Obama proposes to update community colleges nationwide, could impact Meramec
Clinton Borror
–Staff Writer–
If passed, the American Jobs Act bill, presented to Congress earlier this year, could result in $5 billion in funding for community college modernization.
“A lot of the community colleges that are in the country were founded in or around the 1960s,” STLCC-Meramec President George Wasson said. “We’re all sitting here with 50-year-old facilities. This is the idea that’s behind the proposal.”
New construction would be used for modernization and expansion. Improvements to the Meramec campus could include increased classroom size and the modernization.
According to the latest Delta Cost Project report on college spending trends, community colleges “bore the brunt” of state and local cuts to support higher education.
“Over in our science building, we’ve renovated half of our labs. The other half, we desperately need to. That’s the type of initiative we’d have if it came,” Wasson said. “We’ve already got things on the books that we’ve prepared in case this goes through.”
Some facilities have been renovated through funding from the Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative.
“I will say that the labs we’ve redone, we’ve done a very good job on. We have better facilities than some of the four year colleges,” Wasson said. “We’re very proud of that and want to maintain those standards – and even upgrade a bit if allowed.”
However, other areas of campus could be updated with increased funding as well.
“We have our physical therapy assistant and our occupational therapy assistant where those facilities are in desperate need of renovation. We have our horticulture programs,” Wasson said. “All these different types of facilities that we’ve kind of patched together over the years would be open to that type of renovation.”
Occupational therapy assistant teaching classrooms could be updated through expanded classroom size.
“We have 47 to 48 students right now between two levels of classes. When I have 24 students in a classroom, the space is tight,” said Meramec Occupational Therapy Assistant Program Director Cynthia Ballentine.
Students use occupational therapy assistant classrooms to begin learning skills, and later practice them on one another.
“With larger space we might be able to have clients come in so we could practice on them before they go out to do fieldwork or clinical experiences,” Ballentine said. “We know how to teach students, but as class size grows we need to make sure students have as many opportunities to practice their skills as possible.”
The engineering physics lab in Science West could use expansion. The room contains a single line of sinks running along the length of the classroom and heavy wooden tables for students to work at.
“There are nice and sturdy wooden tables, but one of the problems we have is this line of water which makes it difficult to do a kinetic experiment,” said Professor of Chemistry and Chair of Physical and Engineering Sciences Nancy C. Collier.
Some labs and classrooms could use “more elbow room,” according to Collier.
“The college physics room has large sturdy tables but they are not conducive for moving out of the way to do a larger experiment,” Collier said. “We do an amazing job of teaching physics here. Just think what we could do if we had renovated labs.”
