MOHAVE COUNTY - A cost-saving initiative made by Mohave Community College to reduce travel costs between campuses is resulting in major dollar savings for all of Arizona’s community colleges.
MCC established an intercampus exchange (ICE) in January that allowed staff on the college’s four campuses to meet with one another or several other individuals via videoconference from their individual offices.
Currently, there are five conference rooms at MCC equipped for larger groups – one on each campus and one in the administration building in Kingman. There are also close to 100 cameras in offices on the four campuses, so many support staff can now speak to and see other individuals or small groups from their offices without incurring travel costs.
Danette Bristle, the dean of instruction at MCC, suggested that MCC spearhead an effort to hold a fall meeting of the Arizona Transfer Articulation Committee (ATAC) via ICE and save travel, housing and meal costs for those attending. It required a positive response on the part of all participants and their college administrators as well as working out the technical details.
“Not many committee members were in favor of holding the meeting via ICE, and MCC had to work out a few hitches technically,” Bristle said.
“As soon as the other colleges started feeling the budget crunch, however, it became a pretty good idea around the state.”
Bristle worked with Brian Siemens, the user services manager with MCC’s technical support services, to hold the ATAC meeting on Feb. 11 via ICE.
All 31 members of ATAC were able to meet from their home campuses, which included all community college campuses in Arizona – the most distant being the Sierra Vista Campus of Cochise College, at 372 miles and six and a half hours of driving time from Kingman, where the meeting was to be held.
Siemens did a cost-saving analysis of holding the meetings via ICE. The
14,518 miles that would have been traveled amounted to a saving of $5,444.25, and 252.22 hours of drive time were eliminated. The elimination of lodging saved $1,500 and the unneeded meals amounted to $850. That is a total savings of $7,794 – not counting the drive time - for the state’s community colleges for the one meeting.
MCC purchased the required server and software and activated the system in January, Siemens said. Because MCC has the system, it serves as the “host” for all ATAC meetings and those of the ATAC committees.
Other groups within ATAC include The Arizona Program Articulation Steering Committee (APASC), which includes administrators from the state’s community colleges, and the Articulation Task Force (ATF), which is mostly faculty involved in the ATAC goal of “working on Arizona articulation policies and procedures for opening pathways” for transfer agreements between Arizona’s community colleges and Arizona’s three public universities, Bristle said.
There are at least 50 such meetings of ATAC or its other committees in a given year, Bristle said, and MCC hosted its sixth ATAC ICE meeting on Friday. If the $7,794 savings were applied to all 50 meetings, there would be cost reductions of more than $380,000.
“With many legislative budget unknowns and the belief that state funding will be cut substantially, the more savings MCC and Arizona’s other community college’s can realize by cost-cutting measures, the more everyone benefits,” MCC Chancellor Michael Kearns said.
“Nearly $8,000 saved with one meeting is impressive; but multiply that by all meetings of community college committees, then add the savings of all state department and committee meetings and the saving would be staggering,” he said. “The benefactors would be all Arizona taxpayers.”
Arizona State Senate Bill SB-1001, proposed by Senate President Pro Tem Jim Waring, mandates, if passed, that all state agencies, boards and commissions, all cities, towns and counties, all school districts including the universities, the regents and the community colleges must purchase the web conference system within one year of the bill’s passage.
The bill also specifies that by the second anniversary of the bill, 25 percent of employees must be trained and utilizing the software, then adds 25 percent increases each year for four years until all employees of the state and its departments are fully trained and using the system.
For more information about the system, contact Siemens at (928) 757-0869.
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