Back to school
Who is the average college student? An 18-year-old who is fresh out of high school? Maybe a 19-yearold who commutes from the family home? A 21-year-old who is working two part-time, minimum-wage jobs? How about a 41-year-old with a spouse, three kids, a house and a 15-year career in healthcare?
As it turns out, our society’s perception of average isn’t really the case these days. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 40 percent of our nation’s 16 million college and university students are actually 25 years of age or older. In fact, three out of four American college students are considered nontraditional, indicating they are older or possess one or more of the following characteristics: they delayed entry into higher education after completing high school, did not earn a traditional high school diploma, are married, attend part-time, work full-time or have children.
For nontraditional students, often identified as adult learners, obtaining a college education is a carefully orchestrated plan, resulting most commonly from a desire to advance within a current organization or gain entry into a new one. It’s a journey that must be coordinated with a multitude of pressing obligations, the most notable being life itself. Going to school while maintaining a career, family and church and civic commitments, not to mention the pressures that correspond to each, is no small task. For many, it’s a daunting, albeit rewarding ordeal, but one that Bluffton University’s adult and graduate education program
continually seeks to make possible.
Working to educate a workforce
According to a March 2007 report by the Lumina Foundation for Education, our nation’s workforce comprises 54 million adults who are without college degrees, and of those, nearly 34 million have no college experience at all. The increasing global economic competition and torrid pace at which technology is changing is “revolutionizing the skills and educational qualifications necessary to individual job success and national economic well-being,” say the authors of the report.
The days of earning a comfortable living without a bachelor’s degree are practically all but gone. “It’s a standard now— across all industries—that in order to advance in a position or even apply for a position that a bachelor’s degree is required,” says Ted Bible, director of adult and graduate education at Bluffton. “We have many people coming to us who know that in order to make their next career move they need to have a degree.”
For adults seeking a bachelor’s degree, Bluffton offers two degree completion programs—the Cohort-based Organizational Management Program (BCOMP) and Human Resources Management (HRM) program. Both are accelerated degree-completion programs designed specifically to complement workplace experience. Students earn their degrees by attending class one night a week, with the same group of individuals (known as a cohort), finishing the program within 18 to 24 months.
Now in its 16th year, the BCOMP program was created for professionals in a variety of careers, including manufacturing, finance, retail, healthcare, business and law enforcement. “Our BCOMP program is designed for anyone who is in a work environment,” says Bible, “because it prepares people to be effective managers and team leaders.” Adding to its accessibility factor, the program is offered in three locations: the Bluffton campus; Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio; and Northwest State Community College in Archbold, Ohio.
“In talking with BCOMP students who are mid-career, many say they’re getting their undergraduate degrees because the workplace environment is shifting so much,” says Dr. Karen Klassen Harder, professor of business and economics. “Even though they have a wonderful track record of job involvement and performance in a wide range of organizations, they still feel it necessary to get a degree to differentiate themselves so they can get the next position when the current one goes away or when a new one becomes available.”
New to the university in 2006, the HRM program is for working adults who have some professional or academic training in human resource management. The program is currently offered at the Bluffton campus, and the first graduates of the program are expected to receive their degrees in May 2008.
It’s not just bachelor’s degrees that are sending adults back to school. “These days, organizations are making it clear to their employees that if they are serious about their careers, they ought to be getting a master’s degree,” says Dr. George Lehman, director of Bluffton’s graduate programs in business and Howard Raid professor of business. “It shows initiative, particularly if individuals are interested in moving beyond supervisory roles into administrative positions.”
In 1995, Bluffton began offering graduate programs in education, including a Master of Arts in Education (MAEd) and licensures in technology, intervention specialist, and, as of early 2007, literacy specialist and mathematics specialist. Graduate programs in business were added in 1999, with a Master of Arts in Organizational Management (MAOM), followed by a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in 2004. While the education program and licensures are only offered at the Bluffton campus, the MAOM and MBA classes are also available at Edison Community College.
Bible says that while having an advanced degree certainly allows individuals more leverage in their careers, reasons for obtaining the degrees are varied and aren’t necessarily career-driven. “Many enter our programs for occupational reasons while others have reasons that are much more personal,” he says. “Many want to set examples for their children, or they want to prove to themselves that they can do it.” Regardless of reasons, adult students are in the business of advancing their lives.
