Bellwater State University's enrollment in its biotechnology and clean-energy technology programs has grown by nearly 40 percent over the past three years, even as enrollment in the university's traditional liberal-arts majors has declined, according to figures Chancellor Eleanor Castellano presented to the university's board this week.
Chancellor Eleanor Castellano told the university’s board of trustees Thursday that combined enrollment in the biomedical sciences and renewable-energy technology programs has climbed from about 640 students three years ago to just over 890 this fall, a 39 percent increase. Over the same period, enrollment in the university’s history, English and philosophy departments combined has fallen by roughly 14 percent, continuing a decline that predates the current growth in technical majors.
“We’re not trying to shrink the humanities, and I want to be clear about that,” Castellano told the board. “But we would be doing our students a disservice if we didn’t respond to where the jobs actually are opening up in this region.”
A curriculum built around Foundry Row and West Bellwater
The university has added three new degree tracks in the past two years: a bachelor’s in biomanufacturing, a certificate program in wind-turbine maintenance technology developed jointly with Bellwater Turbine Works, and an expanded lab-sciences concentration aimed at students who might otherwise transfer to Kincaid University’s more expensive programs. Castellano said the turbine-technology certificate, in particular, has drawn students who might not have previously considered a four-year university at all.
“We have students in that program who are the first in their family to set foot on a college campus, sitting next to a wind-turbine gearbox instead of in a lecture hall,” Castellano said. “That’s the kind of enrollment growth that actually changes a family’s trajectory.”
Dr. Ramon Delgado, president of Bellwater Community College, said his institution has seen a parallel shift, with enrollment in its green-energy manufacturing certificate programs at both its downtown and West Bellwater campuses growing faster than any other program area. Delgado and Castellano have expanded a transfer agreement that lets community college students move directly into Bellwater State’s biomanufacturing bachelor’s program without losing credits, an arrangement Delgado said has become one of the college’s most heavily used pathways.
Ten years ago, a student who wanted a stable, well-paying job without crushing debt had very few good options in this city. Now we can point them toward an eighteen-month certificate that leads directly into a Foundry Row employer.
Dr. Ramon Delgado, President, Bellwater Community College
Employers say the pipeline is still too slow
Dr. Samuel Iyer, the Bellwater State labor economist who tracks the region’s workforce trends, said the enrollment shift is real but still lags well behind employer demand. He pointed to a Kincaid University biotech spinout’s recent funding round, which the company says will fund roughly 150 new local hires, as an example of demand outpacing the current graduating classes.
“If you asked me five years ago whether Bellwater State would have nearly 900 students in biotech and clean-energy programs, I would have said that’s an optimistic decade-long goal,” Iyer said. “The demand side moved faster than anyone modeled. Now the question is whether the supply side can catch up before employers just decide to keep recruiting from outside the region.”
Castellano acknowledged the gap, saying the university’s biomanufacturing program currently graduates about 70 students a year against regional employer demand her office estimates at closer to 200 annually. She said the university is working to add lab capacity and faculty positions but that state funding formulas, tied largely to overall enrollment rather than program-specific demand, have made it difficult to expand technical programs as quickly as employers want.
Questions from the humanities faculty
Not everyone at the university has welcomed the shift without reservations. Several humanities faculty members raised concerns at Thursday’s board meeting that resources were being redirected away from departments already absorbing enrollment declines, potentially accelerating those declines further. One faculty senator, speaking during the public comment period, asked whether the university risked becoming “a technical school with a general education requirement attached.”
Castellano pushed back on that framing, noting the university had recently expanded a technical-writing requirement embedded across all biomanufacturing and clean-energy coursework, taught by faculty from the English department. “We’re not cutting the humanities to fund this,” she said. “We’re asking the humanities to help us make sure these graduates can actually communicate what they know.”
The university expects to release its full three-year enrollment report, including department-by-department breakdowns, before the start of the spring semester. Castellano said she plans to ask the board to approve two additional faculty positions in the biomanufacturing program as part of the university’s next budget cycle, funded in part by a state workforce-development grant the university applied for earlier this year.
Delgado said the community college is watching the enrollment numbers closely because so many of its own students eventually transfer into Bellwater State’s four-year programs. He said the college has begun advising prospective students earlier about which certificate tracks feed most directly into guaranteed transfer pathways, a change he credited with reducing the number of students who complete a certificate but struggle to find a matching four-year option.
“We used to send students off with a certificate and hope the university side worked itself out,” Delgado said. “Now we’re mapping that out with Bellwater State before a student ever enrolls, so nobody discovers the gap after they’ve already spent two years on it.”
For Castellano, the enrollment figures represent both an opportunity and a warning. She told the board that if the university cannot expand lab capacity quickly enough, prospective students may simply choose community colleges or out-of-state programs with shorter waitlists for popular lab sections, undercutting the very growth the numbers suggest. “Interest is not the same thing as access,” she said. “We have to build the capacity to match what students are already telling us they want.”