Office of the President

Serving Dual Roles is Good for Business

Are you ready for a quick pop quiz?

Minnesota State College Southeast is …

A. A technical college.

B. A community college.

C. Both a community and technical college.

Would you be surprised to learn the correct answer is C?

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you didn’t get the answer right. As of 2023, 63% of our community members who were surveyed did not know that Southeast offered general education/transfer courses.

Historically, our campuses in Red Wing and Winona have long served as technical colleges for our communities. That’s a legacy that we fully embrace and want to continue.

In 2016, one of my predecessors, Dr. Dorothy Duran, made the wise decision to have Southeast expand its role and serve as both a technical and community college for the region. Community colleges offer general education and liberal arts and sciences courses, and associate degrees, including transfer pathways degrees, which help students seamlessly continue their education at four-year institutions.

We’ve been offering expanded courses in business, psychology, human biology, and other disciplines for nearly a decade now. These courses provide a resource for students who are looking for the ease and convenience of adding to their knowledge, or getting their general education courses covered before transferring to university to earn a bachelor’s degree.

At the time, there were many in our community who were alarmed that by adding the community college role to our portfolio, we were distancing ourselves from our technical college roots. That was never the case.

In reality, adding these community college and transfer pathway courses helps maintain the financial solvency of our institution.

A psychology course is relatively inexpensive to offer on a per-student basis. Paying for an instructor and covering the cost of utilities represents most of the overhead.

In contrast, offering career technical education courses is expensive.

Class sizes are intentionally small, due to the hands-on nature of the experience.

The equipment needed to train our students is expensive and constantly changing. Our graduates need to be knowledgeable on how to operate the newest technology in the workplace to graduate career ready.

A recent piece of classroom equipment cost $250,000. That’s a steep price considering our annual equipment budget is only $50,000.

Using some of the revenue from our community college courses helps offset the expense of our CNC machine tool, construction, Mechatronics and nursing classes.

The good news for Southeast is that demand for career technical education is “hot right now,” according to Diane Walleser, a veteran consultant who works closely with two-year colleges. At the same time, Walleser reports that Gen Z college students also want transfer pathway courses.

Fortunately, Southeast is well positioned to support our students, whether they are upskilling for their roles in business and industry, or taking courses with an eye toward continuing their education.

Earlier this year, Minnesota State College Southeast added a new position, a Shared Academic Transfer Advisor. The position, funded equally between Southeast and Winona State University, is designed to help our students at Southeast make plans for how to earn their degree at our college and go on and earn a bachelor’s degree with reduced time and cost.

Barb Nascak, our new shared academic transfer advisor, comes to Southeast after 17 years at WSU. She’s already met with more than 200 students, helping them determine what courses they need to take for their degree at Southeast, as well as their future academic pursuits.

That kind of response affirms the value of this new position and the importance of providing transfer pathway degrees to our students.

Ultimately, Southeast’s dual roles are good for your business, and ours.

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