The meeting was called to order by President Jamie Boersma. John Cortesio offered the inspirational invocation and then led the group in the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4-Way Test. Mark Danes introduced guests and visiting Rotarians. Susan Judkins Josten introduced new member Sid Juwarker who is with the Des Moines office of Terracon.
Kevin Kacere introduced today’s keynote speaker: Rob Denson, President of Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC). DMACC was founded in 1966 – 52 years ago. Rob, an Iowa native, was appointed to his position in 2003 and is its 4th President. DMACC’s mission is very clear: to provide students with the skill that they need to get jobs that are in demand when they graduate. They do this out of 6 campus locations, and at the lowest cost in Iowa for students at a 2-year college. (DMACC was ranked #10 out of 1,717 community colleges in the U.S. in the “Top 50 Best Value Community Colleges of 2016”, published by ValueColleges.com.)
DMACC has the largest number of students enrolled in an Iowa college with over 32,000 students in credit classes plus over 22,000 students in non-credit classes. DMACC has relationships with many traditional 4-year colleges, including Iowa’s state universities, Drake University and Tuskegee University, to help ensure full transferability of course credits. Similarly, DMACC has a “concurrent enrollment” program with many Iowa high schools under which high school students can earn college credits at no cost to the students. In some cases, high school students have earned a 2-year degree at DMACC before they graduated from high school.
Rob highlighted several of the many scholarships available to students including: FFA high school Chapter presidents qualify for a full tuition scholarship; High school valedictorians qualify for a full tuition scholarship. He also told us of two current projects that DMACC is working on: A custom training certification program for the Department of Homeland Security – to educate and train TSA agents from more than half of the airports in the U.S.; and a relationship that has be established with Kosovo whereby students from Kosovo will come the DMACC, and an exchange of professors from DMACC and Kosovo universities with the goal of helping Kosovo establish vocational programs in their country similar to those at DMACC.
Rob’s presentation included a few hilarious videos that brought a nice touch of humor to his talk.