Fall enrollment at MAC should reach 4,000

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Enrollment at Mineral Area College this fall is set to stay on course with numbers the college had last year.

So far, nearly 3,700 students are enrolled at MAC. That number is expected to increase to 4,000 after more dual-credit students enroll and when second eight-week classes begin.

Jean Merrill-Doss is Mineral Area College’s Dean of Student Services. She says the last few years have brought some of the highest enrollment numbers in Mineral Area’s history.

"There’s that magic trend when the economy goes south, enrollment goes north," Merrill-Doss says. "With education, because more people come back and try to get additional training when they can’t find jobs, so they go to college, and there’s lot of training money available. A lot of young students, coming out of high school, with the economy in bad shape, may end up coming to a community college rather than a four-year school because of costs.”

Merrill-Doss says there has been a strong uptick towards short-term technical training, such as their truck driver school.

The College will have more detailed demographic data about their Fall 2011 students within the next couple of weeks.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Read More

Nixon calls for performance-based higher education funding

CAPE GIRARDEAU, MO (KRCU) - Governor Jay Nixon announced a shift in Missouri’s higher education formula at last week’s Higher Education Summit.

Nixon wants to change to a performance-based model instead of an across-the-board approach when higher education allocations increase.

Mineral Area College president Steve Kurtz is strongly in favor of basing funding by meeting key performance indicators. He says his college already keeps track of many of the indicators the state will likely use.

"For us, we already have that culture at the institution," Kurtz said. "It’s just, how do we move with the implementation of a performance-funding model?"

Southeast Missouri State University president Ken Dobbins also favors a performance model and Southeast already tracks its own performance as a whole and within departments. He hopes the governor looks at a rolling average instead of basing funding on individual years because one cannot predict when budget increases will appear and an off year on benchmarks is always possible.

"A three to five year average I think everyone has agreed that’s good both on the numbers you are looking at so far as the benchmarking and also for the overall percentage that you’re going to get of new funding," Dobbins said.

The model is still under development. Officials from the Department of Higher Education indicate there will be three or four statewide goals for each institution to meet and each college and university will choose an additional goal of its own.

The key performance indicators have not yet been decided, but they could include goals for retention rates, degree attainment, student success and quality of student learning, to give a few examples.

The model will be approved Higher Education Commission in December.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Read More

MAC receives EPA training grant

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Mineral Area College is the recipient of a $190,000 grant to provide lead contamination cleanup training.

It’s part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s remediation project in St. Francois County.

Program Director Doug Lawson says training will be offered for four groups of twenty four individuals who want to work on environmental cleanup projects. Lawson says the contamination comes from St. Francois county’s days as a lead mining powerhouse.

"Unfortunately there wasn’t much regulation and the communities were left with contaminated materials spread throughout," Lawson says. "It’s just been known to cause developmental problems in younger children. Its been tested so they want to remove it to keep them from having access on something that could cause developmental damage to them in a young stage of life."

The application deadline is September 9th for the first of four training programs. Training will run between September 26th to October 6th.

Lauren Campbell, KRCU

Read More

Mineral Area College to host Ag Energy Conference

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Mineral Area College will host a free Agriculture Energy Day on Thursday, August 4.

The field day will focus on energy production, opportunity and savings.

Topics will include energy efficiency on livestock farms, grant and loan opportunities, and sustainable wood energy using cottonwood and willow.

Conference organizer Van Ayers from the University of Missouri Extention in Bloomfield says the conference should appeal to a wide variety of interests.

“Farmers, entrepreneurs, people that are interested in policy I think should attend, especially those that are interested in energy policy would have an interest in attending this field day. Definitely people such as myself, you know, that are involved in education. I think it would be a good place to pick up some additional information,” Ayers said.

Mineral Area College’s facilities for its new Renewable Energy Technology program will also be on display. These include biomass production plots, a wind turbine, a solar power array and an ethanol production system.

Registration is available at the Mineral Area College website.

Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Read More

MAC look at $8 million renovation project

PARK HILLS, MO (KRCU) - Mineral Area College hopes to generate $8 million for improvements that will allow them to renovate their Park Hills and Fredricktown campuses.

The funds will renovate student service facilities, improve the library of the Park Hills campus, and upgrade science labs at both campuses, according to Dr. Steven Kurtz, Mineral Area College president.

“We identified seven or eight different items, and once we realized that there was an opportunity for a no-tax increase, our trustees did a workshop. We identified these four as top priority,” Kurtz said.

To do so, on April 5, Mineral Area College will have a no-tax bond issue on the ballot for its voting district, the surrounding counties of Jefferson, St. Francis County, Washington County, Ste. Genevieve, Iron, Madison, and Perry.

If the bond is passed, the entire project will take two to two and a half years to complete, Kurtz said.

Rachel Weatherford, KRCU

Read More