Aims reaches out to deliver services

GREELEY — Aims Community College is expanding its reach in Northern Colorado in order to meet the needs of students and the communities in which they live.
Recent growth and development at Aims includes:
? The college has taken over the non-credit portion of Colorado State University?s continuing-education program.
? Under consideration is an expanded presence in the town of Windsor.
? Also under discussion is the addition of programming that would train technicians for the biosciences industry.
? New offerings in the health and allied sciences areas are aimed at the expanding need for health-care workers in the region.
?If it looks like we?re being very visible, it is in fact because we are,? said Aims president Marsi Liddell.

Part of its mission
Expanding programming and facilities comes as part of Aims? effort to address its mission, Liddell said. That mission includes helping to meet economic-development needs of the communities in which the college has a presence.
?I think a community college needs to respond to and address strong economic-development needs within the community,? she said.
In Northern Colorado, those needs include work-force training and development.
?That?s one of the things that community colleges do extraordinarily well both in terms of additional training and also customized training,? Liddell said. ?We take that role and mission very seriously, and we are about making sure that we address some of those needs for companies.?
Established in 1967, Aims is supported by a community-college taxing district that covers Weld and parts of Adams, Larimer, Logan and Morgan counties. The college today encompasses four campuses in Greeley, Fort Lupton, Loveland and Fort Collins. Its physical plant includes 18 buildings
Aims offers 1,500 day, evening and weekend courses to some 14,000 students annually. Of those, 72 percent live within the Aims taxing district, 22 percent come from out of the district, and 6 percent are from out of state.
Courses cover topics ranging from agriculture to health sciences, business to automobile repair, as well as fire science, computer technology and education.
The college employs a faculty of 115 full-time and 275 part-time instructors, along with 31 administrators and a support staff of 226.

Passed up chance to move
The Aims board of directors recently made a momentous decision about the future of the college?s main campus. In June the board voted unanimously to keep the Aims campus at its current location on 175 acres at 5401 W. 20th St. in Greeley.
On the table at the time was the possibility of purchasing the former Hewlett-Packard Co. campus in Greeley.
?Two primary things drove the decision,? said Mark Olson, Aims public-information director. ?One was the community support for the Greeley campus (in its present location).? The other was the opportunity to spread the costs of remodeling and updating over a longer period, he said.
Estimates place the cost of renovating the existing facility and constructing new space at $69 million, Olson said. Moving to the former HP facility would cost approximately $60 million.
?The catch is that if we moved to HP, we would have had to come up with the $60 million right away,? he said. ?However, to stay here and work at renovating and refurbishing and building some buildings, we can spread that cost over 10 to 20 years.?
With Liddell at the helm just since January 2003, Aims is on the cusp of transition. That transition addresses strategy as well as specific change.
Liddell describes a transformation with four pillars:
The first is to transform curriculum. As a fundamental element of the college?s mission, ?Our role is to make sure our curriculum is appropriate for our students and the work force,? she said.
The second Liddell identifies as nearly inseparable from the first. That is, transforming technology to support curriculum changes. ?We are calling bandwidth the fourth utility,? Liddell said. ?It is critical in our requirements for the way we do business.?
Financial resources form the third of the four pillars. ?All of higher education and not just Aims needs to be very cognizant of the fact that we?re an easy target and we need to shore up some of the funding as it applies to higher education,? Liddell said.
Aims will look to new philanthropic outlets, a capital campaign and optimizing tuition and net revenue to help boost funding, she said.
The fourth pillar in Liddell?s vision for transformation is physical environment.
?Aims is looking to establish a higher profile in Northern Colorado,? Olson said. ?We want to send a message to individuals in Northern Colorado that we offer relevant education at an affordable cost.?
The change and growth that is increasingly visible at Aims is due in part to stability, Liddell said.
?It?s difficult to do that when you have interim presidents. My plan is to be here for a substantial amount of time and to really respond to the economic-development and work-force needs of the community,? she said.

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