(0:00 - 0:15)
The clock on the wall says six o'clock, so we will call the meeting to order. We do have a quorum. Is Regent Morfantino joining us virtually? No? Okay, all right.

(0:18 - 0:26)
All right, so first thing on the agenda is public comment. No public comment. No one has signed up to speak, Mr. Chairman.

(0:26 - 1:12)
Fantastic. Okay, then we are we'll get right into the heart of the matter with the presentation of instructional master plan by Dr. Douglas Walzers and Dr. Lorelaine Worley. I just want to make sure the microphone is working. 

It's not. I can hear you. It just needed to warm up.

(1:15 - 1:26)
So I guess we will get started then. Good evening and thank you very much for making the time for this discussion about the college's future. I'm Douglas Walzers, the Provost.

(1:28 - 4:22)
And I'm Lorelaine Worley, the Executive Director of Planning, Institutional Effectiveness, and Research. All right, we're kind of going to give the presentation backwards. We're going to start with the list of conclusions because we want to sort of set the conceptual framework so that you can see the direction that we're going. 

And then we're going to explain how we reached those conclusions. So our conceptual framework is the list of elements that we believe are important for creating a projection of the future Lee College. We have enrollment, which is going to help us understand the capacity that the future Lee College will need, the idea of serving all students, which is going to be essential to meeting the workforce needs of our region, the idea of human-centric education, signaling our belief that effective teaching and learning for the next generation will rely on talented faculty and staff and not simply be relegated to computers. 

The knowledge economy is an idea that guides our understanding of the curriculum of the future Lee College. And finally, productivity and the business model are considerations that must be accounted for as we consider the financial sustainability of the future Lee College. Putting this presentation together has been challenging because this is going to inform the Facilities Master Plan, and facilities last 30, 40, 50 years. 

Projecting that far into the future is just challenging. I mean, 40 years ago was 1984. We didn't have computers. 

We didn't have the internet. It's hard to look that far into the future. So you'll find that this presentation looks at trends and looks long-term in a conceptual fashion. 

We are going to try and bring that back and make it practical for us. But again, being such a long-term projection means that we have to have a certain amount of conceptual work on this. So looking at the future of Lee College enrollment, as I said, we're starting with the conclusions. 

We're projecting a 57% enrollment growth by 2050, and that growth is spread across the entire Lee College district. And this growth is just for our regular enrollment students. It does not include dual credit. 

It does not include Huntsville students. And the reason is because we don't need facilities for them, right? Huntsville students are in state facilities. Dual credit students are in their high schools.

(4:23 - 4:36)
What would that number be, roughly? The number of? Yeah, 57% enrollment growth. Would that be like 10,000 or roughly? The slide is coming up. That'll have the exact numbers.

(4:41 - 8:14)
Serving all students, 40 years ago, student services were pretty basic. College was not designed for students who had jobs and children and required help with basic needs, and that excluded a lot of people from college. We can no longer afford to exclude them, nor can we afford to enroll them if they're not going to complete. 

So that means redesigning college for all students with a broad set of student services. Human centric education, we can see the rapid expansion of technologies like generative AI. You can't not hit generative AI these days in the news. 

And it's leading to more predictions of computers replacing all kinds of workers, including faculty and staff. But when we look at the capabilities of AI and compare that to the abilities and instructional strategies and dispositions of expert teachers, we don't think generative AI can do what effective teachers and academic advisors and student service professionals can do. We think we will still need talented professionals to support high levels of student success. 

Looking at the knowledge economy, we believe that the labor market value of higher education, which is currently at historically high levels, because the demand for educated workers is exceeding the supply of college graduates, we believe that that's going to continue. Long term trends indicate that the gap is going to get wider and not narrower, which is why when politicians from Governor Abbott to President Biden speak about the urgency of increasing the number of people with degrees and certificates, it's for the sake of the economic competitiveness of Texas or the United States. So we believe college will become even more important for social and economic mobility. 

And in addition, we believe that the economy of the future is going to place an increasing value on critical thinking. And in this presentation, we will talk about why a strong program in the humanities is essential for the development of critical thinking. Finally, looking at the business model, there is no denying that the cost of higher education, including at community colleges, has risen significantly faster than inflation for the past 50 years. 

And that is not going to be sustainable going into the future. And we will have to find ways to increase productivity. And generative AI might bring benefits in this regard, but it's really too early to know for sure. 

So those are the conclusions that we're going to support with the rest of the presentation. We know that these conclusions are broad and don't tell you exactly how many classrooms and offices we're going to need. But projecting decades into the future just doesn't allow that kind of specificity. 

Nevertheless, we hope that the information we present will allow us to make informed decisions about a facility's master plan. So we begin looking at enrollment. And the data in this table are from the projections of the population of Texas by the Hobby Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston.

(8:15 - 8:28)
These numbers were cross-referenced against projections done by the individual ISDs in our district. And the numbers are consistent. And so we are projecting a 57% growth by 2050.

