EMCC sets targets for ‘Communiversity’
The new “Communiversity” set to open this fall and the overall emphasis on work force development separates East Mississippi Community College from many other similar schools in the state and across the Southeast, the college’s new president told a community group Thursday.
And the opening of the facility, which will offer the latest training in six broad disciplines, will open the way for one of the college’s other pioneering efforts, the state’s first Early College High School, to move into a permanent home from the portable structures in which it’s been housed for four years.
“The keen focus on work force development, that’s not happening everywhere,” Scott Alsobrooks, who took over as president at EMCC Jan. 14, told the West Point Rotary Club.
“In time, it will attract lots of new industries, more Yokohamas, more Paccars, more Airbuses, more Steel Dynamics, new industries on behalf of your children and grandchildren,” continued Alsobrooks, who cam to EMCC after 14 years at Pearl River Community College and experience in the private sector.
The trend toward skills training is growing as 60 percent of jobs require a combination of brains and specialized abilities. And with the community college system in the state, students can get those skills and move into jobs with little or no debt, meaning within a few years, they are investing in new homes and their communities rather than paying off student loans.
“We have students coming back in a couple of years and visiting and they are making more than their professors,” Alsobrooks described.
The college’s enrollment is at about 3,500 with 2,500 at the Mayhew campus and 1,000 at the “sports” campus in Scooba. Of the total, 407 are from Clay County, including eight on football scholarships.
A new dorm is being built at Scooba and will open in 2020 and plans are under way for another one to meet the demands of athletic and band programs and “millennials who want the best places.”
The strong economy has cut into enrollment, as it has at many two- and four-year schools. When the economy is strong and jobs and relatively easy to find, people don’t enroll in college. That changes when the economy is down, Alsobrooks said, noting college staff think enrollment will pick back up soon as the economy levels out.
Architects and contractors are meeting next week to develop the final “punch list” of items to complete the $45 million “Communiversity” adjacent to Paccar along Highway 82. The skills training center is a partnership of state and federal funds and tax support from Clay, Oktibbeha and Lowndes counties.
(Photo by Steve Rogers, SDN) (Photo by Steve Rogers, SDN)
Equipment will move in this summer with classes expected to start in August.
“We’ll have lots of new equipment,” the new president said, noting it will have 21 bays, three that will act as incubators for new businesses and technologies and 18 that will offer everything from machine shop and hydraulics to a new automation and control program.
Some staff will come from existing classes at the CMTE Center at Mayhew and others will be hired. Grants are helping pay for some of the new equipment and staff.
The Early College High School will move into the space at Mayhew that is being vacated. The college also hopes to expand its nursing and allied health programs to 150 students from the current 50 to meet the needs of the region’s medical community and new industries.
The skills training programs currently have about 200 students, but enrollment must grow to 375 in day and night classes to generate the tuition revenue needed to “pay the bill,” Alsobrooks said.
“The break even number is 375, that’s what we’re shooting for,” he told the club.