UVSC promoting its 'Success' to the Nth degree

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Dec 29, 2005 by Laura Hancock Deseret Morning News

OREM -- Forty-four degrees and rising.

That's the message Utah Valley State College wants to send with its "Success" advertising campaign, designed in part to show off its list of bachelor's degree programs.

Folks who drive I-15 in Utah County should be familiar with billboards promoting UVSC's programs and products. Soon, radio spots touting the list of nearly four dozen majors, various professors and star alumni such as NBA point guard Ronnie Price.

Last spring, the college hired a polling firm to

interview residents along the Wasatch Front about their knowledge of UVSC. The poll conducted by Dan Jones & Associates showed that 25 percent of Utah County respondents are unaware the former community college now offers bachelor's degrees.

Statewide, according to the poll, about 50 percent didn't know a student could graduate with a four-year degree from the Orem school.

Although the poll showed that awareness of UVSC's four-year degree offerings increased from previous years, college administrators would like more people to know that the school has pushed to bring its academics up to university level.

College administrators have told state education and government leaders they ultimately want the school to transition into a university.

But that step may be difficult to make -- politically speaking -- if there's a prevalent perception the school isn't on the same scholastic level as other Utah universities.

"We're working to increase awareness through the marketing campaign," college spokeswoman Megan Laurie said. "We are increasing the recruiting effort (at high schools). We're launching a Success campaign."

When the school became a state college more than a decade ago it rolled out three four-year degrees -- business management, computer science, technology management.

"We had a three-year period when we only had three," said Derek Hall, UVSC associate vice president of marketing and communications. "It was a testing period."

Since then, an increasing number of students have been graduating from 24,000-student UVSC with bachelor's degrees.

In April, about 1,300 students graduated with a bachelor's degree.

Many of the four-year degree programs UVSC offered in the beginning were "niche" majors such as multimedia communications technology in which students learned DVD authoring and digital photography.

College chiefs sought majors to fill local employment needs and majors that made UVSC different from the state's other colleges and universities.

Now, UVSC is trying to fill in the gaps in its degree offerings with majors provided at four-year schools, such as political science and economics.

Many of the majors started as associate degrees and the academic departments only had to add one or two new faculty members and a handful of new classes to be able to have a program that could sustain bachelor's degree programs, Hall said.

In reality, the college lists degrees in about three dozen academic disciplines -- but UVSC administrators count separately bachelor's in science, bachelor's in arts, and bachelor's in fine arts degrees for any one discipline.

To start new degree programs, deans initiate the process by including it in their budgets. Then, they present a proposal for the school's Board of Trustees, Hall said.

"(As) part of that proposal, they look at the faculty we would need, the student need, the industry need, what jobs are there, how supportive the industry is," Hall said. "They look at labs, at space."

If the trustees approve the proposal, it is then considered by the Board of Regents, the governor-appointed panel that oversees Utah taxpayer-supported colleges and universities.

The regents ultimately approve or veto all UVSC's academic offerings, as well as its overall mission, such as being a community college, four-year college or a university.

A group of would-be engineering students recently met and discussed the possibility of UVSC offering traditional engineering programs such as chemical, civil and mechanical engineering.

Administrators, however, do not seem ready to bite.

No traditional engineering degrees appear on the school's future "wish list" of majors.

E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com