MACC moving to Parkade Center, reaches MU admissions pact

The night before enrollment opens at Moberly Area Community College’s Columbia campus, students — some with sleeping bags — line up outside the administration building as if they’re trying to get front-row tickets for a rock concert.

“We have to hire security guards,” said Jaime Morgans, MACC public relations director. After the doors open, “there are bodies everywhere, lining the hallways.”

The early morning and evening classes at the satellite campus are particularly popular with students holding down full-time jobs.

Enrollment at Missouri’s 12 community colleges increased nearly 13 percent this year, and MACC’s enrollment had the second-highest jump — 28 percent. The number of students enrolling at the Columbia campus has increased from 870 in 2005 to 1,692 this fall. MACC now leases buildings at Stephens College and the University of Missouri along with the main building on Walnut Street behind the Stephens campus.

“We’ve outgrown everything we’ve been in,” Morgans said.

But next fall, MACC will move all of its Columbia operations to the Parkade Center on Business Loop 70 and plans to increase enrollment to about 1,800.

The agreement to lease 37,000 square feet in Columbia’s original shopping mall was signed in mid-September, and the community college plans to do extensive renovations to accommodate administration and faculty offices, a faculty lounge, science labs and general classrooms.

Parkade, which has slowly added tenants in the past few years, will be about 95 percent occupied after MACC moves in, Manager Benjamin Gakinya said.

“We’ve warned them — it’s going to get a lot busier in there,” MACC President Evelyn Jorgenson said.

She pointed out that the new location benefits the commuter college by providing ample parking space, and it’s on the bus line and close to low-income areas of the city.

Each of Missouri’s community colleges has a designated service area, and the MACC region includes Boone County at the southern end. MACC began offering classes in Columbia in 1998, two years after Jorgenson became president. She lived the previous 21 years in Columbia, where she taught adults at Douglass High School and got her master’s degree and doctorate at MU.

“I felt the need for a community college all the time I lived in Columbia,” Jorgenson said.

After getting associate degrees, about 25 percent of MACC’s students transfer to MU to get bachelor’s degrees, Morgans said. The community college had 240 Columbia graduates last year. Of MU’s almost 31,000 students, about 1,400 are transfer students from community colleges, and MACC is the No. 1 provider of transfer students to MU.

About the same time Jorgenson signed the lease agreement with Parkade, she and MU Provost Brian Foster signed an agreement to start the Mizzou Connection Program.

The program will offer 50 degree options. The goal is to strengthen the relationship between MACC and MU and provide resources, such as early MU academic advising and information about campus activities while the students are still attending MACC.

“MU research has shown that transfer students do as well or better than native students,” Jorgenson said.

MACC also wants to provide adult technical training and career training that will make the local workforce more attractive to industries considering moving to or expanding in Columbia, she said. “I think we can play a very important role in supporting economic development in Columbia.”