JCCC’s Strategic Academic Master Plan reflects the college’s academic goals and priorities.
Johnson County Community College’s Strategic Academic Master Plan reflects the College’s mission, vision, values, and academic goals and priorities. The Strategic Academic Master Plan provides a framework for ongoing analysis, academic planning, and decision making that prioritizes academic excellence, establishes action plans for continuous improvement, and provides guidance for resource allocation, facilities planning, exploration and implementation if feasible.
Strategic Goal: Student Success
Support learners in achieving their educational goals.
Offer relevant academic programming to meet the shifting needs of our students, communities, and the industries we serve in career and technical and transfer programs.
- Create and implement a campus-wide Internationalization Plan to strategically and systematically integrate global concepts across the campus.
- Strengthen the academic program review process to be more responsive to stakeholder feedback and establish clear, transparent criteria for assessing programs and supporting enrollment growth in critical areas.
- Develop a long-term program evaluation and prioritization framework to guide decision making on adding new healthcare programs and expansion/enhancement of existing high-demand programs. The framework will establish transparent criteria for weighing community and industry demand, student interest, resource requirements, faculty availability, and alignment with JCCC’s mission, ensuring sustainable growth and responsible resource allocation.
- Strive for appropriate enrollment efficiencies (fill rates across Academic Affairs Branch).
- Align with KBOR’s systemwide transfer initiative.
- Explore ways to incorporate artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies to enhance student learning, and provide guidance for faculty and staff in upholding excellence and academic honesty.
- Increase the use and effectiveness of embedded course assessments within program/department and institutional assessment processes.
- Design and implement AI-focused courses and programs while integrating sustainability principles throughout the curriculum at JCCC.
- Pursue new programming to further enhance our focus on industrial technology related trades and programs.
- Design and implement language development pathways for English language learners to facilitate their entry into technical and trade professions.
- Develop and formalize global transfer credit policies that recognize international academic credentials, enabling students to meet prerequisites and placement requirements for career and technical education programs.
- Maximize existing pathways between JCAE and JCCC to accelerate student placement and enrollment into targeted CTE programs.
- Provide study away opportunities to students in every program of study at JCCC, including career and technical programs.
- Create a Center for Excellence in Healthcare within the science and healthcare campus neighborhood that co-locates all healthcare programs on the main campus. The Center will be designed to meet current program needs, allow for the expansion and enhancement of programs, and provide capacity for the strategic addition of new healthcare programs.
- Establish healthcare and public safety cross-program collaboration projects that prepare students to meet workplace interdisciplinary team-based competencies.
- Formalize a KBOR aligned pre-BSN associate degree pathway.
- Investigate a bi-level nursing program model for the practical and registered nursing programs.
- Complete Practical Nursing curriculum modifications and seek national accreditation.
- Increase the enrollment in the Practical Nursing program commensurate with additional classroom/lab space and faculty.
- Expand the Registered Nursing program to include a spring cohort start date in order to graduate more nurses and meet community demand.
- Expand the Dental Hygiene clinic to serve an increased number of students to meet community need and employment demand for the profession.
- Revise the Respiratory Care Program's clinical curriculum to fulfill the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care (CoARC) standard allowing up to 25% of student clinical hours to be completed through high-fidelity simulation; consider faculty support needs to accomplish this.
- Revise the Respiratory Care Program's curriculum to align with the most recent National Board for Respiratory Care (NBRC) content matrix and exam blueprint.
- Create a Public Safety Training Center to co-locate the Fire Science program, EMS program, and Police Academy. The Center will be designed to meet current program needs and allow for the expansion and enhancement of programs.
- Transform the Horticultural Science Center to support usage and collaboration among Horticulture, Floral Design, and Sustainable Agriculture programs.
- Construct a new astronomical observatory to support student demand in the Astronomy program.
- Provide additional and upgraded spaces for the Music department to accommodate current growth trends and compete with other local higher education institutions for enrollment.
- Assess and expand teaching and gallery spaces, as well as facilities staffing within the FADS department, to accommodate increased demand resulting from the implementation of the AFA degree.
- Relocate the Fashion Merchandising and Design program (to include laboratories, office space, and room for the historical fashion collection).
- Complete the remodel of the Student Media Center to offer Journalism students and Messenger staff a workspace that adheres to the standards of modern newsrooms.
