By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
With student success staying its top institutional priority, building a dormitory for 116 students in four-person suites at a cost of $5.5 million by 2008 could help Southwestern Michigan College bolster revenue while providing an affordable "total college experience," President Dr. David M. Mathews said Tuesday.
"On-campus student housing could get us to the next level," he said of the issue he wants to bring before the Board of Trustees for a decision in April. "There appears to be market demand for this. As our recruiters go out into the schools, they consistently hear, 'I'm going to go live in a dorm somewhere,' so we're off the radar screen of a lot of students for whom we would be a great choice. And it could put us on the radar screen of students who are 40 miles away."
On-campus student housing hinges on two issues. Can its construction be self-supporting? "Can you pay the mortgage, essentially, with the rent students pay?" Mathews said. "Peer institutions have done it. I'm convinced final numbers will show it can be done.
"The second piece we're working on now is will students come and live in it? It's a unique initiative because we've got lots of financial needs at the college. This is the only thing we've looked at that has the potential to not only be self-supporting, but actually helping our overall financial situation rather than being another cost. One hundred new students bring $300,000 in new tuition. Rents will provide enough revenue to have an on-site manager, to have resident assistants and supervision that's necessary to make for a safe facility and maintenance.
"What we're looking at" through College Suites of Missouri "is modern college dorms. Every student would have an individual bedroom, but every two students would share a bathroom and every four students would share a kitchen and living room. A suite would be fully outfitted like an apartment, but have two bathrooms and single, locking bedrooms."
College Suites, a "turnkey developer," built housing for Gogebic Community College last year. Jackson Community College is adding housing this fall.
SMC is also weighing food service options. "Davenport, for example, offers none," he said. "Other colleges, say Western, offer multiple meal plans. We have the potential to go either way with our food service vendor here. We're coming to grips financially with trying to figure out what students want and what we can provide," which might be plans of 10 or 15 meals a week.
While the Niles campus on M-60 offers "a great location for commuter students, we would want to leverage our student activities center and the beautiful facilities we have here" on the Dowagiac campus, which has hot food service already.
"One hurdle," he acknowledged, is the state Legislature's requirement that any expenditure exceeding $1 million be "blessed – even if it's not with their tax dollars. it's called a use and finance statement you have to get approved. If we could get that approved before the Legislature went on summer recess, by fall 2008 we could have housing. We'd do bonding. If we borrowed the money to do it, we ran the numbers with 6-percent interest, where we could get 4 1/2 percent today. I'm hopeful that the next numbers show that it could actually produce money as a revenue source" as a hedge against occupancy fluctuations. A survey of existing students is being designed.
"The thing that's harder to get at is if you're currently a high school student in Buchanan, Dowagiac, Niles, Edwardsburg or Cassopolis and you say you'd come to SMC if it had dorms, will you really do it?"
Mathews also said risk could be mitigated by an "incremental approach" where the units were constructed for 100 students at a time.
"We've got to improve our parking lots and the architects say that's going to be $1 million," he added.
Mathews, at a news conference prior to his sixth "State of the College" address, detailed "truly extraordinary accomplishments in student learning" achieved in 2006 "even against a backdrop of drastically reduced state funding" and a third millage defeat Aug. 8 for 0.854 of a mill for 15 years.
Emblematic of SMC doing more with less, its museum collaborated with the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians to serve the community with an exhibit seen fall semester by 3,500 people.
"Keeping student success as the number-one institutional priority has allowed us to keep moving forward in academic programs," Mathews said. "What we haven't done is gone to large lecture classes because of state budget cuts – and it won't happen. This is a highly interactive learning environment. I don't see Michigan's budget challenges going away. We tried the millage route unsuccessfully."
John Hartman, psychology, and David Baker, art, even created a model classroom based on research into a physical setting which might stimulate learning. One wall creates a certain mood. Facing another direction alters the ambience. "It's a statement of how committed our faculty are to doing anything to help our students learn in small groups," Mathews said.
"Every college says it cares about student success," but last year's National College Benchmarking Survey provided an objective comparison of SMC with 152 U.S. community colleges.
According to this voluntarily submitted data, SMC ranks in the top 10 percent of the country in student course success.
"SMC concentrates on student outcomes," Mathews reported to the Board of Trustees Jan. 9, "and we now have objective, external confirmation of the effectiveness of this approach to teaching and learning. All our courses focus on student outcomes. We base everything on the outcome. We ask, 'What is the student supposed to be learning, what can we do to facilitate this learning and, finally, did they learn it?' The National College Benchmarking data shows that this approach has now distinguished SMC on a national level."
