Official: SouthArk Outdoor Expo expected to exceed $100,000 in revenue
EL DORADO — Departmental heads at South Arkansas Community College gave updates on their various areas to the college president and the SouthArk Board of Trustees Wednesday.
Dr. Mickey Best, vice-president for learning, used his time to highlight increased enrollment and a grant awarded to the health and natural sciences department.
“In the career and technical education area, we have a 46 percent increase (in enrollment). Cosmetology had a 63 percent increase. Criminal justice had a 140 percent increase and we’re adding welding positions because he had a 40 percent increase,” Best said.
SouthArk’s nursing program received a grant from the USDA to install two simulation machines: SimMom, the Omnicell and the SimView video system. SimMom is a labor and delivery simulator mannequin. The Omnicell is a medication delivery machine. The SimView video system is computer system used to allow users to view data feedback of simulator mannequins.
Best said, “Our USDA grant is going very well. We’re getting all of our sim lab equipment up and running. The deputy secretary for the USDA was at the acceptance meeting in Little Rock and actually delivered a baby with that SimMom.”
Periodically, SouthArk is examined by the Higher Learning Commission, an agency that reviews the college’s Federal Compliance Report, critical thinking Quality Initiative and interviews several officials. SouthArk’s student services vice-president Dr. Jim Bullock gave an update on the college’s preparation for this visit.
“For two and half years, we have been working toward the visit by the Higher Learning Commission in November. We’ve reached two milestones. On September 1, we were able to upload the assurance argument, that 35,000 word document, our means of our existence. It was uploaded so our mock visit from Arkansas State University-Newport could help us prepare,” Bullock said.
A year ago, the community college received a National Energy Grant and Arkansas Sector Partnership. SouthArk uses it to put south Arkansans back to work.
“It has the intent of getting people who are unemployed or underemployed the training they need to get back into the workplace. They have been busy at work finding partners and various focus areas for grants, one of them being those who were recently incarcerated,” Bullock said. “We created a new partnership in August with the Arkansas Human Development Corporation that focuses on those in the farming sector, trying to get those people trained and back in the workforce. A total of 11 participants are in the NEG program.”
According to Bullock’s trustees report, its partnership with the Arkansas Human Development Corporation, they have the financial resources to assist with training and provide small stipends while training.
SouthArk’s chief information officer Dr. Tim Kirk was pleased to announce the approval of some reimbursements. According to his trustee’s report, the Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network has received the UAMS e-Link consortium’s funding letter from the Universal Service Administrative company. a
“ARE-ON tells me that the check is the mail for our credit from the federal government where we’re part of the universal credit tax. We’ve successfully applied for as part of the ARE-ON and e-Link Consortium and we’re getting a check with a possible net rebate of $15,000 this year,” Kirk said. “We’re actually able to apply for our expenses this year again because the money we got was for our expenses last fiscal year. Hopefully in December or January we’ll be reporting about a second check arriving.”
Dr. Stephanie TullyDartez, chief institutional effectiveness and advancement officer, used her time to highlight a new feature on the college’s website and new commercials featured SouthArk students.
“Thanks to the ‘Chat’ section of the website, Charlie was able to collect a great deal of information on what students were frequently looking for and has consequently built a ‘Quick Links’ section of the front page of the website, which includes the process of registration, phone numbers that a frequently looked for and materials of that kind.”
The college’s new 30-second promotions are in rotation in the Crossett, Magnolia and Monroe (La.) areas, available on social media and a 15-second version will run before films at Star Cinema began showing, Heath Waldrop, SouthArk marketing coordinator, said.
SouthArk Foundation director Cynthia Reyna gave a preliminary report on the annual Outdoor Expo.
“Thank you to everyone who came and volunteered. We’re very proud to say we exceeded our goal of $100,000 in revenues and that is continuing to grow,” Reyna said. “We’ll have a better number in the next several weeks. We sold a ton of ribs and had all of our contests. It was a very successful day.”
The SouthArk Board of Trustees meets at 3:45 p.m. every other third Tuesday in the administrative boardroom on at its West Campus.