Changing a career course
Dave Johnson BCOMP ’96 (Dublin, Ohio) was working in human resources at BP Chemicals in Lima, Ohio, when he heard about the BCOMP program. He was amazed that students could earn their degrees by going to class one night a week. “It was an answer to prayer for me,” says Johnson. “I had pretty much maxed out where I could go with the job I was in because I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. And, at the time, it was practically unheard of to be able to go to school without quitting one’s job.”
Like Johnson, Brian Carlin BCOMP ’07 (Bryan, Ohio) also thought the program sounded too good to be true. He had been going to school off and on for eight years, working toward an engineering degree. The night he found out about Bluffton’s BCOMP program, he had just been told the last three classes he needed would conflict with his work schedule. “At first, I didn’t think that as an engineering student Bluffton would be able to help me,” says Carlin. “I also thought, ‘No way could it be that easy.’ Nothing in the last 10 years had been that easy for me.”
While the program itself wasn’t all that easy, Carlin came to appreciate its structure and the way he was challenged to think differently. Working as a lineman for the city of Bryan, Carlin advanced to field foreman while in school and then to a superintendent position, overseeing all electrical personnel of the city. “I had two promotions within a year and a half,” says Carlin, “and all because I finished my bachelor’s degree. You could say the Cinderella story really happened for me.”
“Adult students go through our graduate programs and learn different ways of thinking and relating,” says Lehman. “Our graduates are asked to join task forces and take on more responsibility, and I believe it’s because employers can see they’ve become more objective, better problem solvers and careful thinkers.”
Johnson’s time at Bluffton propelled him on a new career path. He finished his degree as BP began undergoing major structural changes. When the company offered severance packages to employees in 1998, Johnson took one and decided to head back to the classroom, this time obtaining a master’s degree in adult education from The Ohio State University – Lima. He received a call from Bluffton, asking him to teach in the BCOMP program.
Johnson says at first he was unsure of what he’d be able to bring to the classroom, but he quickly realized all the change he experienced during his time at BP would parallel his students’ experiences. “I could talk about downsizing, restructuring, entrepreneurship and such because I had experienced them,” he says. “At some point in time, these students will experience the same.”
Learning from teachers and peers
At Bluffton, adult students’ work experiences play an important role in their education. Individuals share their work experiences and practices in the classroom, providing their peers with new ideas to take back to their work environments.
Jean Heath MAOM ’04 (Piqua, Ohio) says her classes complemented her job as an oncology coordinator. “I wasn’t with all nursing directors,” she says. “I was with a diverse group of students from different walks of life, all with unique ideas. I got to see how others handled themselves in their organizations and how they dealt with situations.” Heath, who has been working at Upper Valley Medical Center in Troy, Ohio, for the past 25 years, is currently the director of the Cancer Care Center and Community Health and Wellness, a position she advanced to after completing her master’s degree.
Klassen Harder tells the story of a class discussion in which students explored what it means to be a leader. Students in the class had experienced a wide range of management styles, from militaristic to pastoral. One student was completely unfamiliar with the idea of an employer respectfully listening and communicating with his employees. As a new job responsibility, this man would be notifying fellow employees that their jobs were being terminated, beginning the day after this particular class session. Klassen Harder says the student became aware that these individuals were people with families, with personalities and responsibilities.
“Because of his master’s program experience, he was able to relate in a kinder and gentler manner,” says Klassen Harder. “In fact, people who were a part of his leadership team asked if he was OK because he was giving indication of showing the emotion of this reality. He realized, along with others in the class, that one’s leadership is more effective when he or
she shows respect.”
“As instructors of nontraditional students, we’re always looking for our adult students to make connections between classroom topics and application to workplace,” says Lehman. “The more job experience an individual has, the more capable they are of applying what they learn.” Lehman says that when students finish their programs, they often tell him that they learned just as much from their peers as they did from their instructors. “We expect that,” he says.
Jasen Coleman MAOM ’06 (Toledo, Ohio), a bank manager at U.S. Bank’s Fremont, Ohio, downtown office, says he continually uses the information he took away from class discussions: “I’ve had someone bring up the issue of conflict in their workplace, and I said, ‘We talked about that in class.’ And I went back to my notes to look them over. I’ve been able to use everything I’ve learned in the classroom in my corporate setting.”