This outcome-based approach, facilitated in small classes by faculty, is enhanced by many types of academic support, such as free tutoring and access to technology in SMC's Teaching and Learning Centers (TLC).
In the fall of 2006 alone, SMC TLCs logged 15,276 student visits, each averaging slightly over an hour.
"Clearly," Mathews remarked, "SMC has focused limited resources where they can make the biggest difference for our students, and that is making sure that we do everything within our power to help each student succeed."
Transfer student success was another 2006 measurement of which SMC is proud.
SMC transfer students
do well at WMU, Ferris
"Approximately 14 months ago," Mathews said, "SMC received a detailed report from Western Michigan University (WMU) regarding its academic accomplishments of SMC's transfer students, showing that they consistently outperformed transfer students from other institutions, and they consistently outperformed students who began their career at WMU."
SMC transfers to WMU averaged a 3.24 GPA, compared to 2.97 GPA by transfers from other colleges and 2.95 for students starting at WMU.
In 2006, SMC received similar data from Ferris State University (FSU).
SMC students who transferred to FSU earned a grade-point average (GPA) of 3.32 at Ferris, which is significantly higher than the GPA of all other Michigan community college transfer students (3.10) and FSU students in general (3.04).
To promote bachelor's offerings, SMC hired outreach specialist Lisa Topping to manage previously underutilized space in the Dale A. Lyons Building into the University Center, where Ferris, WMU and Bethel maintain offices.
In addition to the success of SMC students upon transfer to other colleges and universities, SMC students who complete workforce-preparation programs are also succeeding at impressive levels.
The 2006 survey of SMC graduates showed that 97 percent of SMC program graduates from the previous year who did not transfer to another educational institution are now employed.
According to Mathews, "SMC's workforce preparation programs are teaching the skills that employers want, students are mastering the skills that employers want and virtually all of these students are finding employment."
Mathews identified institutional accomplishments for 2006, including expansion of the automotive technology facility, winning a $635,000 competitive federal grant and the state funding award to create an information technology certification center with the Barbara Wood Building.
SMC expanded automotive technology in 2006, moving it from the Wood basement into the former aviation hangar.
Welding followed machine tool, which morphed into precision production technology to the M-TEC Center at the Niles Area Campus in Milton Township.
Aviation facility sold
for automotive growth
"The first phase that relocated the automotive technology program to function in the new, much larger, space was completed approximately 18 months ago," Mathews said. "The second phase, that added many of the finishing touches, was completed in September. Both phases of the renovation were funded entirely from proceeds gained from the sale of SMC's aviation maintenance assets (for $454,000) when that program closed."
The new facility gives students the opportunity to learn exactly what they need to know to work in an auto dealership. The parts inventory control and most other functions in the center operate just as they would in an auto dealership, so students have a setting that resembles the modern workplace and also learn procedures they will need to know in the workplace.
Instead of thick Chilton's books for each model year of each car, students work off laptop computers with wireless access to vehicle technical manuals.
creates summer camp
In June, students began to benefit from the $635,000 grant from the Department of Labor to support SMC's precision production technology program.
Area high school students attended one of two summer camps that focused on career opportunities in the precision production technology field.
Leveraging federal dollars allows SMC to accomplish more for the community than would be possible within the college's general fund budget.
IT Center
Also in 2006, after six years of planning, construction began on the information technology (IT) training and certification center opening this fall.
This $4.5 million project is transforming the existing Barbara Wood vocational building into a state-of-the-art facility providing IT training and certification far beyond what is available anywhere in the region.
"The germ of the idea came seven years ago when Larry Crandall was superintendent of (Dowagiac) schools," Mathews noted. "I was vice president for instruction, and he asked me to go with him over to New Buffalo to see training provided to students throughout Berrien County."
Half of the cost of this project is being paid by the State of Michigan.
The other half is being paid from building and site funds set aside over the past several years by the college for this purpose.
This center will serve individual students, K-12 schools, area businesses and industry and the community.
Funding challenges
and student housing
Regarding the funding challenge facing the college, Mathews said, "The accomplishments of SMC students, faculty and staff have been tremendous in spite of significant funding reductions from the State of Michigan. SMC continues to operate with state aid at below the levels of nearly eight years ago. State aid to SMC in 2001 was more than $7 million per year. By last year, this had fallen to approximately $6 million per year. Projected state revenue shortfalls for the current year mean that the slight increase in aid that SMC was promised for the current year will most likely evaporate."
