Officials renovate building, promote program

By Rachel Morse, Staff Writer

The university is renovating a building that will be donated to the School of Adult and Continuing Education.

The building, located at 23rd St. and NW Blackwelder Ave., will serve as a central location for faculty offices, SACE Director Leo Werneke said.

Renovations are taking longer than expected, so the completion date is uncertain, he said.

Dave Steupka, SACE student, said a separate building for the adult students would enhance the program.

“It doesn’t have to be big, but a place to study besides the library would be helpful,” he said.

SACE was developed with the help of a 1979 grant for the improvement of post-secondary education as an alternative way to earn a degree, Werneke said.

The program later developed into an adult degree program, which currently has 100 domestic students and 250 in the Management Development Institute of Singapore, SACE’s partner program.

The renovations resulted from a marketing campaign launched in November to promote SACE, Werneke said.

More funding and marketing have been needed for SACE to compete with the growing alternative degree market, he said.

There was a push in advertising for SACE during the 2010-2011 school year, said Christine Eddington, director of communications and marketing.

“SACE is a great program,” she said. “We want people thinking about enrolling if they had not finished their degree.”

The Spring 2011 campaign was successful enough that the school repeated it the following semester, Werneke said.

Fall 2011 advertisements marketed the degree program as the “quality alternative” to for-profit institutions such as The University of Phoenix and Kaplan University Online.

The office of institutional advancement has incorporated advertising on the radio and TV to target specific audiences, Werneke said.

The first cycle of ads promote the accounting degree, and a second cycle markets the mass communications programs.

All ads contain the common theme of a program of excellence for people who wish to continue with their education, he said.

“You get a very marketable degree, and you get to take classes with other really, really bright students from really talented professors,” Werneke said.