College sets new goals with 2025-2027 strategic plan

By Sophia Potter
Student Editor in Chief 

Earlier this year,_­ Lansing Community College President Dr. Steve Robinson and the Board of Trustees revealed the 2025-2027 Strategic Plan for the college with the overarching goal to have a clear vision of students’ needs and meet them in new and effective ways.

In simple terms, a strategic plan is a roadmap that an organization can use to make sure it is meeting the goals of its stakeholders—in this case, the community that the college serves—as well as meeting the needs of the “clients,” or more appropriately, the students.

According to Dr. Robinson, “This new strategic plan takes a step back to look at the big picture. It overhauls our previous plans and leads a close examination of our mission, values, guiding principles and goals, and the strategies we can use to realize them.” 

In addition to four new objectives, the 2025-2027 Strategic Plan also introduced an updated mission statement (changes notated with italics):

“Lansing Community College provides accessible, high-quality education through relevant and innovative instruction methods to equip and empower a diverse community of learners to complete their educational goals while becoming engaged global citizens.”

While similar in message to the former mission statement, critical changes have been made that acknowledge LCC’s responsibility to the students and community to meet their varied needs by emphasizing accessibility, conducting market research and celebrating the diversity of the community.  

The four goals for 2025-2027 include: Goal 1: Achieving Academic Excellence with Purpose and Equity; Goal 2: Foster Student Enrollment, Retention and Completion; Goal 3: Strengthening Community Engagement and Partnerships; and Goal 4: Establishing LCC as a Premier Workplace through Empowerment, Engagement and Inclusion.

While these goals may sound bold, each goal contains several numbered strategies and key objectives to explain exactly how the college plans to actually achieve them.  

• 1.3 Enhancing Equity and Support to Empower Student Academic Success focuses on “dismantling barriers that hinder student success,” both inside and outside of the college. This goal is directly related to Robinson’s 2025 presidential goal, as stated during the January board meeting: “Understand the basic needs of LCC students, including housing insecurity, food insecurity, childcare, and student mental health.” The strategic plan outlines that the college is going to work to advance equity and proactively remove barriers across many departments, specifically citing admissions, financial aid, academic program design, and student services.  
  
  
• 2.2 Facilitating Completion and Achievement of Educational Goals includes a promise to “improve and broaden advising services” so students not only understand where to turn for different kinds of help, but also ensure that “personalized and inclusive guidance” is accessible to everyone. Section 2.2 also mentions creating new ways to celebrate student milestones in an effort to support and motivate students toward their personal goals.
  
  
• 2.3 Strengthening Student Retentiondiscusses plans to better support students who are either struggling to remain in school or have “paused their academic journey.” Methods include strengthening communication between departments in order to streamline the reentry process for students, refining current support systems based on student feedback and fostering an inclusive community on campus that engages students.
  
  
• 3.1 Maintaining Relevancy with Workforce Expectations & 3.3 Creating Career Pipelines from K-12 through Associate and Baccalaureate Transfer both focus on the ways the college prepares students to be engaged and productive members of the community upon entering the workforce. 3.1 discusses ways the college plans on scanning the current workforce, while 3.3 discusses the pipelines the college is establishing with both K-12 schools and four-year colleges and universities. While approaching the subject from different angles, both 3.1 and 3.3 help explain changes that may be coming to various programs over the next few years as the college works to better align course offerings with the demands of the labor and wider education sectors. For example, students may begin to see that classes are structured to better align with courses offered at universities, and the college may begin creating implementing more programs for youth and high school students.
  
  
• 4.1 Cultivating a Culture of Empowerment through Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging is perhaps the most ambitious of the strategies across any goal and includes four key objectives. The first is to expand the college’s definition of diversity to be more inclusive. The second, to “sustain and enhance inclusivity initiatives,” includes consistent reviews and updates to existing diversity programs to make sure they are up-to-date and relevant. The third objective is to “enhance accessibility and accommodation” so that students and staff of all abilities have equal access to the college’s services and facilities. The final objective is to create more collaborations across departments. This goal aims to build respect and create a better organizational culture by promoting projects that bring together a diverse group of employees.

Perhaps one of the most important takeaways from the 2025-2027 plan is that, despite the “noise—especially out of Washington,” as Trustee Hope M. Lovell put it, the college is leaning into its practices.

“Even though it seems as though higher ed is under attack right now, community colleges are special,” Lovell said during the February Board Meeting, fresh from the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) National Legislative Summit, which took place in February of this year.

“In fact, we are the darlings of education because we are preparing the workforce of tomorrow. Let’s continue to keep our eye on the ball and doing the good work, because bipartisan—both Republicans and Democrats—they see it,” Lovell said.

Dr. Robinson also stated at the February Board meeting that “LCC is working internally with our legal council to understand and ensure compliance with all civil rights laws.”

“I have been part of a group of community college presidents studying and preparing for these issues for years, and my most important message to our entire college community is this: our efforts to create empowering, diverse academic culture at LCC are legal,” he stated further.

While times are uncertain for many higher education institutions, as the board and president’s office look toward the future of the college, they find comfort in the college’s legacy of excellence and an overwhelming hope for the future that the college can build.

Board Chair Angela L. Mathews expressed her confidence in the institution at the February meeting: “I’m confident we will be prepared whichever way we need to go, because that’s what we do here. I’ve been here for nine years, and I’ve never known LCC not to be ahead of the curve.”

The next Board of Trustees meeting is Monday, June­ 16 from 6-8pm in the Administration Building Boardroom, and can be accessed via Webex here. All previous Board of Trustees meetings can also be viewed on the Lansing Community College Youtube channel.