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U of I starts at former AIB campus

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Becoming a Hawkeye no longer requires moving to Iowa City. With little fanfare, the University of Iowa this fall began offering four inaugural undergraduate degree programs at its new Iowa Center for Higher Education in Des Moines.  

About 130 students are enrolled with U of I at its first undergraduate satellite campus, located on the former AIB College of Business campus on Fleur Drive. The initial programs being offered include bachelor of arts degrees in enterprise leadership, social work and political science, and a bachelor of science in sport and recreation management. 

The majority of the Des Moines students are enrolled in the social work program, which has been a longstanding offering by the U of I locally, said Tom Rice, director of University of Iowa Des Moines Programs. 

The university took possession of the 20-acre campus, which was given to U of I by AIB, on July 1. The Iowa Board of Regents in October 2015 approved AIB’s donation of the property to the University of Iowa, with the intent for it to be operated as a joint regents campus. 

Rice said officials from the three state universities have been in active discussions about joint use of the campus, but have not reached any decisions.  

“It’s a property that we are eager to share with the other two state universities,” he said. “It is my goal to bring them onto this campus and have a campus where all three schools can offer some of their signature programs.” 

Three of the new programs U of I has launched are being offered on a hybrid schedule of online and classroom instruction, while the social work program is being offered entirely on-campus. The university has actually offered the social work program for about 40 years in Des Moines, most recently from the Pappajohn Education Center downtown. All of the classes are being taught by regular U of I professors, some of whom travel from Iowa City and some who are based in Des Moines, Rice said. 

“The regents wanted to start with some programs that Iowa State and UNI don’t have, and the departments that offer these programs in Iowa City were eager to come to Des Moines, so it was a good match,” he said.  

A political science professor, Rice has taught at all three regents universities at different times in his career, and this semester he is teaching a political science class at the Des Moines campus. 

Next year Rice hopes to double the enrollment in the three newly offered majors, and possibly bring some new majors to campus, depending in part on what Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa opt to do. 

“I think it’s just first giving UNI and ISU time to think about what programs and majors they’d like to bring here,” he said. “We had some lead time and some time to think about it; the gift was announced almost two years ago.”

Rice said that he’s been impressed with the condition of the former AIB facilities, and that the U of I has primarily just made some technology upgrades to the buildings prior to starting classes. For now, the university is mainly using two of the largest buildings on campus: the Fenton Administration Building and the gymnasium. 

The administration building houses nearly all of the 25 faculty and staff who are on the campus full time, and classes are being held in five of the 10 classrooms in the building. 

The gym is being used as a working laboratory for the sport and recreation management major and is also being leased out to community groups. 

Rice points to the joint Indianapolis campus shared for the past 50 years by Indiana University and Purdue University as a model for the Des Moines campus. 

“Every degree earned on the campus is either a Purdue or an Indiana degree, and the two schools sort of split up the degrees, and students can shift back and forth between the schools,” he said. “It’s really worked out quite well. That would be one model we could at least try for here. 

“As somebody who has taught at all three universities, I think it makes a lot of sense to compete on the football fields,” he said. “But when it comes to educating Iowans, I think we should work together when we can, and I think we have that opportunity in Des Moines.”