If there's one quality that WICHE's home region, the West, is famous for, it's endurance in the face of crisis. And if there's another, it's the ability to find--and make--opportunities even in tough times. Over the last fiscal year, WICHE has done just that. The organization has been highly successful in terms of developing new projects and securing funding for them from a variety of foundations and other organizations. States have received excellent value for their support over the last year. It has worked directly with a number of them--including California, New Mexico, Oregon, and North Dakota--to help them find solutions to challenges in a number of areas, including higher education finance, performance-based funding, governance structures, and accountability. In addition, WICHE has seen a record number of students participating in the Student Exchange Program: over 28,000 enrolled in the Western Undergraduate Exchange, Professional Student Exchange, and Western Regional Graduate Program last year. Its research efforts were particularly strong in fiscal 2011. It advanced its work on the multistate longitudinal data exchange project and helped to launch another multistate initiative, the Predictive Analytics Reporting Framework project. The organization secured resources for a new project, the North American Network of Science Labs Online, and continued its efforts on the College Access Challenge Grant Consortium and Network. It wrapped up its work on the Non-traditional No More project--and thanks to the depth of experience it gained through it, WICHE was selected as the national administrator for the Adult College Completion Network. It launched a new partnership, the Western Alliance of Community College Academic Leaders, a companion to its four-year-college-focused Western Academic Leadership Forum. And the Mental Health Program initiated and worked on many projects in a wide range of areas last year, from behavioral health training to meet the needs of returning soldiers to rural mental health and mental health first aid. Over the last fiscal year, the work of its commission--under the leadership of Chair Joseph Garcia, Vice Chair Bonnie Jean Beesley, and Past Chair Thomas Buchanan--has been a major assist in helping shape the organization's agenda so it can achieve its goals in five focus areas: finance, access and success, workforce and society, technology and innovation, and accountability.