(8:28 - 9:24)
Our current enrollment of not dual credit, not Huntsville students is around 4,500. We see that going up to 7,000 by 2050. From a facility's perspective, this could mean that we will need 50% more classrooms and 50% more space for student services like academic advising, financial aid, student services, tutoring, and so on. 

And we will talk about those projections a bit later. I want to talk about the assumptions underlying these numbers. So the assumptions are that natural population growth, which is just the difference between birth rates and mortality rates, from 2020 to 2050 will be about 0.6% annualized.

(9:24 - 10:51)
And that's about four times higher than the national rate, which is about 0.15%. But Texas, we're a little more fertile down here than in the rest of the nation. And that is what the demographers are predicting. Net migration includes both domestic and international migration. 

So migration from other states as well as immigration from other countries. And from 2020 to 2050, we are predicting a migration rate of 2.3% annualized. And that is the same as the average rate from 2000 to 2010. 

Now, migration from 2010 to 2015 slowed down. And if that remained constant, we'd have a rate of about 1.6% annualized. But in either case, migration is going to be three to four times larger than natural population growth. 

And while natural population growth is pretty steady, net migration is highly dependent on our economy, which attracts people to Texas, and national immigration policy. And both of those things can be volatile and out of our control. So we're doing the best we can just by extending past history.

(10:53 - 13:37)
But that's an area of uncertainty for sure. The third assumption is that the college going rate in the future will be the same as the college going rate presently. For example, presently, 8.4% of 21-year-old females living in our district attend Lee College. 

And so we're assuming that 30 years from now, 8.4% of 21-year-old females will attend Lee College. Now, the talent strong Texas strategic plan calls for the percentage of Texans with a degree or certificate to increase from 45% to 60% between now and 2030, which would require a substantial increase in the college going rate. So our assumption that it's not going to increase, but stay steady is probably a conservative assumption. 

But again, we just don't know what's going to happen to the college going rate in the future. The last assumption is that dual credit students, about 90% of our dual credit students are taught on their high school campuses by dual credit instructors because transporting them on buses to the main campus is costly and consumes instructional time. We're assuming that in the future, they will remain on their high school campuses. 

They will not be bused. Now, it's possible that more advanced high flex technology may allow dual credit students to virtually sit in a campus classroom, which might require extra facilities. But we have not included that in our projections. 

We're assuming that they're just going to remain on college campuses, on high school campuses. So the headline is 50% enrollment growth over the next 30 years. This is an exception, right? Most of our peer institutions are only experiencing growth in dual credit enrollment, and their regular enrollment is flat or slowly declining. 

And we're just different because we've just got rapid population growth, partly due to developments, and just partly due to our strong economy attracting migration to this area. And that is, as I said before, growth in our regular enrollment. So our second point is serving all students.

(13:37 - 13:52)
Yes. So the second element of the conceptual framework is serving all students. And the mission of the modern community colleges was defined by the Truman Report in 1947.

(13:53 - 16:55)
You can see that paraphrased here on the slide. These ideals were reiterated in 1981 in a report commissioned by President Reagan that became known as a nation at risk. More recently, the perspective has shifted from an emphasis on providing opportunities to individuals to developing talent to keep the United States competitive in the global economy. 

This is a significant shift from focusing on the needs of individuals to the needs of the national economy. But the bottom line is the same. We can't afford not to educate all students. 

Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity is not, is a popular quote. The table shows the effect of household income on enrollment and completion. 

Note that this table just looks at young adults who are dependents. So they are living at home and are supported by their families. We believe there are just as many potential college graduates in poor households as there are in wealthy households. 

And this chart shows us the work we have to do to make sure we are serving all students. This next table shows the effect of race and ethnicity and gender on degree attainment by age 24. And it includes everyone, not just those who are dependents. 

Again, we believe there are many potential college graduates who are male as there are who are female. The same applies to race and ethnicity. The mission of the community college is increasingly seen as focusing on converting non-college going students into college going students and providing support services to increase completion rates. 

Texas House Bill 8 clearly signals the direction for community colleges. State funding for enrollment was eliminated and replaced by funding for degree and certificate attainment and transfer. And dual credit is fully funded for economically disadvantaged students. 

So 40 years ago, student services were pretty basic. College was not designed for students who had jobs and children or who required help with basic needs. This excluded a lot of people from college and we can no longer afford to exclude them, nor can we afford to enroll them if they are not going to complete a degree or certificate.

(16:56 - 19:14)
We are already redesigning college for all students with a broad set of student services, but we still have large gaps in college going and college completion that we must close. So we might want to think that in the future the needs of students will decrease, but if we look at poverty rates in Texas for the past 40 years, we see ups and downs. We see the upward bumps due to recession and a recent downward bump due to the COVID relief funding, but poverty stubbornly persists. 

If we want to be the engine of economic mobility for families in poverty, we should assume that a 15% poverty rate is going to persist and we will need to complete, sorry, we will need a complete array of student services to support these students. So the headline is that student services are essential because we can't afford to waste human talent. And for community colleges that especially means developing the talents of students with children and jobs and unmet basic needs. 

