Boosting student retention and reducing the overall cost of tuition are two priorities for Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College’s new interim president Brooke Justice.

Justice, formerly the vice president of student services for six years, stepped into the role after the former president, Phil Neal, left SKyCTC last month to join leadership at the college system’s state level. Justice’s previous position involved numerous offices, departments and programs, including the Admissions Office, Office of the Registrar, Career and Academic Planning Center, Student Life and Engagement, Marketing and Public Relations, and “TRIO,” the latter being SKyCTC’s federal programs for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On Thursday, Justice spoke with the Daily News about her focuses for the coming year. Her first priority, she said, is to do “everything we can” to improve student success.

Justice said achieving that means working on student retention, which has risen to almost 60% in the past couple of years. For the 2022-23 class, the most recent cohort with available retention data, it’s 65%, she said.

Asked about primary ways to increase retention, Justice said she wants to ensure SKyCTC’s wraparound support services are accessible. Justice added that SKyCTC distributes surveys to identify non-academic barriers, and she highlighted the college’s student emergency fund.

Justice also pointed to SKyCTC’s new partnership with Bettermynd, an online therapy service for students.

“We always want to make sure we can provide the resources that we have available and accessible to us,” she said. “Most importantly, we want to make sure that we’re supporting the whole student.”

Affordability – “continued efforts to reduce the overall cost of the college tuition” – will also remain a big focus, she said. SKyCTC’s website calls the college’s tuition the “lowest … in the state.”

Justice spotlighted the SKY Merit Scholarship, an automatically applied sliding-scale financial award of $1,000 to $4,000 for first-time, first-year students who graduated high school within the past 12 months and obtained a GPA of 2.5 or higher, according to SKyCTC’s website.

She also pointed to the “dual-credit to finish” scholarship, which automatically provides a $5,000 annual award to students who “complete nine or more SKYCTC dual credit hours with a SKYCTC GPA of 3.0 or better,” according to the college website.

Also, she said, there’s the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship, where students pursue high-wage, high-demand careers within technical programs.

Asked about challenges, Justice noted the demands students grapple with.

“Students are constantly bombarded with different competing demands on their time, so it’s just helping students to prioritize and make sure that they have the appropriate supports,” she said.

For example, Justice said, there are the school’s tutoring services as well as its “first-year experience” classes. The latter, she said, help students identify the time commitments needed to complete their studies as well as commitments outside the classroom.

“More than anything, we just want to make sure that we are providing a stable environment to make sure the student comes to campus and to make sure that they are receiving the education that they need,” she said.

Speaking on last year’s accomplishments, Justice highlighted SKyCTC’s new Medical Laboratory Technician program.

“That definitely is providing a pipeline for the local hospitals and also the local medical facilities,” she said. “So, I think that is phenomenal in our effort to provide a stable economy.”

As for state funding, Justice said, “We’ll continue to be good stewards of the appropriations that we’re allotted, so definitely anything that the legislature would like to provide for us, we’re more than likely to use that appropriately.”