- Leverage Information Services governance process to ensure the optimization of the goals of the Strategic Academic Master Plan.
Attract and ensure access to learning for all individuals, regardless of background.
- Create more flexible scheduling to provide additional options for high school students and adult learners. This could include standardizing Parts-of-Term as possible block options, exploring short-term cohort-based program offerings (possibly connected to Areas of Interest), and publishing a year-long course schedule to increase opportunities for completion.
- Optimize and expand dual credit opportunities.
- Establish closer working relationship among Academics, Counseling, and Access Services.
- Utilize academic plans in Plan My Classes tool to forecast future course demand and inform course schedule.
- Expand access to CTE programming for populations working towards a GED.
- Establish JCCC as a global educational hub by adding foreign partnerships, housing partners, and increased funding.
Create clear pathways and early momentum to student success by helping students explore, choose, plan, and complete programs aligned with their career and education goals efficiently and affordably.
- Enhance Areas of Interest to improve student outcomes.
- Enhance marketing efforts to showcase JCCC programs to spark student interest.
- Assess success rates for Math Pathways and English co-requisite models.
- Fully implement Math pathways by fall 2026 semester, including online sections.
- Collaborate with Student Services on the completion of Transfer Guides.
- Through collaboration with the campus bookstore, promote open educational resources (OER) and other cost-effective course materials for students.
- Foster efforts to implement Continuous Improvement (CI) initiatives across the College through KPI-focused assessment that produces feedback to inform program and curricular planning.
- Establish certificates or micro-credentials in each of the foreign languages offered at JCCC to promote completion of all courses.
Increase flexible, industry-recognized, stackable courses and credentials to support workforce needs.
- Add areas for the Career Ready program.
- Establish a stackable micro-credential system for skills / areas and promote these opportunities directly to local businesses for their employees. Develop these micro-credentials with input from local businesses.
Strategic Goal: Employee Engagement
Create and maintain an environment where employees feel valued and have a sense of belonging.
Leverage total compensation strategies to attract exceptional talent and retain employees while advancing the mission of the College.
- Identify and implement strategies to retain current employees.
- Incorporate multiple measures of employee engagement into faculty evaluations.
- Explore ways to provide additional faculty and academic staff positions to support enrollment growth, retention, completion, safe environments, and industry experience in critical areas to serve student and community demand.
- Develop a long-term recruitment and retention plan for specialized difficult to fill faculty positions (e.g., Healthcare, CSIT, Industrial Technology), including industry-competitive compensation strategies.
- Establish the proposed job-laddering framework so employees have opportunities and incentive to grow within their positions.
Foster an environment of belonging and support a positive campus culture.
- Provide employees with resources to help them ensure academic integrity and maintain commitment to high standards of student achievement.
- Create and encourage training opportunities for employees to support them in ways that increase students’ sense of belonging in the classroom and in campus communities.
- Foster a culture of curiosity and exploration through programs, co-curricular activities, and innovative teaching methods.
Foster a culture of continuous professional growth, in which all employees are empowered to enhance their skills to advance the mission of the college and their career goals.
- Expand departmental professional development opportunities to include College Now faculty and to promote rigor, innovation, and cohesiveness in academic disciplines.
- Promote, support, and establish international professional development exchange opportunities to all employees (such as the Dutch Exchange) and expand global opportunities for all students in the course curriculum at JCCC.
- Promote and support employees in applying for programs such as Fulbright.
Strategic Goal: Community Connections
Advance strategic partnerships to support student success, employee engagement, and the community.
Serve as a driver for workforce development across Johnson County.
- Engage with local stakeholders to evaluate market demand and implement targeted workforce development initiatives.
Serve as a catalyst for business and community growth by supporting partners who attract and retain companies in our region.
- Continue to develop strategic industry partnerships with companies such as General Motors (GM), BNSF Railway, and Panasonic to promote learning and employment opportunities for our students and community.
Serve as a convener for focused community engagements, responding to the shifting demographics of Johnson County.
- Partner with local organizations to serve as a gathering place for events, engagements, and activities that positively impact our community
Serve as a cultural hub for our community by facilitating lifelong learning through educational programming and world-class art experiences.
- Integrate the campus with the Greater Kansas City Japan Festival, held every year at JCCC.