Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

higher education :

Balancing act

Some say new bachelor’s program could conflict with CSN’s main mission

CSN

Leila Navidi

Student Pedro Perez listens for the “heartbeat” of a doll during a neonatal and pediatrics lab in the Cardiorespiratory Sciences Program at the College of Southern Nevada. The possibility that CSN will offer a bachelor’s degree in cardiorespiratory sciences has sparked debate.

Click to enlarge photo

Cardiorespiratory Sciences Program Director Tracy Sherman, teaching in a neonatal and pediatrics lab, hopes to use $50,000 in recent foundation funding to hire a consultant to study the feasibility of CSN's offering a bachelor's degree in cardiorespiratory sciences.

Click to enlarge photo

A student practices placing an oxygen delivery mask on the face of a doll in a neonatal and pediatrics lab at the College of Southern Nevada.

When the College of Southern Nevada dropped the word “Community” from its name last year, the change reflected the school’s launch of its first bachelor’s degree program and its aspiration to develop others.

Some educators worried that along with its name, the institution would alter its mission. They fretted that baccalaureate offerings would siphon resources away from the cash-strapped college’s traditional areas of focus, including vocational training and preparing students to transfer to universities.

CSN will have to revisit these concerns as it explores offering a second bachelor’s degree, in cardiorespiratory sciences. (The first is in dental hygiene.)

Some members of the Board of Regents, which governs public higher education in Nevada, are reluctant to establish more advanced programs at community colleges.

“I think it drifts the mission, except in those rare cases where there is a unique need that has to be met but the state college can’t meet it,” said Jason Geddes, chairman of the regents’ Student and Academic Affairs Committee.

The program CSN is weighing would prepare respiratory therapists for management and teaching positions in their field.

The college has an associate degree program that trains these health professionals — the folks who treat asthma and emphysema patients and help premature babies and trauma victims breathe — to work in hospitals and other clinical settings.

“What the bachelor’s degree would offer is the ability to advance professionally,” said Tracy Sherman, director of CSN’s Cardiorespiratory Sciences Program.

Only registered respiratory therapists would be eligible to pursue the bachelor’s degree, Sherman said.

CSN is the only public higher education institution in Nevada that offers a degree in cardiorespiratory sciences. That strengthens the school’s argument for adding the new program.

So does an $8.2 million donation the college announced in August. The money, from the Engelstad Family Foundation, will allow CSN to build top-of-the-line facilities for Sherman’s program, which is so short on space its students use sinks in the college’s restrooms to clean off dummy arms after they practice drawing fake blood from the limbs.

The Engelstad gift includes $50,000 for planning the bachelor’s program. Sherman hopes to use that money to hire a consultant to help study its feasibility.

She said she does not know when CSN would be ready to bring a formal proposal to the regents. Before deciding whether to move forward with a baccalaureate program, the college will survey potential students and professionals to gauge interest and support, Sherman said.

Still, she creates the impression that CSN is well-positioned to launch a new program. She thinks the Engelstad donation and fees from bachelor’s degree students would cover costs.

So for the college and the state, “it’s almost like a free program,” she said.

Convincing Regent Ron Knecht of that might prove to be a challenge.

“I’m very skeptical when anybody tells me that a public agency has a new program and it won’t cost the taxpayers anything,” he said.

Besides obvious expenses such as faculty salaries, every new program requires the college to spend money in areas such as student support. Advising, financial aid services, program planning and administration all have costs.

CSN will have to make a strong case — stronger than usual, perhaps — to sell a new bachelor’s degree program to the regents.

With public agencies facing budget cuts the state archivist has called the worst since the Great Depression, regents have made it clear they will heavily scrutinize any proposals for new programs.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to be adding too many things when you’re cutting back others,” Knecht said. “That said, I guess I qualified that by saying ‘too many’ — I wouldn’t categorically rule it out. I’d have to look at it on its merits.”

Some faculty leaders have acknowledged that at a time of cutbacks, schools need to do a better job of estimating costs and demand for new programs.

In the past, officials at CSN and other state schools have had inflated expectations for new offerings. When making enrollment projections for programs launched in 2004, officials overestimated student demand in 18 of 25 instances, according to a report regents reviewed last year.

For CSN’s new bachelor’s of science in dental hygiene program, for example, officials had predicted that in fall 2006, 254 students would be pursuing the degree. Only 31 were.

The projection included every person who, on a survey, indicated an interest in entering the program, an unrealistic way of assessing demand, according to a consultant whose company conducted a feasibility study for the program.

To attract more out-of-state students, the college moved all dental hygiene bachelor’s degree courses online a year after launching the program as a hybrid classroom and Web-based program. Most students are still Nevada residents.

Patricia Castro, interim dean of CSN’s School of Health Sciences, said she and her colleagues have “talked extensively about being very careful” and “reasonable” in predicting enrollments for new offerings, including the one in cardiorespiratory sciences.

She thinks the dental hygiene bachelor’s degree is a success despite lower than expected student turnout. The program, with an annual budget of about $100,000, has graduated 34 students, including several who have become college instructors.

In the end, a second bachelor’s degree program at CSN might get a warmer reception than the first.

Faculty Senate Chairwoman Sondra Cosgrove thinks many of her colleagues’ misgivings about bringing baccalaureate education to CSN have died with time. Professors were worried that a bevy of new bachelor degrees would follow the approval of the pioneering one, pushing the school away from its mission as a community college, Cosgrove said.

That never happened.

“We brought the bachelor’s degree program on and nothing much has changed,” Cosgrove said. “So people said, ‘It’s not as bad as what we thought it could be.’ ”

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy