As published in the June 1, 2016 Toledo Business Journal
Mike Bower, Ph.D., and
Steve Robinson
Owens Community College
Owens Community College plans workforce development
Owens Community College president Mike Bower, Ph.D., has been in his current position for almost four years. Toledo Business Journal met with Dr. Bower and Steve Robinson, vice president of academic affairs, to examine the institution’s efforts involving workforce development.
Toledo Business Journal: Can you discuss the role that you see Owens Community College playing in the region’s workforce development?
Mike Bower: You know, the one thing that we look at, as far as our mission, is success for our students. As you look at workforce, and being able to either attract companies or the incumbent workers that we have in industry, we have to be here to advance their skills. But more importantly, think about the young people that are coming out of the school, coming out of the military. How can we help them? And our focus takes a look at high-paid, high-demand, high-level skills. That way we can work with the present companies that we do have, or attract other companies coming in, to provide a trained workforce. And that is so important to what we do, and that’s a main focus for us.
Steve Robinson: The only thing I’d add is in the 21st century the mission of higher education is economic development. Students come to college because they want a job. One of the great things about two-year college, and our mission here at Owens, is making sure we match the programs that we have to the skills and abilities that local employers need.
TBJ: Can you discuss some key efforts to align the curriculum at Owens to needs of area businesses?
SR: There are a number of layers of assessment. Let me start on the macro-level. We just commissioned an economic impact study for the college that included what we called a gap analysis – taking a look at our current programs and matching them to workforce needs, taking a look at national / regional data, and what the employment outlook is in five, ten, even 15 years. The company that did the study, and does this for a lot of two-year colleges, is called EMSI. The gap analysis takes a look at what programs we have, and then the gap between our graduate production and the local need in the employment categories. At the very top of those are some of the things you would expect here in northwest Ohio: advanced manufacturing, healthcare – there’s some in sales, marketing, and accounting. That’s on the macro-level, making sure that we have our current programs matching what the data tells us.
On the micro-level, every one of our programs has an advisory committee. The advisory committees are made up of people who are practitioners, business owners in that area. Just to drill into an example so you can picture it, accounting for example, the accounting program has folks from local accounting firms, CPAs, who know the kinds of skills they and their competitors want when they are hiring people from our program. Those are the two levels.
TBJ: Can you discuss investment and equipment put in place in the last several years to enable students to be able to learn and train on equipment used in industry?
MB: When we were looking at the operational levy, it is so important, people have to understand. It wasn’t because of any of the fiscal issues we’re facing, the key for us was “How do we purchase equipment? How do we get new technology out here? And how do we do that if we look at a very small millage or levy.” That is what’s critical.
So what have we done without that? We tried to bring as much involvement with, let’s say partners, to provide equipment. We’ll give you a couple of recent examples. The nursing department, they needed this piece of equipment. They called me and said St. Luke’s has what’s called a C-arm that they use in the radiology area. It’s not functional for life, for the use of a patient, but it could be used by us for simulation by getting software to make it operable. So I contacted the administrator at the hospital, Dan Wakeman, and Dan said “Why not?” So we got that piece of equipment.
Another is working with (Ohio) Senator (Randy) Gardner over the last several years on equipment when it comes to what can we work within the community, areas of training, the workforce, or anything that will advance the experience of the people. Previously he was able to pull, a couple of years ago, $300,000 worth of money to buy what we call fluid power equipment – hydraulics schematics so that we can get people these trainers.
SR: I’ll just add a little layer about a client. This is computer numerical control (CNC), advance machining type of equipment. Because these are very, very expensive machines, some of them we own, and some of them we are providing a location for them and we’re doing training on them. But they have, as a corporation, access to bring their clients in and do demos. The other equipment that Dr. Bower alluded to is in the healthcare area. We have one of the only MRI technician programs in the country, so we have functioning MRI equipment on campus, and that’s very expensive equipment.
In this region, we are the leader in John Deere and Caterpillar dealer service training. Students come in cohorts of 20 to 30, they move to northwest Ohio from Michigan, Indiana, and other parts of Ohio. These students have jobs before they even start their programs. We don’t own the big equipment that they work on, but that’s a partnership that those students come here and they’re already employed before they even start.
TBJ: Can you provide an update on some of the efforts being undertaken by Owens to address financial issues that face the institution?
MB: We’ve had this challenge going on for a number of years, from when I first got here and recognized that enrollments were dropping off. We have addressed it by looking at efficiencies. We have looked at meeting the needs and what the cost would be.
Our recovery plan is our Bible. If you go to our website, on our front page, and if you look right in the middle, it says ‘fiscal recovery.’ You will see, right at the top, the reports that we have been providing, and this is open to the public. They can take a look at the progress that we have really, really made.
Now, the one thing that people have to recognize, when they take a look at this, you are going to say, “They are doing well, they are in the black.” I want to caution people. Yes we are, but we have to get to a certain ratio. And that ratio is 2.4. We fell below that ratio for a number of years, and that’s what put us on what they call fiscal watch. So people will look and say, “Wow, they’ve got cash flow. They are building reserves. They are in the black.” But we’re still below that ratio. We have to get to that 2.4. So, yes, we are looking good, but we are not where we need to be.
