Southwestern Michigan College President David Mathews presented the annual “State of the College” address to SMC’s Board of Trustees during its meeting Monday on the Dowagiac campus.

According to Mathews, “Student academic success continues to be the top institutional priority of SMC. In 2010, the college achieved its highest rankings yet. The latest National Community College Benchmarking Project report ranked SMC in the top 1 percent in the nation for transfer student success.

“The benchmarking study provides objective, external confirmation of the effectiveness of SMC’s approach to teaching and learning,” explained Mathews. “In addition to the success that our students achieve once they transfer, the Benchmarking data also shows a truly remarkable fact: SMC’s success rate for students who enroll in ‘hybrid’ classes that blend face-to-face and online instruction placed the college in the 100th percentile nationally. In other words, SMC’s success in hybrid classes is literally unsurpassed nationally.”

Looking forward to a future with uncertain state funding for higher education, Mathews expressed concern and optimism, saying: “Currently, $6.4 million of the college’s $20 million annual budget comes from state funding. This is down $800,000 from $7.2 million in 2001-2002. Although we hope that this decline will not continue, the college’s strategy of becoming the college of first choice through quality, superior student success, and through student life has, and will continue, to serve us well.”