Kathy Murphy, president of Gadsden State Community College held a town-hall meeting at Gadsden’s Cherokee Campus Tuesday evening. The goal of the town-hall was to garner feedback from the community on ways to increase enrollment at the campus. Murphy reassured the crowd that she was committed to Cherokee.

Murphy shared enrollment data with the town-hall crowd of around 20 community members; in the summer term of 2022, Gadsden State’s Cherokee campus had one hundred and twenty two students enrolled for eight hundred and three credit hours. In the fall there were one hundred and ninety-three students enrolled for one thousand two hundred and forty seven credit hours. This at a campus with a capacity for well over 700 students and a history of 400 plus students attending at a time.

City Council-member Kay Davis spoke about the enrollment at Gadsden state in the past, and voiced her thoughts on how to increase it at the Cherokee campus today. Other feedback from the community included; having more coverage of pre-professional courses, such as English, Math, and Sciences at the campus so that students weren’t forced to campuses further away. The idea was proposed to build on-campus or acquire nearby dedicated student housing to attract young students. Adult education and continuing education was also addressed as Cherokee and surrounding counties have a high number of adults aged 19 or older with no high school diploma or college degree.