Speaking at the Westlake Rotary Club Thursday, Marianne P. White, director of institutional advancement at Sowela Technical Community College, said the school is a resource that many in the community do not know about. Sowela started in 1938, one year before McNeese State University opened its doors. White said general education courses at Sowela such as math, English and history can transfer to any four-year public institution. She said that is a plus for their students.
White said some students want to get a two-year degree and join the workforce. Those students can go the technical route and become millwrights, machinists, welders and more. She said they have a lot of women studying for non-traditional careers. “Nowadays, women take the same courses and enter the same careers as men do.”
Sowela has a fast track program for process technology that runs 16 weeks, eight hours a day. To get into that program, one has to have an associates degree or higher. “We have master’s degree students and some with doctor’s degrees who have come back to Sowela to get process technology degrees because they want to get good jobs making good income.”
“The opportunities that we offer are amazing. To me, our students are amazing.” White said a lot of their students are working full-time while going to school full-time. She added that many of their students have children and are non-traditional students.
This fall semester, Sowela started offering new programs in nursing (leading to a registered nurse), chemical laboratory technology and business administration (fully online and fully on-ground). They also started a Rodbuster program in Workforce that is new with the first class completed and hired, and the second class now enrolled.
White said there is collaboration between Sowela and McNeese and other four- year schools to make sure that students succeed.
Sowela opened its Regional Training Center last week, a $20 million building. “It’s just phenomenal. It takes up a whole city block.” The center will house the industrial instrumentation programs, industrial electrician program and more. The center will also be used to host plant managers who want to do training. “The facility has state of the art technology.”
Other new buildings on the Sowela campus are the arts and humanities building and the nursing building. A student center is being built and will open in the spring and they have funding for a service, hospitality and tourism building which they have not yet broken ground on.
“It’s a beautiful campus. We put $1.6 million into it planting trees and grass. It really is a more collegiate field for our students.”
Although Sowela does not have athletics like a four year school, they are starting an intermural team. They do not have fraternities and sororities, but they do have service clubs and honor societies like the four year schools.
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