2024 Year in Review

AUGUSTA, ME — In 2024, Maine’s community colleges continued to deliver on their promise of offering an affordable, accessible, high-quality education to Mainers across the state. The colleges and system took concrete steps to improve access with ongoing Free College scholarships, expanding popular academic programs, and vastly increasing the number and type of short-term workforce training.

The year’s highlights include:

• TRANSFER: Unveiling three new transfer programs: the sweeping “Transfer ME” program with the University of Maine System that streamlines MCCS college grads into a hassle-free guaranteed direct admission to a UMS college; a similar Maine Transfer Guarantee program with six private college in Maine; and the Black Bear Advantage program that guarantees direct admission to MCCS college graduates to UMaine.
• ENROLLMENT: Enrolling a second straight year of record fall enrollment at the colleges, in large part due to the success of the Free College scholarship program and the expansion of high-demand programs.
• PARTNERSHIP: Joining the new Maine Defense Industry Alliance as a founding member, and securing the group’s first $6.5M investment to expand manufacturing and trade facilities and programs at York County Community College.
• FUNDING: Securing a transformative $75 million grant that funds another five years of short-term workforce training programs at MCCS’ Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce.
• INNOVATION: Garnering national media attention for our leading-edge model of developing short-term workforce training in close collaboration with Maine employers, including stories in Forbes.com, Inside Higher Ed, The Job newsletter, Evolllution, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
• LEADERSHIP: Hiring Kristen Miller as the new president of Southern Maine Community College, and Angela Buck as interim president of Northern Maine Community College.
• STRATEGIC VISION: The Board of Trustees approved the latest MCCS Strategic Vision, a roadmap for the system that brings our mission, vision, and values into sharp focus and lays out our priorities and goals for our students, employees, and employer partners over the near- and long-term.
• SPEAKERS: Attracting Governor Janet Mills and Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro as graduation speakers.
• NEW STUDENT FACILITIES: Announcing plans to add student housing at Kennebec Valley Community College in 2025. Unveiling the system’s first Veteran’s Resource Center at Southern Maine Community College, and a first-in-the-state First Responder Training Center that opened in Alfred in collaboration with York County Community College. Central Maine Community College is expanding Kirk Hall, which houses its health care programs..

And, of course, our students are at the center of all we do. Read a handful of their inspiring stories:

• Thomas Bailey went from homeless vet to BIW employed.
• Southern Maine Community College culinary students won the Maine Restaurant Week breakfast cook-off.
• Eastern Maine Community College graduate Marilou Ranta won a coveted James Beard award for outstanding hospitality at her restaurant, The Quarry in Monson.
• Women at the Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center graduated from a short-time workforce training welding course as part of a pre-release program, with several landing union welding jobs upon release.
• Kristen Crowley enrolled while incarcerated with the Second Chance Pell Program, graduating with a 4.0 and honored as the Washington County Community College Student of the Year.