Unofficially, fall enrollment and credit hours are down slightly at Southwestern Community College, Dean of Student Services Beth Kulow reported during a SWCC board meeting Tuesday.
“I don’t have the final numbers yet, but ... we are short eight students from today’s date in history going back,” Kulow said. “Now, this is our 14-day count. So, students who aren’t here, that type of thing (aren’t included). Right now, our headcount is down four-tenths of a percent – literally eight students. And, our credit hours are down 4 percent.”
However, Kulow said she is seeing a similar trend among other Iowa community colleges.
“Right now, headcount is up five-hundredths of a percent, and credit hours are down approximately 1 percent if we average all the state colleges,” Kulow said. “The most significant changes I’ve seen across the state (are) Southeastern Community College had a headcount increase of 9 percent ... and Northwest (Iowa Community College) has the highest credit-hour increase of 3 percent. WIT (Western Iowa Tech Community College) is looking at an 11 percent decrease in credit hours and 8 percent decrease in headcount. So, we are amongst our peers here.”
The final numbers will be released soon. For now, Kulow said she is working to target students more specifically when recruiting.
“We do still have the opportunity to enroll students in our 12-week classes, our eight-week classes, and then, of course, retention at this point in time is incredibly important to us,” Kulow said. “It always is, but the students we have here, we want to make sure they are successful this fall semester and we roll them into the spring semester so we see that strong retention rate. And then, we’ll recruit heavily for the spring semester so we get that credit-hour (number) back up.
Spartan Drive
Also during the meeting, Tom Lesan, SWCC vice president of economic development, provided updates on construction projects.
The Spartan Drive project involved tearing out roughly 1,000 feet of concrete and pouring new, 24-foot-wide and 7-inch-deep concrete.
“All the concrete is in the ground. It looks really nice,” Lesan said. “We have one section where the water flow is not right the way we want it yet, so I won’t be a bit surprised if the engineer doesn’t have them tear out a section and re-pour that. We had to do that with one other one already.”
One of the last steps will be painting, but with the amount of rain Creston has received recently, it has been delayed.
“They do believe they’ll get on that (today), and if that works and we can fix the one spot that (water) runs back into the building without cutting out the whole section, we will open this up possibly Friday or Monday of next week,” Lesan said.
Spartan Drive is currently open to vehicle traffic except semi-trucks.
Room 220
Construction in room 220, an auditorium in SWCC’s instructional building, is ongoing. The project involves taking the nine current heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) units out and replacing them with five new, more energy-efficient units.
“They actually have the structure up for the mezzanine that they’ll work off of. That was huge. It was taking a long time,” Lesan said. “We ran into problems as we went. It’s taken us about four weeks to get to this point where we actually have the frame up.”
Now that the mezzanine is up, Lesan expects construction to pick up speed.
“Carpet is in town ... so we’ll get the carpet in and then the seats get put in last,” Lesan said. “We have not rented that room out until that week (after) Nov. 1 just to make sure we are ready for programs in there at that time. Hopefully Nov. 1, we’ll be back in business 100 percent; everything will be good.”