OTC prepares for changes

The first building on the Ozark campus, the 60,000-square-foot Life Sciences and Technology Center, is ahead of schedule, according to OTC Vice President of Administration and Business David Roling.

The original schedule called for completion of the first building in March 2007, but construction work is on pace to be five or six months ahead of that schedule.

“In looking at the most recent schedule that we have on the project, we’re really contemplating final inspection about mid-September or the first of October,” Roling said. “A lot of that is due to the excellent mild winter weather.”

He added that most of the infrastructure work at the site – installation of curbs and gutters, as well as hard base work for roads and parking – is complete, and mechanical, electrical and plumbing work on the building itself is under way.

Walton Construction is the general contractor on the project, and Hagerman New Urbanism is the project architect.

The building is the first of three planned phases for the south campus. Phase II will be a second 60,000-square-foot building, while Phase III will add a rotunda and a business and industry center, along with a central mall and space for student services, student activities and a bookstore, making the facility more like a self-sustaining core campus.

A time frame for those subsequent phases has not been finalized, Roling said, because construction of the additional facilities is dependent on both student demand and available funding. The price tag for Phase I is $12.9 million. Roling said preliminary estimates for subsequent phases are between $15 million and $16 million.

As for when classes will begin in the first building in Ozark, Roling said that schedule, too, has been accelerated. The new goal is the summer semester of 2007, as opposed to the original target of opening in the fall.

“There is a possibility, in theory, to begin in January of 2007 for the spring semester, but that might not be the most appropriate time to hire faculty,” Roling said. “So the current plan is to begin summer sessions there but have the building available for registration in early spring.”

The new campus is intended to help control growth. OTC enrollment passed the 9,000-student mark with this spring semester. That number is expected to be 12,000 by fall 2010 and 14,000 by fall 2015.

The Ozark facility will hold about 2,000 students and require 18 full-time faculty and 35 additional support staff.

But as the school prepares to deal with a larger student body, a central figure in OTC’s growth is preparing to say goodbye.

Norman Myers, the college’s first and only president, announced in August that he will retire June 30. The search continues for a successor.

Jackie McKinsey, chair of the OTC Board of Trustees, also is chair of the school’s presidential selection committee. She said the pool of potential candidates, which initially numbered 29, will be narrowed down to five or six after a March 28 meeting of the search committee.

“After that, the finalist list with all the information packets and so forth will be distributed to the trustees, who have the job of picking from those finalists,” she said. “Then the board will discuss them, and they’ll be brought into town to meet with the community and the OTC family.”

The board’s choice for president should come in late May.

Tough act to follow

The successor to Norman Myers as OTC president will have big shoes to fill:

• Myers has 43 years of education experience, including 32 as a community college president.

• Under Myers’ guidance, OTC grew from 1,198 credit-seeking students in 1991-92 to approximately 9,000 this year.

• Full-time staff totals grew from 35 to 385, and the operating budget grew from $1.5 million in 1991-92 to $39.1 million for the 2005-06 school year.