The John and Mary Pappajohn Higher Education Center, which will house the Des Moines Higher Education Collaborative, plans to open Sept. 1, and the collaborative’s partner schools are planning for programming changes at the new facility.

The DMHEC started offering classes in downtown Des Moines in August 2000 through its seven partner schools: Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, the University of Northern Iowa, Drake University, Simpson College, Des Moines Area Community College and Grand View College. Up until now, the courses have been offered at Capital Square, which has been sort of a satellite location for the different schools.

“Right now, it’s safe to say, that each of the institutions is doing their own thing in a collective space, with the exception of a few collaborative efforts. There are some collaborative ideas emerging that do make a lot of sense for several of us to address collectively,” said Drake University President David Maxwell, who is also president of the DMHEC board, which is composed of the presidents of the member schools and two community members.

Up until now, Drake, ISU and the U of I have focused on offering graduate-level courses through the Collaborative. Kent Henning, president of Grand View College, said his school’s primary role has been to provide foreign language courses for professionals, especially those working in certain fields, such as law enforcement.

“We have a number of adult and professional learners who are not interested in obtaining a bachelor’s degree specifically, but taking a set of courses that will improve their job performance,” Henning said.

Other institutions, such as Simpson College, have not found a need to offer courses at the downtown site right now, but instead have focused on partnership opportunities with the Collaborative’s other schools. LaGree said Simpson’s adult learners prefer to go home and touch base with their families before class, making Simpson’s West Des Moines and Ankeny satellite campuses an appropriate outreach for adult learners.

“We discovered early on that the most valuable thing for us is the collaborative part,” said Simpson President Kevin LaGree. “One of the most valuable is the Carver Teacher’s Education Program, which brings together the three components of higher education in Iowa—a community college, a Regents school and a private institution. We pool resources and gear our efforts towards bringing much-needed minority teacher representation into the area schools.”

DMHEC Director M.D. Isley said that he expects the seven partnering institutions to do more synergistic programming in the coming months.

“We are looking for more ways for the schools to collaborate and perhaps produce better together than they could do alone,” he said.

Isley said this will involve a shift in focus. Now, many of the students taking courses downtown may be pursuing a bachelor’s degree from one particular institution. In the future, though, working professionals will have more opportunities for certificate programs and community-specific programming offered through the efforts of several institutions. A Multicultural Opportunities Program, for example, is in the works for this fall.

“As we develop more of these collaborative programs, it might simply be to get that certificate in project management or to send new employees over to the insurance industry overview course of some kind,” Isley said. “In some ways, we see ourselves meeting some common needs of the community, and in other ways, it would be more specific based on individual employees’ development plans.”

Though Drake welcomes the idea of responding collectively to the needs of Des Moines businesses and individuals, Maxwell said his school fully intends to use the Pappajohn Center as a site for some of its professional studies. Drake, along with Iowa State’s Extension Service and WOI radio and the University of Iowa’s masters of social work program, worked with the Pappajohn Center architect to secure space specific to their needs. Through additional fees, these three institutions have designated space for which they will have control over scheduling. The Pappajohn Center’s other 11 classrooms will be divided among the partner schools for their joint usage, as agreed to in the yearly membership fees the partner schools pay.

“It’s a matter of being as close as you can to the people who you serve,” Maxwell said. “We have a couple of specific programs in mind that directly address the learning needs of the downtown community, and it helped to know that we would have a designated space there for these.”

Grand View’s plan is to get more feedback from the community before changing its course offerings at the Pappajohn Center.

“We haven’t seen sufficient demand for a complete bachelor degree program at the downtown location,” Henning said. “In the future, that demand may grow as more people live downtown with the addition of the downtown housing.”

LaGree said the options the Collaborative offers its partners and the communication among the partner schools help each institution to contribute in its own way to help meet the educational needs that have been identified.

“That’s the good thing about the Collaborative. We don’t all have to do the same things,” LaGree said. “There are a lot of colleges in Iowa per capita, and it just makes good sense that those of us in those institutions need to find ways to do things together and not repeat them.”

The DMHEC board meets regularly to discuss the educational needs in Des Moines and also how to help the city position itself to be more attractive to economic development and corporate community development. The pinch in state education funding drives the partner schools to look for joint opportunities to serve the Des Moines area.

“Finances are certainly an issue, given the nature of education and educational funding today, and we can’t ignore that each one of these schools has to pay very close attention to their finances and their funding,” Isley said.

“At this point, it has not been a revenue source for us, and at this point, it hasn’t been clear to us that it ever will be, but that’s not why we’re a part of it,” Maxwell said. “We’re doing it because Des Moines needs it. We all have a vested interest in the health and vitality of the future of Des Moines, and if the city doesn’t thrive, then we won’t thrive either.”