Live and Learn
Several Northwest Arkansas colleges and universities offer residents a chance to expand their education without interrupting their careers
Posted on: Sunday, September 21, 2003
Options have multiplied for working adults who want to seek further training without interrupting their careers, educators say.
Influencing this trend in Northwest Arkansas is the comeback of the master of business administration, or MBA, and an influx of national companies who expect their employees to have degrees.
John Brown University in Siloam Springs, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Webster University and Northwest Arkansas Community College in Bentonville all have responded with both traditional programs and off-campus offerings that blend traditional classroom work and distance learning.
Some of the programs are offered at night or on weekends, or on rotation, so they're more compatible with working adults' schedules.
The schools also are emphasizing developing skills that are in demand in the current economy.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s business and industry leaders became concerned that MBA programs were not meeting their needs and were failing to keep pace with changes in business practices.
Business schools across the nation, including UA's, responded by restructuring their curricula to ensure that degree holders learned entrepreneurial skills and concepts such as teamwork and global management.
In fall 1999, UA's Walton College replaced its nearly 70-year-old MBA program with an accelerated program that students can complete in one year. The former program took full-time students at least two years.
"People could do our old MBA program at night, but it might take them three, four, five years to do it," she said.
The new, accelerated program still works great for people who can take off a year from work, she said, but not everyone has that luxury. So one year after its birth, the university added a two-year MBA program taught in night classes.
The night program is taught simultaneously in Fayetteville, Bentonville and Fort Smith using a video link and a traveling professor for each course. In a given month, the instructor might teach on the Fayetteville campus twice and once each at the Baldor company in Fort Smith and the Wal-Mart Development Center in Bentonville, Halsell said. The distance-learning sites offer the same computer technology -- software, Internet and online library resources -- as the Fayetteville classrooms.
At Northwest Arkansas Community College, serving non-traditional students has always been important, and two-year occupational degrees and one-year certificates are common.
But even so, officials have been making schedules more flexible. Some courses are made available day and night, but the college's bending doesn't stop there.
The college's two main programs geared toward putting people into careers are the criminal justice and early childhood education programs.
Many of the students in the criminal justice program are hourly workers who want to become dispatchers, counselors, or corrections or probation officers, according to school officials. Some want to change or start careers, and others are already in law enforcement seeking promotions or salary increases.
The associate of applied science degree in early childhood education, available since fall 1995, is attractive to people who already work in private or church day-care centers or Head-Start centers. The community college students know that as Northwest Arkansas continues growing, the need for child-care services will expand.
At John Brown University, people who never completed a bachelor's degree can opt for the Advance Program, a degree-completion program.
Others are learning new skills in one of a half-dozen graduate studies programs.
A number of the other John Brown programs are set up on a "cohort program."
In such a program, 15 to 20 classmates go through the program together. A cohort program typically squeezes 12 classes, about 37 credit-hours' worth, into roughly a two-year period.
Three of the cohorts -- the master of leadership and ethics, master of business administration and master of arts in ministries -- typically meet one night a week for four hours.
John Brown's MBA cohort meets every other weekend, for about four hours on Friday evening then on Saturday for about five hours, she said.
Other JBU graduate studies geared for working adults' schedules are three counseling programs -- in school counseling, community counseling and marriage and family therapy.
JBU's Advance Program offers students two business-oriented majors: a bachelor of science in organizational management and a bachelor of science in business information systems.
The Advance Program is taught at three sites: its Northwest Center in Springdale, its Little Rock Center in North Little Rock, and its Fort Smith Center in Fort Smith. The Northwest and Little Rock centers have some satellite classes at Harrison and Hot Springs, respectively.
Webster University, with a satellite campus in Fayetteville, also offers graduate degree programs in nine-week terms. Each course meets one night a week from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.