The Renegade 2012 Plan looks in the future of Bakersfield College in forms of economic climate, student needs, technology factors, political climate, cultural environment and the community needs. The plan’s primary goal is to create a view of the future in five years, and how BC will be affected by changes on the way.
The theory of the plan working should result on student’s academic, personal and occupational success. “We are going to evaluate our mission and values,” said Academic Senate president John Gerhold, representing campus faculty and one of the three founders of the Renegade 2012 Plan.
According to Gerhold, BC’s top values should be history, tradition, education and people (students, staff and administration).
Advanced planning is taking place and has been since the fall of 2006 by Ann Morgan, an administrator, Jennifer Marden, union representative, and Gerhold. “Most institutes have strategic plans every five years,” mentioned Gerhold.
“The last time BC has gone through a strategic plan was in 1999.” The accreditation team came to BC and said that BC has to have a strategic plan before the year 2009 in order to have a fair view of BC’s route.
Some key result areas the Renegade 2012 Plan is trying to look at are things like communication, linkages, student success, image and fiscal responsibility.
According to the Renegade 2012 Plan pamphlet, “Receivers must trust the content and be able to discern between messages that are essential and those that are peripheral.”
According to Gerhold, these topics are the areas BC has to look out for in order to be successful. “The Plan is not a response to a weakness but express a desire for the campus to be the best it can,” said Gerhold.
On January 18, faculty members had the Renegade Roundtable All-Campus Summit to introduce the Plan to other faculty members.
According to Gerhold, everybody who attended was put into groups and asked to write down what they thought BC was doing well on a post-it note.?Ideas to improve BC were in the air and ideas were introduced to figure out how this plan was going to move forward, including worldwide events were discussed in order to see if it had an impact on BC.
“For some people this area was the hardest,” mentioned Gerhold, “because some found it difficult to think outside of their own area.”
More information about the Renegade 2012 plan can be found on the 2012 Web site at www.bc.cc.ca.us/2012.