Chris Gray, Ph.D.
Founding President, Erie County Community College of Pennsylvania
Last year, I happened upon a social media post that offered a surprisingly fun way to usher in the new year. At precisely 11:56:20 pm, cue up "In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins, and the iconic drum solo lands at the exact stroke of midnight. There's something oddly satisfying about that moment: a slow build to a crescendo in a sort of inevitability not unlike the march of time itself. The new year invites that same kind of reflection. It asks us to look forward with hope while also looking back with brutal honesty, much like the two-faced Roman god Janus, who gazes simultaneously at where we've been and where we're headed.
As the new year is upon us, I've found myself doing a great deal of looking back. Like any year, this one brought its share of challenges. It tested our patience and our resilience, and time and again, we rose to meet those challenges. I could not be prouder of what we have accomplished together.
As we prepare to close the door on what has been, for many, a tumultuous year, it feels fitting to pause and take stock of EC3 in 2025. What we see when we do that is growth, and that matters.
This year, we celebrated 130 graduates. That number alone tells a powerful story. It represents nearly five times the size of our 2023 graduating class and almost double that of 2024. Behind each of those diplomas is a student who persisted amidst challenges far beyond classroom academics. College is not easy, nor is it supposed to be; however, it's absolutely worth the work, and these students have absolutely been doing the work!
Our graduates came from across our programs, reflecting the breadth of pathways EC3 offers. Students completed credentials in Management, General Studies, Manufacturing, Health Sciences, Information Technology, and Criminal Justice. Each program serves a different purpose, but all share the same goal: preparing students to move forward with whatever comes next.
We also saw our course success rate rise to 81%, a number well above the national benchmark of 75% and nearly 25% higher than where we stood in Fall 2021. That kind of progress doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of intentional support from dedicated faculty and staff coupled with determined students who are willing to keep showing up, even when it's hard. That's grit in action.
While many of our students continue to come to us from downtown Erie zip codes, EC3's reach extends across the county. We now serve learners at four locations: EC3 West, EC3 Summit, EC3 Corry, and EC3 at Youth Leadership Erie. This is part and parcel of our pledge to meet our students where they are and make college education opportunities more accessible across our region.
I began my last post with a lyric from "Deck the Halls," and it feels fitting to end this post with one of the final lines from that same song. So, here we go:
"Hail the new year, lads and lasses."
Indeed. Here's to all the work that we'll do together to change our community next year! Cheers to 2026!
Our community. Your college.
