CACC President Jeff Lynn speaks at Prattville Chamber Luncheon  

Malia Riggs 

Elmore Autauga News  

The Prattville Area Chamber of Commerce hosted their monthly Chamber Luncheon at the Catfish House in Millbrook, with guest speaker Jeff Lynn, the president of Central Alabama Community College.  

The luncheon was sponsored by Jackson Thornton where Principal of Jackson Thornton Rusty Golden, not only introduced Lynn as the guest speaker, but also introduced Lynn with his extensive accolades in workforce and economic development throughout the southeast.  

Lynn has over 20 years of experience in the workforce and economic development, applying his vast skillset to CACC since 2016. Lynn helped to start and implement the LED FastStart, which was nationally recognized as the number one workforce development program in the U.S. for over seven years in Louisiana.  

Lynn is also a certified economic developer trainer with more than 30 years of experience in manufacturing and corporate headquarters, IT technology centers, custom support centers, and other business operations, Golden started introducing Lynn.  

Lynn’s presentation centered around CACC, where Lynn gave an update regarding matters centering around CACC.  

In his presentation, Lynn touched on the industries and universities that CACC feeds into locally and on a much bigger scale. Stating that community colleges are growing rapidly, and CACC specifically is up 16% this semester, Lynn confirmed.  

“The beauty of what we do as a junior college, our youngest students are in the eighth grade, and our oldest students are in their 70’s and 80’s. We take people where they are, and we get to where they need to be to get employed,” Lynn said.  

CACC has four programs that are prominent with the students attending CACC classes Lynn stated, credit programs, workforce development programs, non-credit programs and financial education are the main pillars within the CACC curriculum.  

Lynn also touched on their quickly growing sports programs on the Prattville CACC campus, and the recent expansions of the Prattville campus with the new nursing and science wings that opened in January of this year. 

 While programs are quickly expanding, so are other opportunities. Lynn explained the dual-enrollment opportunities for high school students in the river region. CACC offers dual-enrollment for all high school students across the state with over 40 high schools throughout Alabama that feed into CACC, Lynn confirmed. 

Lynn also noted the AI, IT and technology advancements, and trying to stay up to date on those advancements within the courses taught. Lynn stated a lot of the courses are now dated, however CACC was the first two-year school to start teaching AI in the state. 

“We are growing. We are really growing rapidly. But I always tell everybody that we need to be the best college we can be with professional service and with a focus of taking care of the students,” Lynn said.