SLCC President Attends White House Event on Expanding College Access

Salt Lake Community College President Deneece G. Huftalin on Thursday joined President Obama, the First Lady, and Vice President Biden along with hundreds of college presidents and other higher education leaders to announce new actions to help more students prepare for and graduate from college. 

The White House College Opportunity Day of Action was intended to support the President’s commitment to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders, and nonprofits to support students across the country to help our nation reach its goal of leading the world in college attainment.

“Community colleges are vital to create short-term technical training to meet workforce demands in STEM,” said Dr. Huftalin. “I am so proud to have represented Salt Lake Community College at the College Opportunity Day for Action Summit at the White House, and to have shared the innovative work of our faculty to help students complete college in a highly skilled and timely way.”

Event participants were asked to commit to new action in one of four areas: building networks of colleges around promoting completion, creating K-16 partnerships around college readiness, investing in high school counselors as part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative, and increasing the number of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

The President announced new steps on how his Administration is helping to support these actions, including announcing $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college.  Thursday’s event is the second College Opportunity Day of Action, and included a progress report on the commitments made at the first day of action on January 14, 2014.