We look at and we project out that in fiscal year 2017 we’ll hit that ratio. It’s been the work of everybody within the institution, whether it’s in the academic support services, or our facilities people. It is everybody coming together to make this happen, so we’re really pleased. We’re excited about it, but we’re not there yet.
TBJ: What efforts are in place to increase enrollment and what geography does Owens service?
SR: We have a service district that includes Lucas, Wood, and Hancock County, with some small pieces of adjoining counties to the east — Ottawa and Sandusky. So that is our legal service district. But we draw students from outside of those districts as well, including across the Michigan border.
What we are looking at, though, is even though aggregate enrollment is dropping, we are looking to increase certain different pockets of demographics. For example, this coming semester in the summer, we’ve seen an increase in what we call our guest or transient student population. These are students who are home from university over the summer and taking classes to make sure they graduate on time. We actually put our calendar together so students that are home from BGSU or Ohio State or wherever they are, can take classes here in the summer in a timeframe that works for them.
Classes are also very importable. Given the way the State works, most of our general education classes are part of what we call the Ohio transfer module, which means that they automatically transfer to there. They don’t have some of the transfer problems students in other parts of the country would in their state because there’s kind of a key of State institutions saying what courses transfer.
The other thing I would focus on, in terms of enrollment, is we’ve seen we’re very competitive in what we call “College Credit Plus.” These are high school students who are dual-enrolled in college. College Credit Plus is a new name for what used to be called PSEO – Post Secondary Education Option. These are students who, while they are still in K-12 school, can start working on college courses. Our enrollment of dual-enrolled high school students has been in the neighborhood of more than 1,000 in recent semesters.
MB: I think people need to understand as well, when I came to the college and I looked at what supposedly these large numbers of students and enrollments were dropping, first of all, the funding formula has changed in the state of Ohio. It’s not on enrollments; it’s on completion. I believe that should be the basis of any organization, you know if you are going to take something in and you are going to make something out of it, it should be a completed project or process. We have had more students graduate from this college in the last four years than any other four years at this school combined.
When we look at our full-time students, we are seeing students that are increasing. This past May at our graduation we presented 743 degrees. That was huge for us. One of the largest graduating classes ever. So it’s the number of students we want to get complete, and we know what’s coming from the State now and not just the federal government about where we need to be in 2025 or 2030 for graduates.
We also have, and I’m not sure what our total population in vets is right now, but we have a large number of military vets. If we can increase that population by showing that we are a welcome place for our vets, that will work.
TBJ: Are there any other issues that you would like to address?
MB: One good thing that’s happening is collaboration. Since I’ve been here, the team I have in place here, wow, I can’t say enough about the college and institution, of the people who are working and are working really hard. We have been able to really build on relationships with BGSU, Lourdes University, UT, and with our sister institutions at Northwestern and Terra Community College. We’re in constant discussions and meetings of pathways, but it’s more than that. It’s talking about what is it that all of us can do to benefit the northwestern part of Ohio and not be standalone silos. We are working on being engaged together and working together. We have brought together a number of institutions working with us to take a look at economic development, if a company comes in and looks at an area and says “We would like to be here, but here’s what we’re looking at we need.” As one institution, we may not have it, but as a group together, we can identify how we can support that need, whatever it might be. So it’s those collaborations and partnerships, including the Cherry Street Mission. We could go on and on, there are so many organizations that we work with that we have to build on so that we can support, not just the community, but it opens it up for our students. We want our students to stay in northwest Ohio. It is so important. If we can’t work together, it’s not going to make it a possibility. So it’s something that we are striving for, and I think we are doing very, very well.
SR: If we think about the mission of the college as economic development, because students come to college because they want a job. But some jobs that we offer credentials for they can go out and work if they can become an associate degree prepared nurse for the largest nursing program. I don’t know what northwest Ohio in healthcare would do without the nursing graduates that we have.
In terms of transfer partnership, we are building over at UT, but we have finished a groundbreaking partnership with BGSU called Falcon Express. Let me tell you a little bit about Falcon Express. Most community colleges have a dual mission of university transfer and credentials that lead to jobs, but with the university transfer piece, what normally happens is students will accrue credits at the community college and kind of think about where they might transfer. If they are very high functioning and lucky that they are talking to an advisor that says, “Take this class, because they take that at Bowling Green. Don’t take that because it won’t fit your major,” then they put all those credits in a bucket, and they go to the new institution and they see what they can do with it. We built a partnership with BGSU where that happens in real time. The student is dual-enrolled at both BGSU and Owens Community College. Those credits are transcripted and transferred in real time. Once they’ve completed one semester in the program, our student here at Owens as a Falcon Express student can log into their account at BG and see their transcripts populating to a BGSU transcript. So by the time they get to BG in their junior year, they are pretty much a junior status, and they are well on their way.
We actually have a very similar articulation agreement with UT, that dual admission agreement that’s being reviewed, I think, by the lawyers at UT and by the folks here to roll out soon. Institutions are going to have to work together for this to happen. These kinds of partnerships are really the only way that we’re going to be competitive in a future workforce, when we know these future jobs. These high-skill, high-demand jobs are going to require credentials.