And this, that means comprehensive student services. So now we're going to turn our attention to teaching and learning, which is the heart of higher education. The most important factor that determines how much students will learn is the quality of the instructor. 

The instructor is more important than the textbook, computers, lab equipment, furniture, instructional modality, or anything else. Research on expert tutors reveals an extensive set of abilities and strategies and dispositions that illustrate the art and science of teaching. I've given you a list of some of those characteristics to look at, but it shows just how effective teaching and learning is fundamentally built around the relationship between the student and the instructor.

(19:18 - 19:40)
Technologists sometimes fail to understand the relational nature of teaching and learning. Here are two quotes that I especially like, one from 1966, sort of the dawn of the computer age. This was in a Scientific American article that said, in a few more years, millions of school children will have access to a tutor just as good as Aristotle.

(19:43 - 20:11)
Okay. Great. But even in 2015, we had a quote from the CEO of a big data company saying, talking about his product, it's like a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind and figure out your strengths and weaknesses down to a percentile. 

Those are both exaggerated. Exaggerated. And even now we have talk about how AI is going to revolutionize everything.

(20:11 - 21:32)
I think we should remember that teaching and learning is fundamentally about relationships between instructors and students, and we want technology to help us increase our productivity, but we don't think that it's going to replace our faculty or staff. So this is a quote from a report released just last year by the U.S. Department of Education talking about artificial intelligence and saying, practically speaking, you need to keep a humanistic view of teaching front and center. And the department confidently responds, no, when asked, will AI replace teachers? And that is something that we agree with. 

So the third headline in our master plan is that people will remain central to the business of higher education and to Lee College. And now we're going to shift our focus and ask about the value of college education in the labor market. We know that a large majority of students go to college in order to get a better job.

(21:33 - 21:42)
And this is a graphic from the U.S. Department of Labor. At the top, you see students with doctoral degrees. At the bottom are students with less than a high school diploma.

(21:43 - 21:54)
On the left are the median weekly earnings. And you can see the more degrees you have, the more money you earn. On the right side in the green is the measure of the unemployment rate.

(21:54 - 23:42)
And again, the more degrees you have, the lower your unemployment rate. But that's today. Is it going to be that way in the future? So the race between education and technology is a theoretical framework that just uses the law of supply and demand to consider the value of a college education. 

And this graph actually goes back about 150 years. If you look at people born in 1880 who turned 30 in 1910, half of them had a bit more than seven years of schooling, and half of them had a bit less than seven years of schooling. And the number of years of schooling increased steadily for 70 years. 

Until we hit the birth cohort of 1950, they turned 30 in 1980. And after that, the number of years of schooling stopped increasing for 20 years and then grew slowly. But the demand for educated workers from 1980 to the present continued rising, driven by technology, leading to where we are today, which is a historically high wage premium for educated workers. 

Yeah, for educated workers. And so when Governor Abbott or President Biden speak about the urgency of increasing the number of people with degrees and certificates, which is what the state strategic plan is all about, this is the graph that they're looking at. And it seems very likely that higher education will be the key to getting a better job for the foreseeable future.

(23:43 - 25:32)
But we also have to ask, what are those jobs going to look like? What kinds of skills are they going to require? And so I'm going to ask for a little bit of imagination. There was a website on the best paying jobs of 2040. One of them is the AI debunker. 

This is a person who detects and to inform the public of fakeness by producing compelling evidence and narratives. We already have some AI debunkers now. Another one of the highest paying jobs of 2040 is the digital twin expert. 

In this imagining, our cities are equipped with sensors on everything from plumbing to electricity to traffic lights. And we have a virtual version of the city that's informed by what all those sensors are feeding it. And the digital twin expert can use that virtual city to run experiments to see how the city can perform better. 

And I should point out that currently our plants are running digital twins of their operations. They've got a virtual version of some of their plants that are fed by the sensors in the plants. So that's a job even today. 

And finally, we've got the augmentation specialist in the medical field. Older people wanting complex medical interventions to maintain a good life quality and younger people wanting to enhance themselves cognitively and physically. And so we need a person to design, develop, and maintain all of those skills and abilities.

(25:33 - 28:17)
And it's impossible to know if large numbers of people will be employed as AI debunkers and digital twin experts and artificial organ and augmentation specialists a couple of decades from now. But I think the job descriptions illustrate the kinds of knowledge-centric skills that are going to drive the future knowledge economy. The World Economic Forum recently published the future of jobs report for 2023. 

The most important skills were analytical thinking and creative thinking. And we believe that those skills will remain the most important skills in the future economy. So thinking about the curriculum of the future Lee College, we believe that wellness will be essential simply because physical and mental health are prerequisites to being able to learn. 

