News Photo by Temi Fadayomi The Alpena Community College Board of Trustees sit together at their board meeting on Thursday. They unanimously approved a resolution in support of expanding student housing on the Alpena campus.

ALPENA — The Alpena Community College Board of Trustees unanimously agreed to sign a resolution in support of expanding student housing on the Alpena campus during their board meeting on Thursday.

“The Alpena Community College Board of Trustees unanimously support expanding student housing opportunities on the Alpena campus,” ACC Board of Trustees Chairman John Briggs said. “The Board of Trustees encourage all interested parties to pursue activities which lead to the addition of new housing opportunities.”

A particular element in the process that Briggs drew attention to was ensuring that any new housing would be accessible to everyone.

“We want housing that doesn’t deal with accessibility issues,” Briggs said. “We need to do that if we’re going to be welcoming to everybody.”

During the discussion about the resolution, Briggs mentioned that ACC is likely missing out on several great students due to the limitations in housing and that being able to house more students on campus is going to be a necessity for ACC’s growth.

“Unfortunately, we’re losing a lot of qualified students,” Briggs said. “As much as we can do remote and online, there’s hands-on skills and training that has to take place in the lab.”

According to ACC President Don MacMaster, the hope with passing this resolution is to have something to show to possible donors or state representatives that indicates that student housing is a necessity of the college and a priority that the board and MacMaster are in agreement on.

“I think this will be direct enough,” MacMaster said. “You never know what the definitive answer is until you get the outcome, one way or the other, either issue will be helpful.”

Towards this goal, the ACC has already been awarded a $1.75 million Directed Spending appropriation from Congress that will be used to add 32 more beds of on-campus housing.