More than 12,000 area students now attend college at satellite campuses stretching from Logan to Butler and Warren counties. Students have more options and schools are growing enrollments while facing increasing competition.
“If I am going to be in businesses, I better be flexible,” said George Sehi, dean of Sinclair Community College’s Courseview campus in Mason. “People are coming here for training, cross-training and retraining. We have exceeded our enrollment projections every quarter.”
Long gone are the days when a residential campus was a student’s only option. Branch and satellite campuses have been around for half a century. Now students can blend together not only courses from different college locations, but from different schools.
Sinclair is the only public college with a brick and mortar site Warren County, but the school has partnership agreements with Wright State University, Wilmington College, University of Dayton and University of Cincinnati, which all have either offered classes at the Courseview campus or plan to.
The demand is obvious; enrollments in Mason jumped from 350 students in 2007 to nearly 1,200 today.
Casie Gebhart, a nursing major from Middletown in her third year at Miami’s regional campuses, said she needed convenient options in order to continue her education. “I know a lot of students who struggle with money and finding a way to get to school,” Gebhart said. “It is extremely important. Not everyone has the means to travel.”
Miami University has been the only public higher education option in Butler County for nearly 50 years. The university now has three regional campuses — in Hamilton, Middletown and West Chester — and a new collaborative ready to open near the Atrium Medical Center in Middletown where Gebhart will complete her training as a nurse.
But Miami will not be alone for long. Cincinnati State Technical and Community College is nearing a deal that could bring a branch campus to city-owned buildings in downtown Middletown. The college plans to offer a variety of programs including hospitality, allied health and associate degrees in a market Miami has dominated for decades.
Larry Mulligan, Middletown’s mayor, said the new branch campus would be a big win for a city working to revitalize downtown. “It’s going to have a huge impact. The potential of bringing students and instructors in will help with the revitalization of downtown,” he said.
Despite the closeness of the two campuses and the likelihood some class offerings will overlap, officials from both schools maintain they wouldn’t compete for the same students.
“Not really,” said Jean Manning, spokeswoman for Cincinnati State. “One of the things we are looking at is working with Miami. Let’s not forget there are a whole demographic of students that are not ready for the rigor of a Miami-type degree. Serving those students is our business, not their business.”
Leaders from a number of higher education options in the I-75 corridor agree there is a large enough “pie” for every school.
G. Michael Pratt, dean of regional campuses for Miami, said Cincinnati State’s entrance into Butler County doesn’t worry him.
“I don’t see them as a rival to us,” Pratt said. “We are a powerhouse institution that will continue to recruit the kind of students we want. I don’t see them as a great concern.”
Cincinnati State is working with city officials to develop a plan to occupy several buildings the city acquired for $475,000. Different options are being explored, Manning said, including working with a real estate firm, Industrial Reality Group, which is redeveloping the former General Motors plant in Moraine. IRG would renovate the buildings and then lease to the college, according to a recent memorandum of understanding the company signed with the city. Or Cincinnati State could fund the project on its own if grants and tax incentives are available.
Manning thinks the college could draw 500 students including some who now commute to the Cincinnati campus, helping to free up space there.
Regardless if Cincinnati State finalizes a deal to open a branch campus in downtown Middletown, the college will soon have a presence in the I-75 corridor. Cincinnati State will offer a paramedic training course at the new Greentree Health Science Academy that Miami University and the Warren County Career Center will open later this month.
That collaboration is a first of its kind in the region and possibly the nation, school official said. It combines a technical high school, community college and four-year college degree program under one roof. It is just a short walk from the laboratories and real-life classrooms at Atrium Medical Center.
“You won’t find anything like this on a health care campus anywhere in the country,” said John W. McKinney, director of facilities management for Atrium. Greentree programs will begin with about 100 students and are expected to reach 300.
Stacey Cook, a nurse at Atrium who plans to upgrade her skills to a bachelor’s degree at the new facility, said the convenient partnership gives her a chance she would have otherwise not received.
“I’ve wanted to go back to school for some time,” Cook said. “When you work 40 hours a week it is hard to fit anything else in so when this came up I thought, here is my chance.”
Miami and the Warren County Career Center used a lease deal to get the new 32,000 square-foot facility built. The city of Middletown borrowed money for construction and will rent the space back as part of a lease to purchase agreement, McKinney said.
These types of deals help minimize risk and up-front costs, school officials said. Sinclair is leasing space now in Warren County, but plans to build on nearby land the college bought for more than $1 million. The University of Cincinnati has owned nearly 400 acres of land along I-71 near Lebanon for a decade, but Greg Hand, communications director, said the school has no plans for another branch in Warren or Butler counties.
While schools and partnerships will likely continue to proliferate, developing new locations isn’t always as simple as opening as storefront with classrooms. Before it moved into Warren County Sinclair petitioned the state to add Warren County to the college’s service region. Cincinnati State will likely need similar approval for its venture into Butler County.
Cincinnati State spokeswoman Manning said she didn’t expect the service district to be an issue. The college has been in contact with the regents, but will not file a formal application until after the facilities issues are worked out.
Nonetheless, opening a new branch, even if it is in a schools service district, can get complicated. David Devier, Clark State Community College vice president of academic and student affairs, acknowledges his college’s entrance into Greene County in 2006 was “heated” at times, even though it was in the college’s state-designated service district.
“The Greene County commissioners and citizens said to Clark State: ‘Either get in here and do what is needed or we’ll go to Sinclair,’” Devier said. “I spoke to two of the three commissioners recently and they are happy with what we have done.”
Enrollment growth mirrors Sinclair’s success in Warren County and Clark State recently took over the entire building it occupies in Beavercreek that was built with the help of state and federal earmarks and named for former U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson. Clark State also offers classes at high schools in Xenia and Jamestown and Devier thinks the school could one day increase offerings in Logan County.
With the continued emergence of online education many schools may begin to blend in-person instruction with distance learning to save money and reach more students. Nearly every college and university in the Miami Valley now offers some type of online course and Ohio Board of Regents data shows distance learning is one of the fastest growing course offerings in the state.
Yet Berkwood Farmer, dean of Wright State University’s business school, believes a classroom component will always be important for certain students and degree programs. WSU has expanded offerings for its Master’s of Business Administration degree to nights, weekends and satellite locations in Mason and even partly online in China. All these students get face to face experience with professors.
“The in-class experience, where a student and professor are face to face is still the most effective way to deliver higher education,” Farmer said.
What is clear is students can expect a growing number of higher education options closer to home, especially if their home is in a region with population growth like the counties between Dayton and Cincinnati.
“Cincinnati and Dayton are clearly destined to be some kind of mega-city and when that happens I-75 will be Main Street,” said Pratt, the Miami dean. “Miami is positioned to be a major player to provide quality higher education to the citizens of that mega urban area.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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