After a year mentoring under then Southeastern Illinois College President Jonah Rice, Dr. Karen Weiss has taken the reins and is about 4 months into her role as the leader of the community college. She stopped by Carmi Kiwanis Thursday to share her story and update club members on how things are going. She says transitioning in that manner with a full year of shadowing to go from an operations focus to procedures and vision made a huge difference. As far as how things are going? Pretty good she says.
We’ve just been making progress on our Carmi building. The first phase is completed. We actually have classes going on. I’ve brought Griffin [Hart] here before to talk about some of those classes. We have two certificate programs that students can get while they’re in high school at that facility. We’re working on our second phase, which hopefully that will be completed late spring. And at that time, we plan to have a Grand Opening for the public to come in. I know a lot of people have been in to see the facility, but with the new addition, it’s going to be one big facility that everybody can come in and view the classrooms and what we’ve really done there.
Other work she’s been focused on include board relations, state initiatives, and meeting with department heads. Dr. Weiss also touched on the CTE (Career and Technical Education) program, expanded children’s programming, and ag in a partnership with Rend Lake. Additionally, she says some new programming including healthcare centered and enriching workforce development in the region.
You can find much more on WROY WRUL News’ coverage on Weiss and SIC over the past few months below
https://www.wrul.com/local-news/open-line-on-demand-sic-president-dr-karen-weiss
https://www.wrul.com/local-news/weiss-and-rice-discuss-ceo-leadership-transition-at-sic
https://www.wrul.com/local-news/dual-credit-and-early-college-programs-a-big-hit-at-sic
Learn more about Southeastern Illinois College at http://www.sic.edu.
