Sinclair360

Every weekday Ashley Hatton hops in her car for a short drive to the Englewood Learning Center. She drops her 11-month-old daughter at daycare and walks down the hall to her college classes. For this new mother, the convenience of the Englewood Learning Center has made attending college a possibility.

“If Englewood weren’t here, I probably wouldn’t be able to be in college, because I couldn’t afford daycare,” said Hatton, 20. “I would have had to drop out.” Hatton is among an emerging breed of Sinclair Community College students who are on their way to degrees largely because the college has branched into their specific communities. Since 2006, when Sinclair opened its first learning center, thousands of students have enrolled in classes at the centers. Students, most often recent high school graduates, are flocking to the centers in rising numbers each fall.

Sinclair now operates four centers, with locations in Englewood, Huber Heights, and both Preble and Warren counties.

“It’s the Walgreens effect,” said Dawayne Kirkman, who manages the Englewood and Huber Heights centers. “Everyone wants a Walgreens on their corner in their town. They want a college on their street.”

For many of the students, attending class at a learning center, rather than on Sinclair’s downtown campus, saves time and money. They avoid a 30-minute commute into downtown Dayton, as well as the related expenses, such as gas and parking. They can more easily maintain jobs in their own towns or go home between classes for lunch. The YMCA – which shares the buildings in Englewood, Huber Heights and Preble County – extends its childcare service to Sinclair students for $1 an hour, a great help to parents like Hatton.

Students often acknowledge that the smaller classes and close-knit community atmosphere ease their transitions to college. “I think a lot of people really like the culture that’s created at the learning centers,” Kirkman said. “It’s a one-door entrance where everybody knows your name. For some of these communities we are serving, that’s the transition they want.”

The communities have been strong supporters of Sinclair’s venture, Kirkman said.

The centers give their cities something to tout when they are recruiting new companies, said Roger Custer, planning and development director for the city of Huber Heights. Custer praised the Huber Heights center as a resource for residents and local businesses. “With our changing economy – locally, nationally and globally – to be able to have a place near home where you can acquire new skills or retrain yourself is invaluable,” he said.

Meeting a need

Sinclair has long offered evening classes at local high schools, and online courses have rapidly grown in recent years. But in 2006, Sinclair took a larger leap into meeting the region’s educational and workforce needs with the learning-center concept. These brick-and-mortar locations offer most, if not all, of Sinclair’s basic academic courses in English and mathematics, as well as introductory classes in some of the college’s most popular degrees, such as nursing and business. Students at Englewood and Huber Heights can complete an associate degree in business administration at the locations, and the Warren County campus offers five associate programs, as well as some complete certificate tracks. For would-be students in these outlying communities, completing an associate degree or earning a certificate has become much more realistic. “We are bringing Sinclair to their doorsteps,” said Janet Schmitt, manager of the Preble County Learning Center, which opened in August 2009.

The response has been easily measured by enrollment. The first centers, in Huber Heights and Englewood, launched with about 400 and 500 students, respectively. This fall Englewood boasts just over 1,300 students, and Huber Heights more than 1,200.

In 2007, Sinclair opened the Courseview Campus Center in Mason, Ohio, just off Interstate 71, as the first and only higher-education option in Warren County. Courseview’s enrollment has grown from 340 that first fall to more than 1,000 in 2009. And even more students are taking classes offered by other universities at Courseview’s campus.

Miami University, University of Cincinnati, University of Dayton, Wilmington College and Wright State University followed Sinclair to Warren County, and all now offer select graduate classes at the Courseview building. “This partnership is a huge asset to Warren County, from the citizens’ point of view, because they don’t have to travel to Oxford, Clifton or Dayton to earn a college degree,” said George Sehi, executive dean of Courseview.

Warren County commissioners have supported the center’s growth, by guaranteeing a $50 to $100 scholarship for every Warren County resident who enrolls at Courseview for at least nine hours.

Sehi envisions 4,000 students at Courseview in the next five years. He expects that the campus will grow to meet the demand, with additional buildings and more jobs. Already the campus has created new jobs for Warren County, with 73 adjunct instructors. “We are helping economic development,” he said.

The success in these communities propelled Sinclair to answer the call of Preble County. The Preble County Youth Foundation raised $1.6 million to help Sinclair establish a learning center there. Preble County leaders knew that a higher-education option was severely needed; the county has the lowest college-attainment rate in Ohio. Sinclair expected about 100 students for this fall’s first quarter, but enrolled almost 250. “It’s a population for whom college has not been accessible. We have a lot of first-generation college students,” Schmitt said. “Every face that walks through that door reminds us that that’s why we are here.”

Providing a pathway

The learning centers are critical pieces of the pathway from high school to higher education, said Courseview’s Sehi. He points to the relationships between the centers and local high schools. High school juniors and seniors are completing college classes for both college and high school credit at the centers during their school days through the statewide Post-Secondary Enrollment Options Program. “We are really getting students engaged and informed of higher education opportunities while they are in high school,” she said. “They are starting to understand that there is college after high school.”

The centers put the students on the road to completing their degrees at Sinclair and then going on to a four-year institution. It’s not unusual for Sinclair students to take classes at a learning center, downtown at the main campus and online throughout their college careers.

Being successful in a smaller environment before heading into a larger university setting is crucial to these students’ confidence, Schmitt said. “This is a smaller, safer step,” she added.

For Englewood student Ashley Hatton, the smaller classes allow her to get one-on-one attention from her teachers. When she finishes her associate degree in business management, Hatton plans to complete her bachelor’s degree at Wright State University, with her eyes set on a job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Hatton and her counterparts across the learning centers are using the centers as their foothold toward college degrees – and better futures.

Said Schmitt, “We’re an opportunity they might not have had elsewhere.”

By Tracy Staley

Tracy Staley is a Dayton-based writer whose work has appeared in the Dayton Business Journal, the Nashville Business Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader, among others.