Dixie State College growing up

Welcome to the 629th meeting of the Rotary Club of Dixie Sunrise.

Bill Ronnow of Jenkins, Ronnow, Jensen & Bayles gave us some nuanced and deep insight into the growing pains currently facing our prized Dixie State College. As a member of the Board of Directors of DSC since 2003, he has seen many of the changes and growth pressures our college has faced. To understand where we are today, with a potential affiliation with the University of Utah, it helps to understand a little of the history challenges unique to Dixie State.

In 2000, Dixie State became a state college, taking the step up from community college. Interestingly, unlike some of the other state schools that transitioned up in the recent past, Dixie State received no new money from the state legislature, Ronnow reported.

With such a rapidly growing community, our higher education demands are not being met. Ronnow also reported that 25,000 of our residents have had course work towards a Bachelors degree, but are unable to finish their degrees in St George. To be a credible State College, we need 20-25 degrees available--several more than we currently have. Just to fulfill the baccalaureate mission they are charged with, they need 8.5 million in new money by 2012 according to Ronnow--an even bigger challenge with today's economic woes.

Within the past year, nearly all the players and stakeholders in the system have realized that Dixie State College is headed for University Status, one way or the other. Growth and the force of history will cause it to be so. Getting there is the unknown road and the school needs to grow to the point of offering graduate programs.

Having rapidly completed the NCAA probationary process, the Dixie Rebel mascot has become a politically hot issue. The NCAA considers the combination of Dixie/Rebel to be "a hostile mascot" and according to their rules, teams with hostile mascots will not play for broad casted games or post season games. Many local residents see it as enforced political correctness, while some of the stakeholders see it as a stumbling block to growing the school to its full potential.

Affiliation with the U of U is currently on the slow track, but the exploratory committees looked at some state flagship schools that had affiliated with distant community colleges and they discovered that the model is enormously successful. They found that the combination solved some problems that neither school could solve alone, and they found that autonomous governance survived in the smaller institutions--which benefited both the larger and the smaller institution, according to Ronnow.