The Ozarks Technical Community College Board of Trustees approved nearly $4 million in various projects across their Springfield campus on Feb. 13.
These projects will make room for their upcoming plumbing program, provide an interior facelift for the historic Lincoln Hall and expand the capacity of some health sciences courses.
Supplemented by some state grants, the additions and renovations being made will allow OTC to add and grow programs that will help put students into industries facing labor shortages.
Lincoln Hall renovations will help OTC graduate more nurses, more comfortably
The board committed $1.54 million to a variety of projects, including the creation of a new practical nursing lab and expanding – and enhancing – OTC’s surgical technology program. The vast majority of that funding is coming from a $1.5 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, which was spearheaded by former Sen. Roy Blunt prior to his retirement.
The new lab will allow them to (more comfortably) grow their average annual graduating class of practical nurses from around 60 to north of 80. They have already hired an additional faculty member to help manage the growing program.
Their new practical nursing program, which began at the beginning of the current spring semester, is designed for individuals who already have entry-level jobs in clinical settings, from certified nursing assistants to EMTs. Their on-the-job experience can count towards credits that can help expedite the process of becoming a practical nurse.
Since the program already began this spring, and construction on the lab in OTC’s Lincoln Hall is yet to commence, they have been working in pretty tight quarters.
“It was more out of necessity of how that program needed to roll out versus when we were actually going to be able to get the space,” said Dr. Aaron Light, the dean of Health Sciences at OTC.
Light said that they expect the new lab to be ready by July.
The surgical technology program, which is also housed in Lincoln Hall, is considerably smaller than its practical nursing counterpart, with only 20 students able to be enrolled at any given time. The lab expansion will allow them to add four to six additional students.
However, Light said that isn’t currently at capacity, but they’re hoping that the new and improved space will help attract additional applicants.
With these additions to their labs and growth of these programs, Light is eager to see the impact it could have on the medical worker shortage plaguing hospitals across the country, including in Springfield.
Education both contributed to the labor shortage and is vital to finding a solution, according to health care experts, including Light, in an in-depth report the Daily Citizen published earlier this month.
“In the health care education community, we need to pretty much double our production [of students], whether it be nurses, respiratory therapists, surgical technologist, respiratory therapists, pharmacy techs, medical assistants,” Light said. “We need to double our production to meet the community needs.
“So while this doesn't double our production in all of those areas, it does at least increase the production of practical nursing and increase the potential production of surgical technologists in this area, which is wonderful news because I know the hospitals are really hurting.”
Additions to Industry Transportation Technology Center to house new plumbing program
Last month, OTC announced its plans to debut its first plumbing program in 2024. With the shuffling around of several programs thanks to the new Plaster Manufacturing Center and the relocation of their agriculture program to the Richwood Valley campus in Nixa, OTC’s Industry Transportation Technology Center, otherwise known as the ITTC building, has room to expand.
The expansion will add a new classroom, laboratory and offices for the plumbing program to the ITTC building. Of the $1.8 million approved for the project, $1.3 million is from a grant from the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
The plumbing industry, like health care, has suffered from labor shortages in recent years, according to Matt Hudson, the executive dean of Career, Technical and Community Development at OTC.
Hudson said that OTC has worked closely with the local Plumbers and Pipefitters Union and local plumbing companies to create a program that works for everyone, by shoring up the workforce and adjusting the program’s focus so as to not compete with them.
“This was overwhelmingly industry-supported,” Hudson said. “These are competitors sitting at the same table…saying ‘we basically steal each other's employees, because there's not enough people to go around.’ They offer somebody a raise, and they go work there for 90 days or six months, then they go elsewhere. That's not solving the problem, and they recognize the only solution is to increase the output, which is where we come in.”
Thanks to the good relationship they’ve developed with industry stakeholders in the area, and OTC’s reputation in the skilled trades, Hudson is hopeful that the program is able to quickly find success. Over a five-year period, he expects the number of students enrolled to mirror what is typical for most of their technical programs, at 50.
Due to the many moving pieces of the project, between finding a qualified instructor, collecting all of the necessary equipment and the challenges of doing construction on an occupied building, Hudson said that fall semester of 2024 was the most realistic timeline the program will debut, although the exact date is yet to be determined.
Entryway renovations a nod to the history of Lincoln Hall, a building with which Light shares history
Amid the funding committed to starting and growing educational programs, the board also approved $429,000 to remodel the interior entrance of Lincoln Hall with new floors, paint, lighting and upgrades to the corridor.
No changes will be made to the exterior of the historic building, which was once Springfield’s only school for Black students from 1931 until integration in the 1950s.
Light himself has had a long history with the building, having been a part of the crew that helped with the asbestos removal when he was a college student at Missouri State University. Now, as the dean of Health Sciences, he oversees a lot of the work that happens in that building.
“So it's a very unique transformation that I have seen in this building over the past 20 years,” Light said. “…The design that is coming out is really holding to the Art Deco feel of the building, which is, I think, kind of cool that OTC appreciates the history of Lincoln Hall and is really trying to make sure that we give a nod to the history of the design.”
