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The meteoric rise in enrollment at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) was as remarkable as it was unprecedented, resulting in the largest number of students in the Atlanta-based community college’s history. But what was even more phenomenal was the ability of the leaders of GPC to get the campus community to perform mental gymnsatics in order to wrap their minds around a complete transformation of the way things were done. Frank Nash, the dean of student services and the interim director of GPC’s Alpharetta campus, says, “The efforts were really led from a number of directions. But I would say an activist president [Dr. Anthony Tricoli], facing the realities of losing 300-plus employees, [was the motivation].”

Nash said Trioli generated enough of a groundswell of support that it blasted open the floodgates of change. Nash and vice president Lisa Fowler, under the auspices of Tricoli, led a myriad of task forces to fundamentally alter the processes of recruitment, admissions, financial aid procurement, communications and governance. Those efforts coupled with campus-wide support, led to a jaw-dropping upswing in student attendance and recruitment. “That came from working in the college community. We solicited input. We heard what people said. It included full-time and part-time students, frontline people, faculty, permanent administration personnel [and] our leadership. Everybody had the same level of participation,” Nash says. “We went to the larger community [and] we talked with businesses [and] people who are involved [in] supporting higher education. They told us what they thought would be helpful. Then we pulled it all together.”

Nash says that creating an awe-inspiring 7,000-student increase in just eight months was “an extraordinary opportunity to step up [to]. Lisa and I did. But we weren’t the only ones. We were able to draw it out, and were able to get people to join. And we did it.” -terry shropshire

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