The supply chain management degree program will be deleted from Southeast Arkansas College’s courses of study.
No students have enrolled in or graduated from the program in the past three years, according to Donna Hunnicutt, the college’s vice president of instruction. Hunnicutt informed the SEARK Board of Trustees on Wednesday the program either had to be deleted to satisfy a policy from the Arkansas Division of Higher Education on viability, or it could be put on hold and a 10-year review of the program would have to be submitted to the ADHE.
“It’s a viability rule, actually, that each program has to graduate a specific number of students on an average over a three-year period, and it depends on the program how many we have to graduate, and we have not graduated any in the last three years,” Hunnicutt said.
SEARK President Tyrone Jackson said the college is revamping marketing efforts across all courses when asked if marketing for supply chain management was done recently.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“There is a lot of emphasis on marketing programs as a whole to boost enrollment, but we’re going to strategize more emphasis on enrollment programs,” Jackson said. “We were in a situation where we had to make a decision before the ADHE had to make a decision.”
An enrollment committee has been organized to look at each program to better meet needs of Pine Bluff and surrounding areas. Jackson said a survey would be done to determine whether there is still a need for the program.
“The way I understand it, we still would have to do the 10-year report and we’d have to make a case before the ADHE board to reinstate the program,” Jackson said. “We would do any sort of reassessment and find out if it would be financially feasible to reinstitute a program of this magnitude. I don’t know the cost of it, but we would have to determine pros and cons of it and make a decision from there.”
Supply chain management required completion of a commercial driving license program and a technical certificate in supply chain transportation before obtaining an associate degree in applied science. According to an online course description, students would obtain basic business technology success skills, ranging from acquisitions to receiving and handling, through the internal allocation of resources to operations units, to the handling and delivery of output.