Kent State adult learners Chris and Jennifer Petrovic receive their degrees at a surprise commencement ceremony.
photo courtesy
of Kent State University |
CE Units Play Essential Role in Inter-Institutional Partnerships
From the December 2007 Issue of InFocus (PDF)
In an effort to further their missions and expand their reach, colleges and universities are partnering to meet regional workforce and
education needs. Continuing education units are developing inter-institutional alliances to expand their capacity, reach new place bound
working adults, and build a skilled workforce qualified to meet current and future occupational requirements.
In Eastern Ohio, Adult Learners ‘Complete to Compete’
The eastern half of Ohio, which stretches from the Appalachian Mountains in the south to the legacy manufacturing region in the north, is seeing a shift in workforce
requirements that threaten to leave a working class largely made up of those without college degrees unqualified for professional advancement. In an effort to raise
awareness of educational offerings among workers in the region, Kent State University and the
University of Ohio
have partnered on the Complete to Compete initiative.
Its primary focus is on some 450,000 adult workers in eastern Ohio who have some college coursework, but have not completed a degree.
"We started talking about how we could promote access, and reach out to eastern Ohio and say that to compete in today's economy, you have to complete a degree," says Patricia
Book, Vice President for Regional Development at Kent State University. While there are socio-economic differences between Kent State's northeast section of the state and
Ohio University's southeast region, the two institutions together have 14 branch campuses that overlap in between. And, says Book, "regardless of what part of eastern Ohio you
are in, continuing education is increasingly an entry credential to get into these jobs. [Employers] are looking for associate degrees now, where it used to be a high school
diploma."
The two institutions pooled funds and began a marketing blitz, primarily advertising in local newspapers, which Book says garnered a tremendous response-"you assume everyone
knows you're there after 100 years, and they really don't," she says. Adult students enroll at the institution closest to where they live; the institutions have a tuition
reciprocity agreement in place and have begun work on collaborative programs, with more to come. As word gets out, both institutions have seen their enrollments climb, little
by little, in a region where success must be tempered against longstanding social norms. "The bottom-line measure of success is increasing enrollments, and getting students
into higher education, and we have been successful in that," says Book. "We have challenges in a region where people haven't had to continue their education to be successful in
achieving a middle class lifestyle, so there are cultural barriers insofar as people may not see a need for education." Some counties in the region have just a 10-percent
baccalaureate degree attainment rate, as compared to a national average of nearly 30 percent. "You don't change cultural attitudes overnight, but we feel like we are successful in
getting the word out," Book says. "It hasn't been dramatic, but a slow, steady growth."
CE Units Join to Bolster West Coast Biotech Industry
The field of biotechnology offers a unique set of challenges for project managers, who must navigate various discoveries, development, testing, and manufacturing processes
in a highly regulated environment. To address emerging industry needs for qualified project managers in the west coast biotech centers of Seattle and San Diego, a pair of
CE units have partnered on a joint program.
University of California, San Diego Extension and the
University of Washington Extension are expanding their capacity and market by offering a joint online Biotech Project
Management Certificate Program. In this non-credit certificate program, students take two courses from UW, followed by two from UCSD.
The UW Extension courses address the fundamentals of project management, and the biomedical courses from UC San Diego apply the foundation principles to biotech product
development project management processes. The courses address the unique project management challenges in the pharmaceutical and biomedical industries. Students who
successfully complete the four courses receive a UW-UC San Diego joint certificate.
Big 12 Engineering Consortium Addresses Workforce Need
Efforts to slow global warming have sparked a renewed interest among scientists and environmentalists in nuclear power, and an anticipated workforce shortage in an industry
already in need of qualified engineers. Big 12 institutions serve the states of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas, where demand for nuclear engineers
continues to rise. But in the region, where some 90 percent of undergraduate engineering students attend college in their home state,
only four universities-Kansas State University,
University of Missouri-Columbia,
Texas A&M University and the The University of Texas
at Austin-offer nuclear engineering programs.
"If students are going to stay in-state for a good engineering school and in-state tuition, they are not going to have access to nuclear engineering," says Sue Maes, Interim Dean
of the Division of Continuing Education at Kansas State University. "It's not feasible for a university to go out and build a nuclear reactor, hire engineers from the field and
suddenly offer a program." Maes serves as co-Director of K-State's Institute for Academic Alliances, and is helping to lead the Big 12 Engineering Consortium, an inter-institutional
response to the nuclear engineering need. In spring 2007, the Consortium began allowing students who were enrolled in any one of the Big 12 schools to take fully online nuclear
engineering courses from the four institutions offering them. This spring, many of the participating institutions will award standard credits for these courses as opposed to transfer
credits; Iowa State and Texas Tech plan to begin offering a minor in nuclear engineering this semester. The Consortium is funded by a grant of more than $600,000 from the U.S. Dept.
of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).
The Big 12 Engineering Consortium follows the model established by the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance (IDEA), which was founded in 1994 to share distance education
courses and programs at the graduate level. Great Plains IDEA is made up of 11 land grant universities, and offers certificate to masters programs in eight human science areas. Students
apply for admission at the "home" institution of the ir choice, and tuition is a fixed amount for all students at all institutions.
The Alliance has relied on CE input from its inception-"we made sure that the Deans of Continuing Education were part of the original formation," says Maes. CE units help with marketing,
Web site development, and market research, vetting potential areas of study and assessing the workforce needs of specific fields. The Alliance furthers the mission of extension, to
disseminate the academic offerings of the university.
-Doug Davala |
