SMC unveils housing plan
Published 8:58 pm Wednesday, January 9, 2008
By By JOHN EBY / Niles Daily Star
DOWAGIAC – Southwestern Michigan College unveiled Tuesday a model unit of its $7.5 million on-campus housing for 130 students, coupled with a $6.5 million doubling of the Charles O. Zollar Building.
The enlarged Zollar Building will become a glass-fronted Student Activities Center (SAC) featuring a rock climbing wall, three resistance training pools and an 80-seat event theater.
Groundbreaking is expected this spring, with both the residence hall – mostly four-bedroom suites with common kitchen, dining and living areas – and the enlarged facility open for fall 2009. Each two private bedrooms share a bath.
The first dormitory will be erected on an angle at the south end of the Dowagiac campus between the Zollar Building and the nursing wing of the College Services Building. Parking will be accessible from Mathews Street.
Dowagiac will be getting a big water customer as a byproduct of the expansion. As part of infrastructure improvements for the residence hall and SAC, city water will be extended to the LaGrange Township campus along Dailey Road.
Each year, SMC, whose students return Thursday for winter semester, reserves 3 to 4 percent of its operating budget to pay debt service for capital improvements.
Over the next three years, most of SMC's debt will be retired, allowing these funds to be redirected to pay debt service on the SAC.
"The elegance of this plan," SMC President Dr. David M. Mathews told reporters in a midday preview of his annual State of the College presentation Tuesday night to the Board of Trustees, "is that this facility will serve not only residential students" – who may number 390 more in three years and fill two additional dormitories contemplated for the fall of 2010 and in the fall of 2011 – "but also commuter students and our community.
"Over the past five years," Mathews said, "the college has significantly enhanced not only its facilities, technology and access to bachelor's and master's degrees, but also its student life activities. Student clubs, intramural sports and extreme sports such as rock climbing and whitewater rafting are incredibly popular with our students." The former Green Beret is an avid climber himself.
"As we look to the arrival of residential students, we need to increase our capacity for extracurricular activities," he explained. "For this reason, the Board of Trustees approved a major expansion in the Zollar Building."
The SAC will continue to house the fitness center, racquetballball courts and gymnasium, adding renovated locker rooms, multi-purpose activity classrooms for aerobics, martial arts and dance; the resistance training pools; a snack bar/student lounge; the rock climbing wall and the 80-seat theater for speakers.
"Commitment to student success continues to be the top institutional priority," said Mathews, president since 2001. "Extraordinary accomplishments in student learning were achieved in 2007, and exciting initiatives are underway that will continue this emphasis, enhance student life at the college, increase revenues and increase the college's ability to serve the community."
Once again in 2007, the National College Benchmarking Survey provided an objective comparison of SMC with community colleges nationally.
According to this data, SMC continues to rank in the top 10 percent of the nation in student course success.
"SMC classes are taught by highly qualified faculty in outstanding facilities using active learning strategies and modern technology. The proof of the effectiveness of this combination is in student learning outcomes. This benchmarking study provides objective, external confirmation of the effectiveness of this approach to teaching and learning," Mathews said. "All of SMC's courses have established student learning 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?' "
This outcome-based approach, facilitated in small classes, is enhanced by
state-of-the-art technology and learning environments.
During 2007, SMC opened the new Information Technology Center on which Mathews centered his remarks last January.
This year it was the site of his address, followed by a tour of the housing model built to scale in the O'Leary Building.
First to tour the prototype Friday were 390 high school students from 13 high schools and career centers on campus for the Regional Business Professionals (BPA) competition.
The IT center in the the Barbara Wood Building provides technology training to SMC students, area high school students and employees of local businesses and industries.
"Clearly," remarked Mathews, after three unsuccessful elections convinced the college more local support was "not in the cards," SMC "focused limited resources where they can make the biggest difference for our students, and that is making sure we do everything within our power to help each student succeed."
Between 2001 and 2006, state community college funding decreased by 20 percent. "When they came through in 2007 with our delayed payment, that changed the ledger up to about a net funding reduction of 13 percent," Mathews said. Lansing "promised a 1-percent increase in funding this year. If that holds, we'll still be 12 percent lower this year than we were in 2001."
Transfer student success proven in 2007 is another measurement of which SMC takes pride. Mathews explained, "This fall, SMC received a detailed report from Western Michigan University (WMU) regarding academic accomplishments of SMC transfer students. Students who began their education at SMC earned (on average) a 3.21 grade-point average (GPA) at WMU, showing they consistently outperformed transfer students from other institutions (who earned a 3.01 GPA), and students who began their career at WMU (who earned a 2.89 GPA).
SMC received similar data from Ferris State University (FSU). SMC students who transferred to FSU earned a GPA of 3.41 at Ferris, which is significantly higher than the GPA of all other Michigan community college transfer students (3.15) and FSU students in general (3.06).
SMC students who complete workforce-preparation programs are also succeeding at impressive levels.
According to Mathews, "SMC's workforce preparation programs are teaching the skills employers want and students are mastering these skills and virtually all these students are finding employment."
Exactly one year ago, SMC committed itself to studying the feasibility of on-campus student housing to meet the need for an affordable "total college experience" and to generate additional revenue to offset significantly reduced state funding.
By April 2007, analysis of data, including surveying high school juniors, was complete that showed this facility could be constructed and operated entirely from rent income, without use of any tax dollars.
Given five choices, of certainly coming to SMC, likely, maybe yes, maybe no, probably not or certainly not, if housing was available, doubled when students were apprised of amenities such as central air conditioning, wi-fi access, cable television, dishwasher, utilities, stove, refrigerator, microwave, private bedroom with window, nine-foot ceilings and furniture, confirming college officials' hunch that strong market demand existed.
"Parameters the board gave us, already facing a decrease in funding, is we could do this if it could pay for itself and, hopefully, generate additional revenue – not the least of which is tuition by students coming here," Mathews said.
Over the past eight months, student housing building design has been finalized, and a model suite has been constructed in the O'Leary Building on the Dowagiac campus that allows potential students and their parents the opportunity to actually see what the housing will look like.
"Students will be especially impressed," said Mathews, by the private bedrooms and social common areas. "Parents will be especially impressed by the high level of security that has been incorporated into the building design, and of course, by the fact that SMC's tuition is less than 40 percent the cost at many other colleges and universities."
"Perhaps the most exciting fact that the housing viability study revealed is that, nationally, students who live in residence housing typically succeed in college at a higher rate than their commuting counterparts," said Mathews. "The more you can get students involved," he said, "the more likely they are to be retained, to persevere and to succeed."
"SMC students already outperform their commuting counterparts. On-campus student housing will be self-supporting, will provide an additional revenue source to the college and has the potential to advance our core mission of student success, making our students even more successful."
Mathews also reviewed several other institutional accomplishments of 2007 including: recognition for the college's outstanding safety record; the winning of multiple competitive grants; and other classroom, technology and laboratory upgrades.
Computer kiosks in most buildings provide convenient access to online registration, e-mail and Internet resources and expanded wireless Internet coverage allows students to also access the Internet from their own laptop computers.
SMC's University Center has grown to offer seven different bachelor's degrees and two master's degrees on the SMC campuses in Dowagiac and Niles with Western Michigan University, Ferris State University and Bethel College in Mishawaka, Ind.
The Niles Area Campus in Milton Township doubled in size in 1997 and added an M-TEC facility in 2001.