And those things must be explicitly taught to give students the best opportunity to succeed in college. Secondly, literacy and numeracy, again foundational to all of the higher order skills and abilities. Third, we have learning how to learn being increasingly important as the knowledge economy is going to require frequent upskilling to keep pace with technological progress. 

And this is one of the self-efficacy skills identified by the World Economic Forum. We have professional knowledge and skills which is going to be required in many career paths. But we're not sure what the bodies of knowledge and sets of skills that are valued in the labor market, they're just going to change in unpredictable ways as the future unfolds. 

We have career and technical knowledge and skills which are going to be required for workers who install and maintain and repair the millions of sensors and actuators and networks that provide the data for our knowledge economy and to support industrial production which will employ a smaller fraction of the workforce but is still going to be an important part of the economy. And finally, we have critical thinking which encompasses analytical and creative thinking, the two top skills identified by the World Economic Forum. Now, in the next several slides, I'm going to take a deeper look at critical thinking. 

And when we gave this presentation to a practice audience, they just didn't know where this part of the presentation was going. So I'm going to tell you up front. Critical thinking, we believe, will be the most essential skill in the knowledge economy.

(28:17 - 28:46)
And we believe it is developed most directly and explicitly by studying the humanities and the arts. And so the conclusion of this section is that although you hear lots of stuff about why do we study humanities, the reason is because it is very effective at developing logical thinking, rational thinking, and reflective judgment. And you're about to learn more about those three things than maybe you really want to, but we're going to do it anyway.

(28:48 - 30:58)
So logical thinking is familiar to everyone, includes deductive and inductive reasoning. And the examples you see here are pretty simple and obvious. But logical thinking in practice is quite complicated. 

I mean, lawyers, doctors, economists, engineers, policymakers, they master large bodies of knowledge so that they can inform their logical reasoning and produce answers to complicated questions. Rational thinking is distinctly different. It's the degree to which a person's decisions are aligned with their best interests or goals. 

And one might say, why would a person not make a choice in their own best interest? But there is a vast body of research showing that people often fail to make good choices due to internal biases that feel right, but lead to suboptimal outcomes. And this slide displays just two common biases that lead people to make poor choices. Confirmation bias, where you favor information that aligns with your existing beliefs, and you dismiss evidence to the contrary. 

And the gambler's fallacy believing that future probabilities are influenced by what's happened in the past. Unlike logical reasoning, which is very intentional and conscious, irrational thinking is often the result of subconscious thought. And courses, particularly in the humanities, ask students to examine their biases, reflect on errors in judgment, and conduct the rational analysis of decision making. 

Finally, looking at reflective judgment, it's different from logical and rational thinking because it focuses on how people formulate beliefs about ill-structured or vexing problems. And here we see three very typical vexing problems, often found in a philosophy course. And people can operate as pre-reflexive or quasi-reflective or reflective thinkers.

(30:58 - 32:41)
And pre-reflective thinkers, they basically think, what I've seen firsthand is what I know, and things that I hear from authority figures, that's also true. But that's kind of it. So they might say, yeah, I smoked pot recreationally, and I'm just fine, so it should be available for everyone. 

Very simplistic, it didn't hurt me, so it's got to be fine for everyone. They might say, I don't think I've ever experienced racism, so it doesn't exist. Again, their experiences are valid, but they seem to generalize and universalize them without really understanding the complexity of the situation. 

Now, quasi-reflective thinkers recognize that knowledge is sometimes uncertain. They understand that evidence is used to support conclusions, but they don't really know how to evaluate evidence. They tend to cherry pick the things that appeal to them, and they don't fully understand the complexity of questions like these. 

The reflective thinkers, on the other hand, accept that responses to vexing questions will require assumptions that are uncertain, but they can evaluate the reasonableness of those assumptions and use available data and information to support their claims, and they're willing to reevaluate their judgments as new data or methodologies become available. I know I've spent a long time talking about critical thinking, one of my favorite topics, but this is the most valuable skill for the future economy and the most difficult to develop. Logic and rationality and reflective judgment are not things that you can memorize.

(32:42 - 33:39)
They're not things that you can attain just by practicing some procedure over and over. They are beliefs and attitudes and abilities that you acquire slowly over years by encountering unfamiliar ideas and difficult questions and learning how to understand them and address them using the tools of knowledge and inquiry, and that is the heart of the study of the humanities, working through arguments and searching for value in an ocean of information that's around us. This quote is now over 30 years old, but I think it captures the importance of critical thinking, and every leader from the smallest local school board and city council or board of regents to the largest federal agencies and multinational corporations needs critical thinking skills because they have to take responsibility for leading an organization.

(33:40 - 34:13)
And so there are a lot of arguments out there about badges and small, well-defined sets of skills that you can accumulate, and I think they miss the importance of critical thinking because they're so focused on getting some small set of measurable and observable skills documented. So two more headlines. Education will remain valuable and will probably become more valuable, and critical thinking will be the most valuable skill.

