Dr. David Sam has been the president of Elgin Community College for a decade, and he shares his experience at the college.

When did you first start here at ECC?

“Feb. 12, 2007”

Why did you apply to come to ECC?

“I started my community college career here in Illinois, and I was fortunate enough to have a mentor who recruited me me to work for her.  When I was in Illinois, I married my wife, who is also from Ghana. She has several relatives here as well. While travelling all around, our goal was to come back to Illinois. And so at a certain time, I started looking and Elgin was one of the institutions that was recruiting and I knew about Elgin’s great reputation so I decided to apply.”

What’s one of your biggest accomplishments at ECC so far?

“The mission of the college is to make sure we improve people’s lives through learning. For me, I would consider my biggest accomplishment is making sure that more people have improved their lives through learning than any other thing.

My biggest accomplishment was not done by me, it was done by all of us. Wonderful faculty who taught all these people, wonderful staff and administrators who made sure these students got where they needed to go, and accomplished their goals.

That’s what I look at, the number of students that have been here for the last decade, and whether they have been here for a semester, or two, or three, or four we help them move toward their goals, and I think we, as an institution, have accomplished that.”

You also helped renovate and rebuild the campus as well, right?

“Yes, that’s true, We rebuilt it . This campus has been here since the early 70’s and in the last six or seven years, we’ve had major additions such as the library, building A, building K and we have a center in Burlington for police officers, firefighters, EMTs. We also have renovations of older buildings. Jobe lounge was close to about half the size of what is is now. Classrooms have been updated and modernized. But what happens in those classrooms are most important.”

Do you plan to be here for 10 more years?

“Well, retirement will happen one day, I don’t know. But I consider myself religious, whatever God has planned for me and everything I will be happy with that. Because God has blessed me here and does he have another plan for me? I don’t know.”

Do you have any personal goals as president for the next few years?

“Yes,  first of all, we are going through a new strategy plan.  Two big things that are coming up are guided pathways, helping student to have a clear pathway.

Also working more closely with business to respond to the needs of our community. In the last several years, we’ve been talking about helping students become ready for college, but we are finding that more and more students are already college ready by their junior year and we want to help them get college credits before they graduate. The goal as of now, come May 2019, is to help students to get their associate degrees before they get their high school diplomas in June.

Its a win-win-win for all. The school districts win, the parents win, the students win and we win because we get some outstanding students to work with.”

What’s the biggest struggle you’ve had at ECC?

“Well, you can point straight to finances. The state resources have been dwindling, we’ve been able to maintain to the quality of excellence we have here, but the resources have dwindled. I look at it and I tell myself that it’s like the game of Jenga and now we are pulling some pieces, and so how long will it remain standing? There are things that I value a lot, like tutoring. Tutoring is an outstanding service, but if things keep going this way, we have to look at reducing hours, I don’t know. I’m using that an example. But we don’t want to have to cut something as critical as tutoring.”

Are there any upcoming challenges to you anticipate, like labor strikes or layoffs?

“Possibly, because with dwindling resources, it becomes very difficult to make the adjustments that you need. We’ve worked very well within our parameters with the union, and we’ll continue to work well with them. The state’s financial situation is no secret, people know that, all that we have to do is keep working hard and make sure we are able to serve all the constituencies well.”

Last question, what’s your favorite color?

“Blue! Spartan blue. Long before I even got here, that was my favorite color. My car is blue! It works out perfectly.”