Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College: Apprenticeship plans advance

Williette Berry, OCtech’s vice president of academic affairs, reported during the area commission’s Oct. 19 meeting that the college’s youth and adult apprenticeship program received 14 applications.

She said seven applicants were prepared to proceed with interviews with the following companies and fields: Orangeburg Department of Public Utilities, industrial maintenance and electronic engineering technology; Gibbes Ford, automotive technology; Husqvarna, welding; OCtech, business; and the Regional Medical Center, medical assisting.

“We’re looking for a Nov. 1 sign-in day and interviews to take place within the next week,” Berry said.

Berry also reported that the college’s Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing Technologies division will be having an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) virtual accreditation site visit Nov. 7-9.

“Also, they are in the planning stage of creating an HVAC certificate program, which will fall under the industrial electronics technology division. They’re going to do an add-on certificate that the IET or the EIT graduate could take during the summer semester after they graduate,” she said.

Berry continued, “Then there is going to be an embedded certificate with the qualifying prerequisites that IET students can earn while completing the IET degree. … Then once these certificates have been rolled out, we will look to create a general technology degree with an HVAC and an IET concentration.”

Berry also reported that OCtech was working to finalize the development of its Faculty Academy and Master Teacher Academy by the end of November.

The college has a partnership with the Association of College and University Educators to equip faculty to improve student achievement, she said.

The Faculty Academy will be for new faculty members.

“It will provide resources, support and training during their first four semesters for initial training, and then initial ACUE training, which consists of four modules. They’ll start off with two modules, and then we’ll have those faculty members who choose to move toward the Master Teacher Academy to complete the additional ACUE modules,” Berry said.

Student services

OCtech Vice President for Student Services Dr. Sandra Davis said registration for the spring semester started on Oct. 18, with classes to start in January.

Davis also reported that direct payments of federal Higher Education Emergency Relief Act funds are also continuing to be made to eligible students.

“All students weren’t eligible in September when we did the initial round of direct payments to students,” she said.

Davis said some HEERF funds have also most recently been used to forgive student balances owed to the college from the summer.

“We are hoping that some of those students will rejoin us in January for classes,” she said.

Plans are also being made for the college’s Dec. 14 graduations, which will be held on campus in the Building R auditorium.

“We will do a rollout of ceremonies similar to what we’ve done at the end of summer and at the end of spring, where we hosted smaller ceremonies, but this time we’re just going to host them here on campus,” she said. More details will be shared later.

OCtech Vice President of Financial Affairs Kim Huff delivered a September finance report. The college reported revenue of $10.9 million at the end of September, with expenses standing at $5.2 million.

“Right now we’re a little down in our enrollment for the fall. It’s around $400,000 short of what we budgeted. … Fortunately, we were able to use some of those HEERF funds to help us offset that shortfall for the fall semester,” Huff said.

“We think we’ll be able to use those funds for the spring as well if we have any shortfalls … but maybe not after that,” he said.

Huff said anticipated revenue from Orangeburg and Calhoun counties had fallen short by $445,000.

“The counties do their best, but they don’t always fund what we’d like for them to fund, and the balance of what is left here gets made up by our tuition and fee revenue,” he said.

Huff also gave the commissioners an update on four projects being done at the college, including work with a mechanical firm to relocate the college’s machine tool program to Building T.

“We will begin ordering equipment hopefully before Thanksgiving because we know it will take a while to get some of that equipment in,” he said.

The replacement of the college’s digital sign in front of campus, the renovation of Building S into a student commons area and the renovation of Building K, the college’s health sciences building, are the remaining projects being worked on.

“Our largest project that’s going on right now is Building K. We’re working now in phase one with an architectural firm out of Columbia, Watson Tate Savory,” Huff said.

The college hopes to have a cost estimate for the Area Commission at its next meeting.

“Initially, we were thinking around $2 million, and we’ve got money in our capital projects fund for that, but that was mostly electrical and mechanical upgrades and just some minor renovation work,” he said. Deferred maintenance money which the state awarded to the college this past year could also go toward the project.

Other business

The commissioners approved two adjustments to OCtech’s 2021-2022 operating budget.

One was to change Calhoun County’s budget line item from $330,000 to $325,000.

“When I talked to (Calhoun County Administrator) John McLauchlin last week, he thought it was going to be $325,000. So we’re just adjusting it down to what he thought. He said it could change, but we’re going with the latest that we’ve heard from them,” Huff said.

The other adjustment was in salary and fringe funding from the state from $5.6 million to $5.7 million.

“We’re putting that $106,000 additional funds into the contingency fund for now, which takes our contingency up to $234,000,” Huff said.