(34:18 - 34:46)
And the final element in the conceptual framework is the business model of higher education. At the basic level, the business model can be represented by looking at four sources of revenue and two categories of operating expenses. And we're going to show that on the revenue side, state and federal funding have declined and will probably continue to decline, which increases the burden on students and their families.

(34:47 - 36:24)
On the expense side, costs have grown much faster than inflation because unlike other parts of the economy, there's very little automation in higher education. So our productivity hasn't increased like other sectors, and the result is an unsustainable business model. On the revenue side, state funding is the yellow bars. 

And we've all seen this slide, right? In 1980, 68% of Texas community college revenue came from the state. In 2020, it was 26%. Now, the Texas legislature has just increased our funding by 23%. 

Thank you very much. $400 million, very happy to have it. And that massive increase in community college funding comes at a time when Texas has a record tax surplus of $32.7 billion. 

Now, given the cyclical nature of the energy industry on which much of the economy depends, I think it's prudent not to count on record tax surpluses every year to give us funding increases for long-term projections. So while I greatly appreciate the increase, I'm not sure I want to say that a one-year increase makes up for 40 years of progressive reductions. If we look at Pell Grants, the maximum Pell Grant in 1971 to 72, the first year, was $1,400, which adjusted for inflation is about $10,000 today.

(36:25 - 37:28)
But the maximum Pell Grant today is $7,395. So there's been a real reduction in Pell Grants of about 30%. If we take a look at federal spending, we can see that education is about 2.4% of the budget. 

And a lot of people are looking into the future when education has to compete with other federal priorities, especially Social Security and Medicare, which take up about 40% of the budget. In 1950, there were 16 workers for every beneficiary. By 2000, there were 3.4 workers for every beneficiary. 

In 2040, there will be 2.1 workers for every beneficiary. This is just the natural result of declining birth rates and increasing lifespans. And federal spending on higher education is going to have to compete with Social Security and Medicare, which are mandatory programs.

(37:29 - 38:07)
In the future, we expect all areas of discretionary spending, including higher education, will experience cuts at the federal level in response to mandatory spending on the growing number of retired workers and their concomitant political power. And that creates a growing portion of the cost of higher education that's passed to students and their families. Looking at the cost of higher education for students and their families, we can see that it has significantly outpaced inflation for the past 50 years.

(38:08 - 41:04)
The increased cost is in part due to reduced state and federal funding, which shifted the burden onto families. But over the past 50 years, the cost of education adjusted for inflation has risen 340% nationwide. And Lee College is right in that mix, right? I grabbed the catalog from 1970 and calculated that our tuition and fees have gone up 315% for in-district and 344% for out-of-district students. 

So state funding has gone down, Pell grants are down 30%, tuition and fees up 340%. So about 70% of the budget is payroll in higher education because the vast majority of operations from new student orientation to classroom instruction to advising and campus security is performed by people. And unlike consumer goods, where automation has reduced the cost of production while increasing quality and capability, higher education has very little automation. 

The expenses associated with higher education are closely tied to the cost of labor and the cost of labor for highly educated workers in higher education has risen substantially. And we expect in the future that it will continue to go up because of the supply and demand problem with more demand for college educated workers and lower supply. And those increasing costs will make college unaffordable for low-income students who are exactly the students that community colleges must serve. 

The economy can't remain competitive if we don't educate those low-educated, those low economically disadvantaged students. Now a few slides ago, I was talking about critical thinking and vexing problems, and this is one of those vexing problems, right? The business model of higher education. One potential solution is to increase productivity using the new generative AI tools, but nobody at this point really knows how effective they will be. 

Now there are a lot of people out there talking about how to fix this vexing problem. I'll give you three common solutions. Solution number one is colleges are obsolete. 

We need to get rid of them, and everybody can just do their education online using free courses, and there can be programs provided by museums and hospitals and libraries and so on, but we just don't need college anymore. Except for the Ivy League. We'll keep them for the children of the elite.

(41:05 - 42:30)
Solution number two is, quote-unquote, make the government pay for it. It's just not that simple. We've seen the pressures that the federal budget is going to be under, and making the government pay for college is going to be a challenge. 

The third solution is don't make students pay for college up front. Just after they graduate, have them pay a percentage of their future income for 10 or 20 years. And I don't know, right, the Department of Education just released their new rules for repayment of student debt. 

It's exactly this. You pay 5% of your income for 10 to 20 years, depending on how much you've borrowed, and at the end of 10 or 20 years, no matter how much you still owe, it's just forgiven. So just pay a percentage of your income for 10 or 20 years, and we're done. 

I don't like those three solutions. I like the solution where we're in control of our destiny, but we can only do that if we increase productivity, because the cost of labor will continue to go up for highly educated workers. And as we think about facilities, we need to think, how do we design them to increase our productivity? Is this where I hand it off? I think so.

(42:40 - 42:57)
All right. So we do believe that if we're going to increase productivity, it will be through technology. Currently, we are seeing a rapid increase in digitalization and data usage.

