Campaign Supports Rollout Of Tennessee-Modeled Degree Program

Members of the National Steering Committee for Middle Tennessee State University’s four-year Concrete Industry Management program have begun raising $4

Members of the National Steering Committee for Middle Tennessee State University’s four-year Concrete Industry Management program have begun raising $4 million to cover estimated costs for similar degree offerings at Arizona State University, New Jersey Institute of Technology and University of California at Chico. The committee met last week in Scottsdale, Ariz., to enlist financial underwriting and create a broad-based industry support coalition. Participants included concrete and aggregate producers, related materials suppliers, educators, equipment manufacturers, contractors and representatives of allied groups. Their goal is to raise half the funding through local patrons and the other half through the National Steering Committee campaign.

A second CIM-sponsored and funded program is beginning at Arizona State’s Del E. Webb School of Construction. Additional programs are scheduled to begin in 2006 at the New Jersey and California schools. The Steering Committee figures that $1 million is required to cover each program’s five-year start-up phase. The expansion of CIM offerings to other schools has been in the works for at least two years, as the flagship nears its 10th anniversary. The first four-year offering of its kind, the CIM program began at Middle Tennessee, Murfreesboro, in September 1996 with the goal of graduating inaugural students in 2000. Current CIM enrollment at MTSU is 300, with 80 seniors on track to graduate with bachelors degrees next spring. Assisting in the program rollout to additional schools is Dr. Earl Keese, who has recently retired as president of Rhodes State College, a northwest Ohio school he joined after heading the MTSU department responsible for the CIM launch.

Ensuring the consistency and excellence of the CIM program is important as we roll it out to other universities, said Dr. Keese. The depth and breadth of the partnership between the universities and the concrete industry makes this program extremely unique.