This past Tuesday the South Plains College Board of Regents held a meeting to discuss a variety of topics of relevancy.
Those in attendance for the meeting were SPC President Robin Satterwhite, Chairman Mike Box, Vice Chairman Ronny Alexander, Secretary Richard Ellis, Vice President of Business Affairs Tracy Baten, Vice President of Student Affairs Stan DeMerritt, Vice President of Institutional Advancement Julie Gerstenberger, Vice President of Academic Affairs Ryan Gibbs, and members Chris Edens, Jim Mara, Joe Tubb and Pete Stracener.
The biggest updates of all came from SPC President Dr. Robin Satterwhite, who gave a President’s Report during the meeting, discussing campus construction updates, Hockley County Appraisal District Board Nominees, Distinguished Alumni Recommendations and the implementation of SPC Policies and Procedures.
The topic that received the largest chunk of time and the most questioning was the ongoing construction at the campus Aquatic Center.
The President updated that after much discussion with the engineers behind the project, they will build the new pool within the confines of the old pool, which is due to the risk of the building collapsing if they were to remove the old pool completely.
“We’ve decided that it’s better to use the existing pool as our barrier, retaining the walls,” Satterwhite said. “We’re going to lose two feet off the width and the length of the pool but also save money with that process as well. And then we release the issues of losing the integrity of the building, should it cave in, so that’s the way we’d like to proceed.” Everything else besides the old pool usage will be a completely brand-new structure within the Aquatic Center.
The process was heavily questioned by several of the meetings participants, but after they all were answered by the President, all were in favor and the meeting proceeded onward.
The other construction updates were about campus roofing and the new dental hygiene area. Campus roofing is ongoing, and he gave the reminder that the project was intended for the summer, but due to the supply chain they are just now being able to start.
As far as the new dental hygiene area, they have temporarily halted work as they seek to carefully design it in attempt at efficiency.
Dental work areas are centered around the chairs, which effects the placement of the plumbing and electrical, so with that being said they are trying to secure the chairs before they proceed.
They then discussed who they would nominate for the Hockley County Appraisal District Board, and they decided on Pete Stracener, who obliged. The college holds over 871 votes, which makes up 17% of the 5,000 total, meaning that they are ensured at least one board member, so Stracener’s nomination is bound to be accepted.
Then they moved onto the topic of the Distinguished Alumni Recommendations of Brett Brock, Cory T. Newsom and Gary P. Nunn. Brock is a production and tour manager for Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen, and he also worked at Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion. Newsom is the President and CEO of City Bank, which is all across Texas and New Mexico, and he also serves on the SPC Foundation Board of Directors. Nunn is a country music artist, songwriter and performer, who helped launch the Texas Red Dirt music scene and has played with Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker, and he is also a Texas Hall of Fame and West Texas Walk of Fame member, along with being named the Ambassador of Texas Music by Governor Rick Perry.
Needless to say, the board all applauded and approved the inductee recommendations, and now they’ve each been contacted.
The President concluded his portion of the meeting with the topic of the implementation of SPC Policies and Procedures. The state of Texas implemented over 800 new laws on September 1, so he encouraged the board to review the policies that attain to them and bring any back for the next meeting that they see as problematic.
He emphasized that they are committed to make sure that the policies are in the best interest of their staff and students before they align the college’s policies fully, but by everyone’s response it seems as if the SPC policies and procedures will parallel the state’s.
Vice President of Student Affairs Stan DeMerritt gave a report on 2025 Fall Enrollment and Housing Occupany. “Our enrollment is up 4.7%. Our Levelland campus is up 110 students, thankfully to our collision, auto-collision, autotechnology and welding, which are all up, as well as our ADN, RN programs. It has gone up a little bit and part of that is increasing our home and AMP courses,” Demerritt said. “All of our local centers are down, not huge, but the numbers do show. Plainview, we’re down on some of our core courses there. Some of that is students are actually moving to our online sections and that’s just what they want versus what we’re offering. Lubbock CTE and the Fire Academy were down this year going into the fall, as well as our real estate courses and culinary, just out of request of that program not being as large this year.
Downtown Center, some of our face-to-face traditional courses, such as English, History and Government, were all down. I think what we’re seeing is one year you’ll see them up, one year you’ll see them down. I think it just depends on the population of students that come through and what they want to do. Overall, our dual credit is up 284 over last fall, and the internet is up 600.” Overall, SPC has an increase of 427 students this year in comparison to the last.” Following the update of enrollment statistics, he also shared the housing occupancy statistics. “We’re 89.37% full, which is trending right on target with where we have been in the past,” Demerritt said. “Our men’s residence halls were at 100% and we saw that going through the beginning of August, those shook out at about 94%, which we thought would happen for no shows and such. Women shook out at 89.6%. Overall, we’re hitting pretty good on our residence halls.”
All those numbers indicate the health and success of SPC, which is a trend that continued when Vice President of Academic Affairs, Ryan Gibbs, gave an update on the Health Sciences Programs Passage Rates. “We try to collect this information at least once a year and bring those here to the board. You can see radiologic technology, our nursing programs, our three LVM programs and then our associate degree nursing program. Our passage rates are all above 80% and are in really good shape,” Gibbs said. “We’re particularly proud of our associate nursing program as they continually stay above 90% of passage. We’re really proud of our health professions and nursing programs, they are doing an excellent job producing a large number of quality students.”
Those stats are even more impressive when you factor in that they only account for the first passage attempts.
From the faculty to the students, the college is doing a great job and it’s leading to more financial investments from funders, which Vice President of Institutional Advancement, Julie Gerstenberger, alluded to during her SPC Foundation financial report. One of the investments has now reached eight digits, which was a response to the 12.28% gain on investments and the 13.66% reduction of fees.
The SPC Foundation is doing great work and seeing a great financial response, which they’re investing back into the college.
“We have a very involved and well educated finance and investment committee, they are active managers and excellent collaborators. So, we’re working now to disperse the 1.4 million scholarship budget that has been approved for this year,” Gerstenberger said. “Our mission continues to be to utilize our scholarship funds and all of our funds to do things like recruit, retain, reward and building among all of our constituencies.”
Gerstenberger also ordered the board to review the college’s mission, vision and values for the next meeting so they can give their yearly reaffirmation of them.
Vice President of Business Affairs, Tracy Baten, also gave a financial and tax office report, along with a property sale notice.
The numbers are confidential, but everything seemed up to their standards of contentment.
The meeting lasted nearly an hour and six minutes with every topic being met with support by the board.