Haslam
said. “The big determinant is how
... we make certain that all of
these students actually complete” their course of study, he
said.

The Tennova healThcare holiday cards from the Cleveland facility this year featured artwork
from students at Hopewell and BlackFox Elementary schools. The cover illustration was by fifth-grade
Black Fox student Shelby Stone. The inside art was by fifth-grade Hopewell student Trucker Bowling.
Above, Coleman Foss, chief executive officer of Tennova poses with Trucker Bowling of Hopewell, his
parents and Tim Riggs, principal. Below, Foss, left, and Kim Fox, principal, pose with Shelby Stone and
parents.

Seymour said at the time the
college had already done numerous things behind the scenes to
make sure students would have
the support they needed to complete their educations.
Other highlights of 2015
included CSCC getting a wrinkle
in its accreditation process
straightened out.
The Southern Association of
Colleges
and
Sch