Augusta Tech president Jermaine Whirl told attendees of the State of the College address on Thursday, Oct. 14 that they’ll have to wait a little longer for the reveal of a partnership between the college and a Fortune 500 company.
“We want to drop this news with our legislators that want to be a part of this at the state capitol, so we’re making that announcement at a later time. You might to want to buckle up,” Whirl said. “It’s a big deal, and it’s related to the cyber work our faculty and staff are doing.”
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Whirl noted that, rather surprisingly, the number of new students the college has taken in over the last three years was the highest in fall 2021, with 1,531 as opposed to 1,172 in fall 2020 and 1,281 in fall 2019.
He said he’s like to see that number between 2,000 and 3,000, based on the needs in the local workforce.
Coming up on his one year anniversary as president of the college, Whirl recapped some of the institution’s accomplishments. He was particularly proud of how the school handled the pandemic.
“I will have been president here for a year in November, and it’s been a whirlwind, no pun intended,” said Whirl. “In terms of COVID-19, we had a total of 176 positive cases here. With 3,800 students and 400 employees, I think that’s a really good percentile and that’s because of the work our faculty and staff are doing what they need to do to keep us safe.”
Whirl said that shifting some of the college’s programming to online learning was not overly difficult.
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“We had about a 300% growth in our online learning,” Whirl said. “It was a team-oriented approach and I will say we didn’t have to adjust too much. This college has been focused on distance education for decades and I think we have been able to do it even better because of COVID-19.”
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The president also revealed a reworked vision and mission statement for the college.
“I want to read this verbatim,” he said. “‘Augusta Tech will be a nationally-recognized academic institution that transforms lives, organizations, and communities through excellence, innovation and partnerships.’ It was a lot of work to get that one sentence down, but that was a collaborative response from stakeholders both internal and external,” Whirl said. “How do you become nationally-recognized? There is a high-level ranking called the Aspen Top 150. There are about 1,200 community colleges in the country, so if you’re in the top 150, you’re in that top 10%. That’s what we are shooting for.”
Before closing the address, Whirl hinted that more announcements will follow soon pertaining to partnerships with more health sciences and cyber partners.
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com
