OTC decides where to expand by following the need

“It was so badly needed,” said Don Wessel, vice president of the OTC Board of Trustees and one of the founding members. “I couldn’t believe this town didn’t have a community college like OTC. After people graduated from high school, a lot of them ended up going back to the farm. Now they have a chance to really advance.”

The school has delivered on those plans – it now boasts about 10,700 students systemwide, as of the spring semester, including more than 2,700 who take classes online or at one of the school’s three regional education centers, located in Christian County, Branson and Lebanon. (Click here for a breakdown of fall 2007 enrollment by county residence.)

The school continues to grow – both geographically and in class offerings – to meet the needs of local business, government and students.

Springfield growth spurt

For OTC’s main campus, bordered by Chestnut, National, Sherman and Central streets in Springfield, spring enrollment is up 6 percent compared to the same semester in 2007. But there are a couple of key issues hampering additional growth at the school’s headquarters. One hindrance is the lack of space on the main campus where additional facilities could be built. OTC President Hal Higdon said there’s only one spot – at the corner of Chestnut Expressway and National Avenue – that’s still available for development, but he said there are no definitive plans in place for that spot.

An attempt in November to gain voter approval for an operating levy increase failed by a 3-to-1 margin. That measure would have generated an extra $5 million a year for the school.

The school is now in the early stages of launching a capital campaign to raise money for work force development, health education, scholarships, the school’s endowment fund and a $10 million college union building. (See related story on page 1.)

That fund, though, won’t have the same impact that would have come from the operating levy boost.

“What we can do with a capital campaign pales in comparison to what we could have done with a tax levy,” Higdon said, noting that the capital campaign would not be used for employee salaries. “Our levy was an operating levy – it would have allowed us to hire more faculty, put more people in the buildings. If the tax levy had been successful, it would have been easier to do all of this.”

Higdon is hoping local community and business leaders will step up to support the capital campaign – and the resulting program growth that would meet work force needs.

“Our allied health programs, automotive programs and other high-tech programs – we want to find people that would be willing to invest in those programs to upgrade the technology,” Higdon said. “For instance, for a radiology X-ray technician program that we’re interested in doing, it’s $250,000 just to buy the machine.”

Given the space constraints on OTC’s main campus, school officials are looking elsewhere, with hopes of leasing 150,000 square feet at the Springfield-Branson National Airport. The space, located in the airport’s existing terminal, would be available once the midfield terminal is finished and ready for occupancy, which Higdon said won’t happen until early 2009.

“It’s a great facility – the airport is to be commended for keeping it up and modern,” Higdon said of the current terminal. “It wouldn’t need much work except for retrofitting the inside.”

Airport spokesman Kent Boyd said the current terminal represents a welcome non-aviation revenue source for the airport.

“Commercial aviation is so fickle right now financially, you never know when an airline is going to leave or you’re going to lose a revenue stream,” Boyd said. “The more we can diversify, the better off we are.”

Both the OTC and airport boards of directors have said they’re in favor of leasing the space to the school, but the issue will have to be voted on by both entities once the space is available. Details for financing the lease arrangement also will have to be determined, but Higdon said the plan is to shift the school’s work force development and continuing education programs to the airport, leaving room on the main campus to expand other services such as health training.

Branching out

OTC officials are eyeing growth beyond Springfield as well. Most recently, OTC has leased 10,300 square feet in Waynesville for an education center that’s expected to open for the fall semester.

Waynesville is the fourth location outside of Springfield for the school – a result, according to OTC’s Higdon, of geographic demand. The

Waynesville facility would take pressure off of the school’s maxed-out center in Lebanon, where spring enrollment hit 354 students, up 9 percent from spring 2007.

Growing to meet students’ needs, however, is nothing new for OTC.

“One of the things we do every semester is graph where our students are coming from,” Higdon said, noting that Greene and Christian counties top the list, leading to the Richwood Valley campus, which opened in late 2007 near Ozark.

Curriculum additions

OTC also has been expanding its class offerings, from the year-old Transportation Training Institute – located at the former Ozark Mountain Ducks ballpark in Ozark – to the Center for Workforce Development in Springfield.

Most of the new offerings are the result of feedback from the business community and the general public, and the school continues to collect information through a series of community forums in towns where it’s already on the ground. The most recent scheduled events were in Branson on Feb. 26 and Lebanon on Feb. 28.

Higdon said OTC officials are constantly talking to area business leaders and government officials to determine where training is needed, and as a result, Marshfield and Republic are on the school’s radar as possible locations for future work force development classes.

“This is something important to business and industry, and we want to be a very integral part of economic development in these communities,” Higdon said. “When they seek to bring industry in, we will be at the table with them ready to have training to bring those industries in. We’re where the rubber meets the road in work force development.”

Carrol Alumbaugh, lead instructor of the Transportation Training Institute, said the program – which celebrates its first anniversary March 7 – has been met with industry approval. More than 50 students have completed the program, and they have been recruited by companies in Springfield and Joplin, and from as far away as Tennessee. All but four of those students were hired, she said.

Alumbaugh added that she’d like to see the program expand in the future, though current conditions restrict class sizes to seven for the five-week program.

“We only have two tractors right now, but if we got more we could easily support more students,” she said.

Those trucks may be needed sooner than Alumbaugh expects. OTC has learned that it will receive a $198,000 grant for the truck training program from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

OTC Chief Administrative Officer Cindy Stephens said the grant will be used to fund weekly scholarships for needy students based on their attendance.

“As people need to be retrained or there is turnover, there are all sorts of people who would be perfect to take advantage of the truck driving school, but they’re the exact people who won’t be able to afford it,” Stephens said, noting that the noncredit program is not eligible for many of the loans available to credit programs. “Here we have this great program, all of these people that are unemployed or underemployed, and we have no way of helping them pay for it. That’s what this grant is for.”

Higdon said that the school also would like to expand its courses for workers in allied health industries.

“There’s such a shortage of nurses and health technicians that we are maxed out in all of our allied health programs, so we’re looking for ways to grow that,” he said. [[In-content Ad]]