(42:58 - 45:57)
There are projections that artificial intelligence will be integrated into learning methods with AI automated content and AI prompting by the end of 2029. During the following decade, futurists suggest education will become more efficient via AI autonomy with systems available to carry out mundane tasks that humans don't have time to do. The integration of virtual reality is currently in the beginning stages of implementation across education, and futurists suggest that by the 2040s, virtual reality and immersive technology will be part of the mainstream real world experiences. 

While it seems a bit fantastical to think about computer chip integration in the brain, Elon Musk's company, Neuralink, announced in January that it had implanted a brain reading device into a person for the first time. Some have suggested that the 2050s will deliver the promise of brain-computer interfaces where knowledge will be accessed more directly and immediately. The promises of rapid technology integration have been in place for some time, but reality has shown that regardless of the speed of technology, humans have moved at a slower pace than the projections. 

The integration of technology advancement is likely to happen over the next 25 years, but whether it occurs as fast as projected is yet to be seen. Technology will enhance, if not replace traditional classroom learning with new ways to explain topics, provide low-stakes tests to track comprehension, and adapt learning accordingly to help students progress. As indicated previously, technology will not replace the need for expert human instructors. 

In fact, as technology and artificial intelligence continue to infuse higher education, human contact, ensuring human connections, and human abilities to think critically will be vital. Most of the traditional classrooms as we know them will be replaced with simulated environments where a student can be underwater, studying marine biology, or on a job site welding a TIG weld. Education is more likely to be driven by student interest, informed by genetics and aptitudes with students grouped by skills rather than by age.

(45:57 - 48:34)
Language will no longer be a barrier as lessons will be automatically translated with instructors. It's intricate guides in the learning simulated environments for learning will be taught live by professional teachers and academics in both synchronous and asynchronous modalities. This will likely require state-of-the-art facilities, including science labs and music rooms with immersive technology. 

The term-based delivery of education will likely disappear with the ability to use AI to monitor and guide learning. Digital wallets and credentials earned through master classes and other virtual classes will become common. While classrooms will still exist, just as much learning will take place outside of the classroom and inside the digital classroom. 

Lifelong learning will be a part of everyday life. Tech skills for new technologies will be required along with critical thinking. Advanced technology does not mean the end of physical buildings. 

However, learning spaces may look very different than the traditional classroom. It is possible with the predicted integration of artificial intelligence, faculty may be able to teach larger groups of students at one time. Perhaps we might imagine a large room with diversified seating in which the walls and ceilings appear like movie screens and students are engaged in the content similar to the immersive Monet or Van Gogh experiences recently that toured through Houston. 

Rather than traditional model where faculty complete their teaching and office hours before going home to develop content for their next class or grading student work, we may see faculty going into labs to develop simulated content that addresses what the students missed in the class. In other buildings, both the traditional science lab along with simulation labs and virtual reality experience spaces could exist. While we don't know exactly what the architecture will be, we do know that we should anticipate new technology, diversified modalities for delivering content, and the possible potential of artificial intelligence supplementing current human higher education operations.

(48:36 - 50:50)
So the final headline is that productivity must increase and we're not sure how, but technology will play a big part. Before we finish, we are going to go out on a limb and make specific predictions of programs that will grow and will need facilities to support them. This doesn't mean that our other programs will disappear or shrink. 

As we plan future facilities, we need to ensure these programs have the room and the equipment that they will need. So as Dr. Walters has said several times, core curriculum with a focus on humanities is important and needs to continue to exist. Clearly in the age of knowledge, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and networking are very important to that economy. 

Additionally, instrumentation technology will continue to grow as more and more things are at the Internet of things, right? Additional growing programs include electrical technology, especially as we reduce the use of fossil fuels and try to mitigate climate change, process technology with the transition to hydrogen as a primary source of energy, logistics and supply chain as evidenced through the expansion of warehouses on 99, along with the expansion of the Port of Houston, and nursing and allied health. Though we haven't spoken a lot about nursing and allied health, it is important to recognize that Houston's future predicts one in six jobs will be added in the region between now and 2036. Other possible new programs include new technology, so clean tech, deep tech, sports tech, space tech, neurotech, all of these are different technologies that we suspect will grow and we may have to think about new programming.

(50:53 - 51:53)
So this brings us kind of back to where we started as we think about the need for increasing classrooms and student services to serve a larger number of students, right? We have to think about our physical locations, so we know that Chambers and Liberties County are continuing to experience rapid growth and we may need to consider building facilities near Dayton to serve these students. But we really don't know, we don't know how much will be online, we don't know how much will be virtual reality or augmented reality, it's just too early to determine. So that brings us back to where we started with our conceptual framework.

(52:01 - 55:23)
So thank you for going on this journey with us. I have to say we had a tough time getting our arms around the future of the college decades from now. And there are lots of books out there that we read to try to figure out what were the key trends for Lee College. 

