Transformational Trajectory: Three Current Case Studies

NACUBO's Business Officer often comes up with great content. In the current issue, there is a series of three case studies worth looking at. They include: "Rising to the Top," by Lee. T. Todd, Jr., about the University of Kentucky, Lexington's plan to become a "Top 20" public research university by 2020; "Transformation to the Third Power," by Bill Duncan, about High Point University's challenge to tackle its physical appearance, academic environment, and overall student experience, all at once; and "Online and On Our Way," by Patrcia Charlton, about the College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas' implementation of online learning to handle massive growth demand:

The College of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, is a two-year public institution providing educational opportunities to this fast-paced, growing metropolis. CSN is one of the largest community colleges in the country and the largest institution of higher education in Nevada. In fall 2008, enrollment topped 41,000 students, or 21,000 full-time equivalents. Like so many other higher educational institutions, our college has felt the pressures of increased enrollment, continual student demand, strained fiscal operating resources, and limited funding to support capital projects. Further, we faced budget constraints that limited our ability to increase faculty, construct new facilities, and expand student service operations. Despite these challenges, the college was determined to meet the current and future needs of its students.

Based on the unique nature of our student population, the 24-hour demand, and limited ability to obtain new physical facilities, implementing online programs was a natural solution that would enable the institution to meet the needs of our students. In the past three years, we’ve gone from having only a few selected courses online to offering more than 22 programs and 300 courses to students in a structured “online campus,” with academic and student services online and more than 19,000 duplicated enrollments annually (with each online course a student takes counting as one enrollment). The online presence is our fastest-growing campus community, and demand is still outpacing the institution’s ability to keep up.