Enrollment looks to be on the increase at Southwestern Michigan College. SMC president Dr. Joe Odenwald made the announcement during his first President’s Report to the college’s Board of Trustees, noting enrollment contact hours are up eight-tenths of a percentage point over last spring, and fall applications are up 20%. Odenwald says if the trend is maintained, SMC can expect a roughly 5% increase in students this fall. He says the college was up 11% in first-time students this past fall over the year prior. Odenwald adds enrollment was down 10% in the fall of 2018, and the school has “weathered that.” When he was interviewed for the job, he told the Board of Trustees SMC needed to grow enrollment by at least 3% “to survive.”
Also during Monday night’s meeting the Board of Trustees acknowledged the death on December 23 of 95-year-old Dorothy Brown, who was a trustee from October 1965 to August 1969, appointed to succeed her late husband, Carroll, as treasurer on the founding board.
