Clatsop Community College has released the framework for a new, five-year strategic plan.

The priorities are to improve student access, increase student success, strengthen the college’s reputation, increase organizational effectiveness and build and sustain partnerships.

The plan emerged after a few years marked by leadership turnover, infighting and upheaval on Coxcomb Hill.

“Things are trending up, little by little. It’s not going to turn around overnight, but I’m trying to kind of rebuild the culture and build a leadership team that’s in it for the long run,” said Jarrod Hogue, who was hired as college president in August. “Again, we need to build trust with our community and it’s just going to take some hard work and some delivering on what we say we’re going to do.”

Before arriving at the college, Hogue, who grew up in St. Helens, was the principal of Math Mentors, a math tutoring company. He held several administrative positions during his 14 years at Mount Hood Community College.

In an interview, Hogue shared his assessment since taking on the leadership post.

Q: We have seen a few waves of leadership turnover at Clatsop Community College and some dire financial projections over the past few years. Now that you have had a few months as college president to soak it all in, what can you tell us about the challenges?

A: The financial dire projections probably may have seemed accurate at that time, but I don’t think, overall, really reflect the status of our finances.

We’re pretty unique in community colleges that we have a pretty diverse revenue source, so we have property tax and student support fund and tuition revenue.

Back to your question, I don’t think that we’re in a dire financial situation. Things have stabilized, enrollment’s stabilized. We have some facilities challenges, deferred maintenance — we’ve, unfortunately, maybe have not made a priority, and we’re going to have to do that going forward because we have aging facilities that we need to take care of.

Q: During the hiring search for a new president, another job candidate referred to the college’s minimal leadership structure and unclear chains of command as a “Lord of the Flies” situation. Do you have a more fitting literary reference today?

A: I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with that assessment. I think it’s easy, in an interview process, to make some assumptions.

Really, it was a situation where there were a lot of decisions made to either part ways with leaders or leaders left. Anytime you get leadership voids you’re always going to have some instability and uncertainty about chain of command and proper processes.

So I think one of my goals coming in was really just to provide some stability and some trust and help start rebuilding the culture.

Q: There is some promise in the college’s partnerships with regional industry through the historic preservation, welding and nursing programs. Do you see potential for the college to partner with other local and regional business leaders?

A: It’s a huge opportunity. I think one of the things that makes career-technical education programs effective and produces good outcomes for students is being closely aligned with the buyer — I guess you’d call it — the end user, which is the employer who is hiring these students.

If we’re not providing the related skills on the equipment that they’re wanting, then we’re not doing our job. So I think it’s a huge opportunity. It’s a win-win-win — it’s a win for students, it’s a win for the college and it’s a win for employers to have students that are prepared to go into their industries.

Q: Are there one or two particular industries that have promise?

A: I think there’s an opportunity to expand our historic preservation — broaden it, in a sense, to train more people into construction management.

Historic preservation is a little bit niche, but it fits this community. But having said that, I think that we could probably better serve the construction industry if we broaden that a little bit into more foundational components.

Q: According to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission dashboard, it appears enrollment at the college is still significantly below levels before the coronavirus pandemic. Do you see a clear path back, or has enrollment settled into a new pattern?

A: I think it’s settled for a while. I think we’re in a new reality.

Some community colleges in Oregon have started to creep back a little bit, but are still nowhere near. We’re down 30% almost since the pandemic.

There are projections that because of fewer people in the K-though-12 system, they’re calling it the “enrollment cliff.” I look at it as an opportunity to think about how we engage with our community and looking at populations that we could probably serve better, which includes young adults, dislocated workers, people looking for retraining.

So we might have to broaden our scope a little bit and put a little more interest into nontraditional students.

Q: Is there a sense of why it hasn’t snapped back? Is it just breaking the routine, with such a disruptive situation with the pandemic? Or is there something else?

A: I think it’s a couple things. One of those is some ways parents, families and students are questioning the value of higher education, especially with large debts and sometimes challenging job markets depending on what the degree they selected.

If you look at it, though, those that selected paths into clear degrees with higher wage outcomes, less of the situation.

But I think the days of spending $100,000 at the university on a liberal arts degree with no clear path, might be — people are questioning that more. That’s going to have downstream effects on the community colleges, too, because half our students are university track, some of them are career tech.

But I think, general, across the country, you’re seeing people questioning the value of higher education, and it’s a challenge for us and we need to be able to respond.

Q: The college has released the framework for a new, five-year strategic plan. What’s the most important aspect of that process that the community should know?

A: I think the most important aspect of that process is that we went out to our community and said, “What can we do better?”

I wasn’t here at the time, but part of that process included an insight report. So we worked with a contractor that went out and asked the community, “How are we doing?”

And we heard that we need to do better. We’ve lost some trust — that the community has seen a little too much chaos, is a word that was used that always stuck out to me.

I know that informed our strategic plan going forward, and certainly informed me coming into this role and knowing some of the challenges ahead.