News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Vol State Community College restructuring its Livingston and Cookeville Centers.
Economic And Community Development Vice President Nick Bishop said they are hoping to streamline the college’s resources and create one Upper Cumberland entity with two sites.
“We’re going to start sharing staff and faculty between those two campuses and that will make it a more financially efficient process on the college,” Bishop said. “It will also create more opportunities for a broader base of classes for the students to choose from so that you’re not having to pick between Cookeville and Livingston or going back and forth between the two campuses.”
Bishop said the college can now offer courses between both centers via zoom technology. In this pilot year, a few classes meet two days a week, one day the instructor can be at the Livingston site and will zoom the course into the Cookeville site and then vice-versa the next day.
Bishop said the college previously had to restructure during the pandemic and saw a decline in enrollment. He said they hope this new plan will continue its new upward trajectory.
“Just like most community colleges, back in March we did a restructuring process due to low enrollment,” Bishop said. “But now our enrollment is actually growing. Our Cookeville and Livingston campuses, they have a significant amount of growth lately. We’re not where we were at pre-pandemic, but we are kicking back up so we’re hoping to grow this into something positive. We went through a restructuring phase in March, and we hope to maybe look back upon that and grow that from here. It’s really a matter of being able to more efficiently and effectively use our resource.”
Bishop said the next big step will be to build an advisory board with community leaders, elected officials, business owners, and others.
