CONTACT:
Bill Frederick
727-341-2076
frederick.bill@spcollege.edu
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – How do we know the Tampa Bay economy is beginning to turn around? One indicator might be the enrollment statistics in St. Petersburg College’s Management and Organizational Leadership (MOL four-year degree program, an offering designed to produce business leaders.
Started in January 2008, the MOL program has become one of SPC’s fastest growing four-year degrees. Enrollment for the current fall semester is 449 students, up from just 197 students who enrolled in the fall 2008 semester. That’s a 128-percent increase.
Of course, some of that increase might be attributed to normal growth as word of a new degree program gets around. But a better explanation might lie in the hopes and expectations of business-oriented people who want to be prepared for better jobs as a lethargic economy begins to show signs of life.
“SPC’s Management and Organizational Leadership degree program is a rare program that offers management insight tailored to real-world opportunities,” said Shri Goyal, Dean of SPC’s College of Technology and Management. “The huge increase in enrollment we are seeing tells us that people who are interested in business management careers are having no trouble recognizing the program’s value.”
Brian DiVita, Program Lead Faculty, added, “The combination of applied-learning techniques and academic rigor offers students the needed perspective to incorporate the business principles to solve everyday management problems.”
Area business leaders saw that value long before the degree program was designed; they worked with SPC officials for many months to develop a set of degree tracks that would fill the area’s need for more and better-trained business executives. That planning process was well underway long before the economy went into its current decline.
The result of all that preparation was a degree program with several different sub-plans;
- Management and Organizational Leadership Focus
- Entrepreneurship
- Sustainability and Green Management
- Not-for-Profit Management
- Real Estate Management
- Insurance Management
Students can adjust their tracks to match any number of career paths, from corporate management to small-business entrepreneurial pursuits. Students who graduate with Management and Organizational Leadership degrees will be trained for careers in, among other things, management, supervision, human resources, training and development, industry/manufacturing, customer service and technical sales, to name just a few.
“Business leaders in Tampa Bay told us there was a serious need locally for college-level business training, and we were glad to work with them to come up with academic tracks that serve those needs,” Goyal said. “It is no longer necessary for local people to leave Pinellas County to pursue a first-class business degree.”
Many of the course offerings are available online, a tremendous advantage to students who are already employed and who need flexibility in their schedules.
For more information about SPC’s Management and Organizational Leadership four-year degree program, visit http://www.spcollege.edu/bachelors/mgtorg.php?program=mgtorg
BABM, the Bay Area Business magazine, has published an article entitled “Educating our financial future,” which discusses the current state of the banking industry.
