COURT HOUSE – Krista Fitzsimons has taken on a new challenge. The speed-talking, energized woman who has balanced a full-time county position with elective office as a Wildwood commissioner has left the county for the campus, the Cape May County campus of Atlantic Cape Community College.
Fitzsimons was named director of the campus. She assumed her new position in October.
Fitzsimons comes to the new role with a background in marketing, sales, and grants management. She worked for the county Human Services Division of Aging and Disability, where she was successful in gaining grant funds for county initiatives.
Prior to her county employment, Fitzsimons spent 12 years with the Morey Organization in various sales and marketing roles. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Fitzsimons says she likes a challenge, and she certainly will get one in her new position. The last few years have been difficult ones for community colleges, which have lost significant enrollment, especially over the two years of the pandemic.
As recently as 2014, two-year community college enrollment was 42% of all undergraduate enrollment in the nation’s institutions of higher education. The National Center for Education Statistics shows that in 2022, those same two-year institutions represented 34% of total college undergraduate enrollment.
Atlantic Cape Community College has had its own enrollment challenges over these same years, with the Cape May County campus losing enrollment at an even steeper level than the main campus in Mays Landing.
Part of the reason for the enrollment decline was a drop in the number of high school graduates in the county. Although the overall population loss in the county slowed, according to the 2020 census, the county did continue to age, with an older population growing at the expense of a younger one.
The $15 million branch campus near the county zoo in Court House opened in 2005. The 68,000-square-foot facility sits almost dead center in the county, 18 miles from Cape May Point in the south and 16 miles from Beesley’s Point in the far north.
Fitzsimons says one early priority is to make the campus and its offerings better known in the county community. She says the campus is a facility with much to offer county residents. The task is to let the community know more about this hidden asset.
Making the college and its programs more relevant to county residents is another job Fitzsimons sees as critical.
“I want to dissect the county, find out its needs and position the campus to meet many of those needs,” she said during a recent discussion.
Fitzsimons admits she needs time to understand the best way to position the campus to meet targeted needs in the community.
She spoke of the need for stronger ties with the county technical school district in workforce training, the expanded nursing program, and the new culinary certificate options now available at the county campus, as well as Atlantic Cape’s drone program relocation to Cape May County.
For Fitzsimons, the challenge is to take this somewhat hidden county asset and make it a central contributor to the academic life of the community and a vital partner in helping residents meet their career aspirations.
The only higher education asset in Cape May County is the Atlantic Cape campus. Fitzsimons has taken on the challenge of making this institution speak directly to the varied needs of the county. The challenge is great, and the potential rewards are greater.
Thoughts? Questions? Contact the author, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.
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