And as we think about facilities and we think about the future, I think these are the things we have to keep in mind. Our growth, the fact that we really need to serve all students, that humans will remain very important for teaching and serving students. We're going to have to, I think we're going to have to maintain sort of our traditional general education core to develop critical thinking and somehow we have to make our productivity increase. 

We just can't do in the next decades what we've done in the past decades, which is just have our expenses grow so much faster than inflation. So we are available for questions. So what's the, say the decades to come, but we're facing a year tomorrow and a year the next year and a year the next year that are rapidly changing right now. 

This looks like we've looked deeper into the past, but when are we starting? I mean, what's the process? I kind of thought we were going to have a little bit more of a defined plan and not kind of this is kind of what the world looks like in the next 30 years. I thought we were going to kind of drive down a little deeper about what next year and next year and next year might look like. So I think that as a result of this work that we've done, we are, we think that for our facilities master plan, well, you know, maybe 40 years ago, we would have said, you know, we know every building we're going to need 50 years from now. 

So let's, you know, pass a bond and plan all these buildings and then they're going to be fine for the next 50 years. And I think what we're feeling as a result of this work is that we're going to need a phased idea. I mean, we're going to need to build a couple of buildings to get us through 10 years and then look at the landscape around us, plan another few buildings for another decade, look at the world around us and go in kind of 10 year steps rather than, oh, you know, higher education is stable, everybody understands it. 

We can just make a plan for the next 50 years. We, you know, this kind of brought us to that belief or that conception, which means we now have to think about sort of phase one, what it's going to look like, what we're going to need. And we haven't done that yet. 

Honestly, this, we've been working on this, honestly, for a year. But you mentioned that nursing or that medical field is going to be like one in six new jobs. Would that be kind of a priority is to attack the medical boom, maybe? I don't know.

(55:23 - 57:23)
We actually are in trying to seek the level two authority from our accrediting body, SACS. And so when we go out for our, and we're working on this now, our decennial reaffirmation, we're seeking a level change. And our sites are on the BSN being able to offer that baccalaureate of science and nursing. 

And what we know there is that it doesn't really require facilities. It's all done online. The other things that we know and we talked about today, we know that, again, the core curriculum is going to remain something that's going to be of importance. 

We know that we are in an area that is fueled by industry and liquid and gas, right, or L&G. And so we understand that, again, as Dr. Walzers and Lorelaine Worley talked about, things like process operations and instrumentation and analyzer tech, those are still going to remain important. But we are also working with ExxonMobil as they have long-term, well, actually short-term plans to build a blue hydrogen plant right here in Baytown, which would add not only billions of dollars to our tax base, but it would also require new programs like the drone technology that we talked about, like cryogenics that we do not have, and like cybersecurity and cloud computing, which we do have. 

And we know these things. But focused on plant operations as opposed to office operations. Right. 

And logistics and supply chain management continues to grow in this area. And so we know, as we look at the next 10 years, these are areas that we need to be prepared for now. And I think the campus in Montbellevue is going to have an expansive allied health curriculum.

(57:24 - 59:31)
So, yeah. So those, I think, are very good bets for the next sort of decade. But I also think it helps to have this big expansive vision to say, yeah, general education is not going to go away. 

And productivity is an important issue that we need to keep a long-term view about. I think most of what I heard is we're going to go this direction. It's the natural evolution of our college system in preparing for the future, both workers and providing opportunities for our students. 

I think what we've got to do is take this path forward and sort and figure out how we accommodate facilities to make all this happen. And obviously, there's some short-term things we can do. I mean, there's some things that we just need facilities, right? And others are the type of facilities we need. 

I think the old classroom, you know, exercise with four walls and a door, you know, I think what we're seeing is these very flexible buildings and classroom spaces that can easily change to accommodate a variety of programs that the space could use. And, you know, when we start looking at how we move forward with facilities, assess what we have, what will still work, you know, we're still going to have certain, you know, core classes that are just required for everyone. That's going to be the challenge is how do we architecturally design for the future? I think you stated, you know, 50 years ago, buildings were buildings. 

And as far as you could see, we all needed buildings. And I think what we're saying today is we still need facilities, but the type of facility and the way it serves us has to be very flexible and adaptable. And that's going to be the challenge.

(59:31 - 1:00:37)
I think that's right. And I would just add, I was thinking about this when I was listening to the presentation too, again, that what we know currently is in the state of Texas, the 50 community colleges as a whole, we serve 40% of all higher education students. But we disproportionately serve 70% of those who are underserved, marginalized, whatever term you want to call these students. 

And that number is growing. And so when we talk about the need for serving the whole student, that number is not going to go down. So we're at 70% now as a group of 50 community colleges. 

So we can anticipate that that number will just get higher and we need to prepare. I think several things guide us. I mean, you referenced to the Texas strong economy, which is building a talent strong Texas. 

Wasn't that the- 60 by 30. 60 by 30. And we're way, I don't know if you looked at that data, it's like we're way off.

(1:00:37 - 1:00:48)
Yeah. Well, COVID knocked a hole in our progress. I think we're going to continue to have these, they're not really mandates, but they are strong goals, right? They are strong goals.