Looking forward to 2007 and the foreseeable future, SMC's focus will continue to be on student success. SMC's greatest challenge will continue to be reductions in state funding. Cost-cutting strategies will continue in all areas, but the need for additional revenue remains. On-campus student housing is one strategy for boosting revenue.
Mathews cites three "compelling reasons" for undertaking a student housing analysis which will lead to a decision by April: the need for additional revenue, market demand and SMC's mission of providing affordable access to a full college experience.
First, and foremost, SMC needs additional revenue after millage losses. The drastic five-year reduction in state funding has made it imperative that SMC generate more tuition revenue. One answer is adding student housing.
SMC has put all the other pieces of the puzzle together when it comes to a quality education. Also, through partnerships with WMU, FSU and Bethel College in Mishawaka, Ind., SMC offers eight bachelor's degrees on its Dowagiac and Niles campuses.
The piece that possibly would leverage all of these strengths to attract more students is on-campus student housing.
Second, it appears that there may be a large number of local and regional students in SMC's service area who would be interested in attending the college if on-campus housing was available. Many students have indicated to SMC that housing is the key to their decision about where they attend college.
Third is the issue of affordable access to a full college experience. Skyrocketing university costs put a residential college experience out of the reach of many families. SMC's tuition costs less than half or even a third of that at state universities. On-campus housing at SMC could provide students with an affordable college-life experience close to home.
The student housing study will tell SMC is housing is a viable strategy to increase revenue.
"Perhaps the most exciting fact that our current viability study has revealed is that, nationally, students who live in residence housing typically succeed in college at a higher rate than their commuting counterparts," Mathews said. "In other words, if we can make the numbers work, on-campus student housing may not just be self-supporting, may not just provide an additional revenue source to the college, but may actually advance our core mission of student success. That would be a win-win-win situation."
Where SMC can look
for more students
Mathews said a fulltime student can attend SMC for less than $3,000 a year.
"There's some point none of us know where it is where raising tuition too high actually impedes our access mission," he said.
While community colleges have traditionally tapped working adult "non-traditional students" to increase enrollments, Mathews said census data driving such decisions shows that Cass County's population of 18,541 adults in the 22 to 45 age group declines about a percent per year, or from 18,541 in 1990 to 15,238 – 17.8 percent over those 16 years.
"Non-traditional students are very important to SMC," Mathews said, "but that's not likely to be our growth area for tuition revenue. In fact, SMC is in the top 4 percent nationally in getting people to come to the college. We've done a great job marketing and we will continue to beat the drum. If we can't grow by state aid or local millage anytime in the near future, you keep coming back to tuition and what students want. They tell us they want bachelor's degree programs, which we have worked to increase."
Traditional-age students coming out of high school "want college-life activities," Mathews said. "In and adjacent to our taxpaying district are students – Dowagiac graduates – who are not putting us on their radar screen because they don't perceive that we have the totality of student life experience. We also know from national data that students will only commute 30 minutes to college. If we had student housing, however, we might be able to draw beyond our traditional service area. Room to grow is where there is a consistent pipeline of students who are going to go to college. We need to do a better job of competing for those students who have a choice."
SMC knows students want technology access, so it added wi-fi hot spots on both campuses.
Last summer SMC gutted the Zollar Sports Arena office area to free up space for the Fitness and Wellness Center, adding air hockey, video games, plasma television, ping pong so that what had been a community resource and converted it to a student resource that's open to the community. New emphasis has been placed on intramural sports, such as co-ed football and soccer.
"Those things are an important component of student life," Mathews said. "We increased tuition almost 10 percent between 2004-05 and 2005-06. That brought in another $435,000 in tuition, but we were cut $342,000 in state and federal aid. Our incremental millage increase gave us $138,000 more, so net, even though we introduced tuition 10 percent, we had only $190,000 more last year to work with than the year before. That may sound like a lot of money, but in a $16 million budget, it's not. It cost us over $250,000 just to give a 3-percent salary raise."
Enrollment
Mathews describes SMC's head count in terms of student credit hours for a year – about 50,000 on-campus. It's been as high as 60,000 when there was 8,000 credit hours for corporate training from Grand Rapids to South Haven.
"Our traditional-age enrollments are pretty constant," he said. "About a third of our students are traditional age and two thirds are non-traditional. As those streams have moved forward for the past 10 years, we've held our own with traditional-age students. Non-traditional-age students contracted."
Mathews said 50,000 student credit hours equates to 1,700 fulltime students; 2,100 unique Social Security numbers for regular students; 2,600 to 2,700 per semester accounting for such things as dual enrollment.
"Right now, we probably have 2,500 or 2,600 different people taking classes," Dowagiac's 1978 valedictorian said.