From The Middletown Journal on Monday July 30, 2012 …

By Michael D. Pitman

Staff Writer

MIDDLETOWN —

When Cincinnati State Middletown opens next month, school officials are confident they’ll meet their 200-plus student enrollment goal.

As of Thursday, 101 students have been admitted (and 95 of those students have already registered) into the Middletown branch of Cincinnati State Technical & Community College, and 204 applications are in the process to be reviewed.

The downtown location is currently undergoing renovations and officials hope to have staff moved in on August 14.

Because of Cincinnati State Middletown’s Fast Track Saturdays — the one-stop-shop to complete the admissions process in a day — “we expect a very, very high percentage of them to be admitted,” said Cincinnati State spokeswoman Jean Manning of the pending applicants.

“We are hitting all of our benchmarks, and we are anticipating that we will be at our goals,” she said. “We’re helping them to push through the admissions process very quickly.”

The new campus for Cincinnati State — which is Butler County’s first community college — will expand the access to higher education, said Jeff Ortega, Ohio Association of Community Colleges director of public affairs.

“This is a major initiative for Cincinnati State,” he said. “ This campus will be such a benefit and resource for the people and students in the Middletown area.”

Most of the students being admitted to Cincinnati State Middletown will enter either the pre-business administration or medical administrative assistant technology associate degree programs, Manning said.

While there are solid numbers of admitted and prospective students, Manning said how many teachers will be needed is not as clear yet.

“Until we have everyone admitted and registered, and we know how many course sections we need to fill, we won’t have a complete number,” she said.

The number of full-time and adjunct professors won’t be known until closer to the opening date, Manning said. The school is still receiving a lot of applications from people in the Middletown area seeking a teaching position.

Many support and administrative staffing hires are in place, however, Manning said. To date, there are 11 full-time and four part-time positions that have been filled, including the director and assistant director of the Middletown campus.

Though the complete staffing levels won’t be finalized until next month, how much will be spent on personnel was approved by the Cincinnati State board of trustees last month when they adopted the fiscal year 2013 budget.

More than $1.2 million is expected to be spent on personnel at the Middletown campus, and nearly 40 percent will be spent on the faculty. Most of the faculty will be adjunct, or part-time, teachers. Nearly 32 percent of the projected personnel budget — the largest portion of the projected personnel budget — is planned for adjunct faculty.

The projected Cincinnati State Middletown budget shows school officials anticipate $1.55 million in revenues for the first school year. The school is projected to bring in more than $900,000 in tuition and fees and more than $460,000 for its workforce development programming. That is 89.5 percent of the projected revenues in the first school year at Cincinnati State Middletown.