Alverno sets nimble course
President of Catholic women’s college aims to boost enrollment, grow degree programs
A year after bringing in a new president, Alverno College is rolling out a five-year plan to stabilize its declining enrollment, grow degree programs and attract more adult students through an innovation hub for online, certificate and two-year offerings.
“We will find things that connect logically to our historic strengths,” Alverno President Sister Andrea Lee said. “We’re not going to start a welding school.”
While the new school within the college still needs a name, it’s viewed as a nimble, flexible successor to the Adult Evening and Online program and the Weekend College.
A decade ago, the Weekend College was Alverno’s bread and butter, helping students with fulltime jobs earn a bachelor’s degree by taking classes every other weekend. Weekend College was phased out after a growing number of nursing students in the popular RN to BSN program decided attending all-day classes on a Saturday or Sunday wasn’t a good fit for them.
The Catholic women’s college — one of about 40 women’s colleges left in the country — was a pioneer among Wisconsin colleges and universities when it began offering classes in a nontraditional time frame in 1977 to meet the needs of working adults.
Alverno will continue to focus primarily on the undergraduate education of women, according to its new strategic plan. But it also want to attract more working adults and graduate students.
Quickly responding to work-
force and community needs in Milwaukee and the region will be key for Alverno to boost its enrollment. The college’s goal is to grow full-time enrollment to 2,200 students by 2022. It would add 500 students over five years, including parttime students, for a combined total of 2,500 students.
The college will increasingly tap working adults who want to complete college degrees they started, those needing additional credentials to advance in the workplace and those wanting to reinvent themselves professionally.
After spending the last year meeting with key people in business, the community, alumnae and faculty and staff, Lee and her leadership team developed the five-year plan she describes as “flexible and alive.”
The plan calls for building on the college’s existing strengths in health care, education, mental health, serving adult students and women in leadership.
Nine new programs launched this fall, including a Montessori teacher licensure partnership, a paraprofessional to teacher degree completion program, a Master of Science in gerontology for primary care nurse practitioners, a 12-month online bachelor’s degree completion program for RNs, and expanded programs in pre-physical therapy and health education, and social work. Music therapy is among the college’s cutting-edge programs, Lee said.
Innovation school
The new school aimed at innovation will house degree completion programs, two-year degree and online programs, as well as “stackable” offerings including certificates, digital badges and professional offerings.
Alverno has plenty of competitors in the online arena, including for-profit schools. There also is the ever-expanding University of Wisconsin System Flexible Option degree program for working adults, which is competency-based and self-paced with a two-fold mission of boosting the state’s number of college graduates and filling job needs.
An estimated 1 million Wisconsin adults have some college credit, but only 26% of Wisconsin adults have a degree; the national average is 28%.
Alverno plans to convert existing programs to an online format and prepare faculty to teach in new ways, Lee said. The college is seeking national accreditation to begin offering online-only degrees.
The aim is to provide a revenue stream to support the Weekday Women’s College for undergraduates at a time when women’s colleges are a threatened species, according to the strategic plan.
Like many private colleges, Alverno is heavily tuition-dependent.
Two years ago, the college completed the most significant campus transformation of its 130year history.
The future may hold more partnerships with other colleges to share both non-academic and academic services and programs. Alverno already has a partnership that allows students to complete a bachelor’s degree at Alverno in three years, and then gain admission to Concordia University’s School of Pharmacy, for example.
Through the years, Alverno has received widespread attention in education circles for its abilitybased, assessment-aslearning approach.
Students collaborate around tables rather than sit in rows of desks. Students must demonstrate what they know, and no traditional letter grades are assigned. Educators from throughout the world visit the south side Milwaukee college to see the model in action.