Support for when life happens
In addition to learning from one another, Bluffton’s adult students are able to rely on each other for support throughout the course of their programs. The cohort-based system is one of the reasons the BCOMP and graduate programs in business are popular, says Bible. “Throughout the 18 to 24 months students are in the programs, life happens.” he says. “Jobs change, whether voluntary or involuntary. There are births, celebrations, deaths and injuries. A cohort provides an immediate support group.” More often than not, students remark that had it not been for the support of their classmates they never would have finished their programs.
Working with the same group of people who have similar obligations, like work and families, makes it easier for classmates to help one another out, says Coleman. “Going to Bluffton was something I really had to think about,” he says. “Bluffton’s not just 20 minutes from Toledo.” Driving to Bluffton from his office in Fremont, which was an hour away, and then home to Toledo made for a long commute. Knowing that he wasn’t the only person having to drive or deal with work and school pressures made the program more appealing. To this day, Coleman says he is still in contact with his cohort. “We still get together and talk about school and life.”
When first considering Bluffton, Johnson was appreciative of the fact that he’d be in class with people just like him— working adults. “The people in my cohort could all relate to one another because we were all working; we all had families,” he says. “By the time we finished, we were a family.” “It was very interesting to see, over a two-year period, this cohort grow into a big, extended family,” says Kevin Towne MBA ’07 (Napoleon, Ohio), who has worked at North Star BlueScope Steel in Delta, Ohio, for 11 years. “We started out as strangers, and by the end, you know the names of everyone’s kids.”
Towne says he researched multiple master’s degree programs, knowing that an advanced degree would make him more marketable. “Bluffton’s program fit my time constraints, and I could focus on one class at a time, getting the most out of each one instead of struggling to make it through three or four at the same time,” he says. He attributes his success to a supportive wife and family. A father of three, Towne says, “I tried to minimize my time away from my family. I would read while the kids were in school or after everyone had gone to bed at night. It made for a lot of late nights, but we all knew what I was trying to do.”
A budget and finance manager for Women and Family Services Inc., in Defiance, Ohio, Edwina Phillips BCOMP ’06 (Bryan, Ohio) was working as a one-on-one, multiple handicap aide for Bryan City Schools while enrolled at Bluffton. She says she would go to school with her children in the morning and come home with them in the afternoon. “The three of us would sit down with milk and cookies and do our homework together,” she says. She acknowledges that the hardest part about taking the courses was missing out on her children’s soccer and basketball games.
Heath, who recently received a Miami County YWCA Women of Excellence award, says the toughest part for her was the juggling of responsibilities. “Some days it was a ‘What’s at the top of my list?’ day,” she says. Her husband and children were very supportive, as was her employer. “The hospital administration wants its employees to be successful. They feel very strongly about employees going back to school and getting an education."
Advancing in the workplace and in life
Helping students advance in their workplace is what Bluffton’s adult and graduate education programs are all about. “Through our programs, students provide increased contributions to their organizations,” says Lehman. “A lot of graduate programs say, ‘Sign up for this program, and we’ll get you a great job somewhere else.’ We say, ‘Sign up for our program, and we can enhance your value at your current organization.’ We’re interested in students who are ready to advance within their organizations.”
Since its inception in 1992, 707 students have made their way through the BCOMP program. Bluffton has awarded diplomas to 56 MAOM graduates, 61 MBA graduates and 124 MAEd graduates. Along with the graduates, hundreds of individuals have completed coursework for additional credentialing and continuing education. This fall, the adult and graduate education office will recognize its largest incoming classes, no doubt a direct result of the increasing need for continuing education in the workforce. With their education, these new students, like the graduates before them, will be making more valuable contributions to their organizations and communities.
“The first night of grad school, my professor told us, ‘The purpose of adult education is to work to help to improve the quality of someone’s life,’” says Johnson, whose passion for teaching adults is as strong today as it was the day he first walked into class. That’s the credo he lives by in his classroom and the same credo that resonates throughout Bluffton’s adult and graduate education programs.