(1:00:48 - 1:01:44)
And as long as there's funding provided to help reach those goals, then we should be doing everything we can. It's for the benefit of not only just our community, but our state and our country. We're always going to be chasing some mandate or strong recommendation that's put in front of us. 

I think we have since all the quotes that you read in your presentation. So I think things have worked well for our community, the way the college has operated in the last 90 years. I think we have the next 90 or 100 to look at. 

We can only plan for 30 to 40 in all reality. Yeah. Maybe not even that much with the way things have changed so quickly. 

But I think flexibility is going to be the key. How can we adapt? It would be very difficult to adapt this room into a different use, right? Yes. It is pretty- Yes.

(1:01:44 - 1:01:49)
It's pretty fixed on the way it's designed. And this is the way the design was. Yes.

(1:01:49 - 1:02:24)
For many years. That's right. But in the future, having an opportunity to have this type of arrangement and then in a week or so have a different arrangement is really what we're talking about when we look at facilities. 

I think we've been waiting from a facility standpoint for this to help the facilities component move forward. I think that's what you were trying to provide us. And I think that's going to require us to get with a very high-tech, high-end architectural firm that when we get to those stages that we're getting what we need.

(1:02:25 - 1:03:26)
And we do still have vendors like, what is the new Burning Glass MZ group? LightCast. LightCast. And so we do have companies like LightCast that will be able to tell us, and they study millions of job vacancies from around the country. 

And they can tell us, this is what the labor market needs are five, ten years out. And maybe not even five, ten years. But they can tell us that information. 

We know what's happening when I gave that list earlier. But we also know, too, that we're no longer just focused on access or even success in terms of completion. When we look at programs, and when I talk with Dr. Walzers and Annette and others, it is, one, will this particular program provide, will there be jobs, right? And will it provide, and by the way, will it be counted in our funding model is another question that we ask.

(1:03:26 - 1:04:46)
And will it provide family-sustaining wages? And if we can't answer those three questions affirmatively, then we're going to take a hard look at whether or not we should be offering that program. So I would, is it safe to assume that since a large percentage of the population that we and all community colleges serve, that most likely the success of those students once they complete is going to be an opportunity in the local area? I mean, you know, I think when folks go off to universities and they get these large degrees, the opportunities are all over the country, right? They are. But folks who, the lower income levels and that need the additional support of family and friends, most likely, I think, they do. 

They stay regionally. People with certificates and AAS degrees, they stay in the region. Which means those degrees and certifications should have jobs available here. 

Yes, right here. We should be focusing on what is needed here. Right. 

And not what might be needed across the country. And that's exactly what LightCast, that company, does. It tells us right here in our service area, not just Baytown, but in our entire service area, these are the kinds of fields, you know, these are the occupational codes that we need to be looking at.

(1:04:48 - 1:06:02)
Makes a lot of sense. And one thing I was hoping to see was maybe a slide or two on what where the ISDs see us, you know, in the same time period. Then maybe the four-year universities, hopefully they're doing the same exercises. 

And maybe just kind of a glimpse of what they're predicting on both sides of us, I think, would be valuable. Then also, I think technology, when I say that, I mean, like air conditioning, heating, electrical, those things are not going away. Automotive repair, you know, those things we should be able to see coming and maybe plan or open up some programs for those things. 

So we did compare the numbers from the Center on Population Growth at the University of Houston to the ISD projections for all of the ISDs in our area. And the numbers were quite comparable. So looking at what the ISDs are predicting versus what this Center at the University of Houston is predicting, they were consistent with each other.

(1:06:02 - 1:08:06)
Now, you know, I haven't talked to ISDs. I'm not sure that they have sort of long-range CTE, you know, career technical education plans. Yeah, I haven't seen that. 

Yeah. I mean, it would be good to, I think, to kind of know what they're planning, you know, as a large group, because we're going to need to kind of piggyback on some of that, I would think. Yeah, I would think a lot of you today, and I would think a lot of the steward career technical high school programs that we do partner with them on are part of that CTE progression on that's going to continue on, I think, autobody, you know, and so on. 

So yeah. And with regard to the universities and Dr. Walzers or Lorelei Morley, you might think differently, but one of the things that I keep coming back to with regard to them is that some universities, I'll just say this in a positive way, some universities are much more astute at understanding the value proposition of ensuring that students from community colleges matriculate and become students at their universities. Yes. 

Some are much better than others at understanding that value proposition. As we, you know, are now continuing to face what we need to change and address to ensure that more of our students transfer. That's one of the overarching themes that I come to. 

Thank you. Thank you. So now Annette's taking all of this and she's plugging it into the facilities master plan. 

You got somewhere you got to be? You got somewhere you got to be? Thank you for me. I wasn't trying to end the meeting. If there's no more questions, we'll move on to the next item, which is matters of concern for future agenda. 

Hearing none, next item is adjournment. Thank you very much.