DOUGLAS — Waning enrollment and new competition from Pima and Maricopa counties could lead to the discontinuation of the aviation maintenance technician program at Cochise College this fall.
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“The pilot program is still very healthy and very much alive,” chief flight instructor Charles Perry said after the meeting. “I’m hearing from members of the community that aviation is closing, and that’s absolutely not true.”
Perry said he has about 50 students enrolled in the professional-pilot program, which has maintained that level for a long time. He also expects the avionics program, which currently has 13 students enrolled in it, to stick around for a while. Perry originally started working at the Cochise College as a flight instructor in 1969 and was there until 1973. He returned in 1984 and has been here ever since.
Carlos Cartagena, vice president for information technology for Cochise College and the senior administration point of contact for aviation programs, said the college has done everything it can to get employment demand translated into enrollment in the aviation maintenance technician program, “but the enrollments just never panned out. They were just not there.”
The aviation maintenance technician, or AMT, program enrollment trend has declined since 2002.
During the meeting, the governing board accepted the resignation of the program’s department head, Darrell Noble. But Nicodemus said the resignation was not a decisive contributor to her recommendation to shutter the program as she said the administration has been looking at the AMT program for several semesters.
AMT has “a lot of rigidity that’s imposed on the college by the Federal Aviation Administration, in terms of their certification of the program,” she said.
During the last four years, as the AMT enrollment went down, the college tried to save costs by reducing the program’s faculty from five to four to three, Nicodemus said. It also tried to save funds by not having two cohorts in a given year as it originally did.
“(Administrators) have really worked hard with faculty to try and look at, are there some ways that we could make this a viable program, because I would acknowledge that there are jobs in this industry. There are not necessarily a lot of jobs in Cochise County, but there are jobs in this industry. And we have historically struggled with even having students from within Cochise County in this program.”
Also there is increased competition. At one time, when Cochise College was established, there was the creation of what were called “franchised programs.”
Cochise College for a long time had aviation as its franchise program. That changed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Chandler-Gilbert Community College has a program in the Phoenix area, and Pima Community College recently added aviation maintenance technician program. Those programs have an advantage by being located in an urban area, which gives students employment opportunities while they are attending college, Nicodemus said.
Relocation of the program to Sierra Vista was considered, but the master facilities plan for the Sierra Vista campus does not accommodate space for the aviation maintenance technician program. Cochise College would end up leasing space that would generate an additional cost to the college for a program that has always had a low student-to-faculty ratio.
John Eaton, the dean of instruction for Cochise College in 1967, said during the meeting that the “death knell came from the state reneging on the exclusive rights of Cochise College.”
After the meeting, he explained, “When we started the aviation program in 1967, we asked the state for exclusive rights to do it, because we knew if competition came, that we wouldn’t be able to sustain things.”
Nicodemus said the aviation maintenance technician program has enjoyed local scholarship support from Northrop Grumman Corp. in the Sierra Vista area, as well as from alumni living in Cochise County.
“But we felt like, for us to continue the program, that we really needed to have some strong public-private partnerships and some additional resources brought to the table,” Nicodemus said.
There is one cohort of students currently in the program. These last seven students will complete the aviation maintenance technician program at the end of September, and then it will be finished.
Comments
Larry Westbrook wrote on Jan 15, 2009 11:22 AM:
Cost of living in the Douglas area is much lower than living in Phoenix. The job market is another story, but Douglas has a new call center with 300 jobs? I would think a total cost of an education could make Cochise a better choice. Has that been mentioned to prospective students?
I went through the electronics progam there in the early 80s. Again, that program was nationally recognized and companies like Texas Instruments, IBM, and federal agencies were taking graduates. It too, was cut. I wonder if was because of a changing job market and throw away cheaply made goods.
This is a sign that "Made in China" or getting your support from someone in India is really hurting America.
Keep your elected officials accountable and let's see if we can start making our own high quality goods here again. "