Recruitment leads SWCC program suggestions

Advertising and recruitment were listed as priorities in Southwestern Community College’s annual program review, which this year focused on welding, management information systems and professional music.

SWCC Vice President of Instruction John Franklin shared information about the reports and why they’re required, citing a mandate from the Iowa Department of Education. House File 2392 requires all career and technical education programs be approved and reviewed by the Department of Education. This process includes a five-year cycle to cover all programs.

“This has been a pretty long process; we’ve been doing it since 1981,” Franklin said. “We review every CTE program, 20% of those programs each year, so it comes out to a five-year cycle. They added in an arts and sciences review, and we’ve done that since 2017.”

The program evaluation committee is made up of faculty, staff and administration from across the campus. The committee reviews a variety of components, including general program information, program and course level assessments, community and secondary partnerships and institutional resources.

Welding technology

SWCC’s welding technology program first began in 2010 following a survey of local manufacturers, who indicated a high need for local skilled welders. The program began with a one-year diploma, but gained a two-year applied science degree soon after. Since then, the program has seen success, with a steady enrollment of about eight students per year.

“With the program, in the five years under review, there were 18 graduates that achieved the associates degree. Three more achieved a diploma without going on to achieve the associates,” Franklin said. “With the graduation rates, only 35% with the AAS degree, but we see a lot of welding students that come into the program, they pick up all the skills and they get employed. For the welding faculty, that’s a successful outcome.”

Of the students that did graduate with the AAS degree, there was a 100% success rate in employment. Students gain the general diploma after the first year and the degree after the second year. Franklin said a majority of the diplomas are earned by high school students.

The evaluation committee had a variety of recommendations, some of which were already in the works.

“We are at capacity for the welding program. Once we get the new Skilled Trades, we anticipate there will be some, carpentry has some space in the welding lab, so welding would like to take that back over,” Franklin said. “The actual welding classroom was on the second floor in the Tech 1 building, so one of the recommendations was to move it downstairs.”

A move downstairs should be possible soon, as the applied engineering technology classes have moved out of the Tech 2 building to the new ORBIT Center. CNA classes in Tech 1 will then be moved to the Tech 2 building, freeing up space in first floor of Tech 1 for welding.

The college is also looking at starting a welding career academy on campus. Welding is already available at high schools in Red Oak and Decatur, with the college looking to expand their program to other schools as well.

MIS

The management information systems program is a mix of business and computer courses, preparing students to manage people, technology and change within an organization.

The future of the MIS program is up in the air due to low enrollment. In the past five years, the program has only had one to two students enrolled each year. However, the MIS program is low-cost with high industry need, so Franklin said the goal is to first increase the advertising and recruitment before the college moves forward with shutting down the program.

“There’s only two courses that are specific to the MIS program. Otherwise, those students are in full business classes or with computer networking students and there’s larger enrollment there,” Franklin said. “Since it is so laddered into other programs, it’s not a significant financial burden on the college to continue offering it. There are some opportunities to hopefully grow it, but if not, next time we review the program we’ll see if the numbers change.”

While there is a high industry demand for the program, most students looking to pursue MIS go for a four-year degree instead. In order to address this, Franklin said the main MIS instructor is working to develop of 2+2 program, so students can start their degree at SWCC and transfer to a four-year institute for their final two years.

“There hasn’t been a lot of movement on the four-year end on trying to get that set up. He’s had some initial discussions,” Franklin said. “There’s demand, it’s just an issue of the students knowing what the program is, which we hope advertising will help with, and trying to convince them they can do it with a two-year degree rather than a four-year degree.”

Professional music

The professional music program is one of SWCC’s most well-known programs This vocational program has seen 72 students over the last five years. However, this fall saw only 7 new students enrolling.

“It’s not a program that’s seen a lot of growth. The number of students in the program is a concern, and it’s a fairly expensive program to run. It is an associate of applied arts, but the completion rate is 32.8%,” Franklin said. “The program has really good fall to spring retention, and it has pretty good fall to fall retention, but students just aren’t always completing the program. A lot of them need more than two years to complete the program.”

With a total of 76 credits needed to receive the degree, many students themselves too busy to complete the general education credits. However, Franklin said that the skill of the students who do finish is obvious.

“Even though they’re already at 76 credits, most of the students also take extra music lessons,” Franklin said. “Most students that finish the program turn out as multi-instrumentalists, even if they really only focused on one thing when they started.”

Recommendations focused on program sustainability, with the hope of recruiting more students to the program as well as creating a plan to replace and upgrade instruments and software. The evaluation committee also hoped to see more students completing their general education credits, possibly encouraged by supporting more in-person classes.