The University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Pueblo Community College have partnered to invest in future college students and industry professionals with the opening of the UCCS Pre-collegiate Success Center in the Pueblo campus’s academic building.

The success center will provide enrichment programs for middle and high school students that will help them prepare for higher education and navigate college, which can be complex and confusing — especially for first-generation and military-dependent students.

“We are really losing many students because they don’t know how to navigate,” said UCCS Chancellor Venkat Reddy.

The pre-collegiate success center on the Colorado Springs campus has combated this; now, with the program at PCC, UCCS hopes to extend its reach to help more students, with initiative funding from CU President Todd Saliman.

Reddy and PCC President Patty Erjavec attended an event Friday to celebrate the center opening and sign a memorandum of understanding that will create a pathway for students to earn an associate’s degree in engineering at PCC before moving on to UCCS to earn a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering.

Administrators with PCC have been working with UCCS to develop a two-year associate’s engineering degree that will directly translate into UCCS’ bachelor’s in mechanical engineering curriculum. The pathway will ease the process of receiving credit when transitioning into the four-year degree program.

The memorandum will benefit students such as Joseph Flores, a veteran and mechanical engineering student at the community college who plans to transfer to UCCS in January 2024.

“The partnership helps clear a pathway. There’s no researching or bouncing around; you go to one university, and they direct you where you need to go,” he said.

“It helps me because I got out of the military, and I don’t know too much about college.”

Flores moved to Pueblo over a year ago and plans on working in the automotive field in the city after graduation, fulfilling a greater goal of the pathway: serving local industry need.

Erjavec said the pathway will benefit industry professionals and help meet a demand for qualified engineers in Pueblo.

“We really pay attention to what the needs are and for quite a while we’ve been hearing that it’s difficult for our business and industry partners, especially the industrial part, to attract highly qualified, highly skilled engineers,” she said.

David Garski is an engineering leader with air conditioning systems, services and solutions company Trane in Pueblo. Garski said there is growing need for engineers, especially in the microelectronics and heavy manufacturing industries.

He cited a need for around five engineers annually, at Trane alone, which speaks to the larger industry in Pueblo.

The engineering pathway and new pre-collegiate center are positive for community industries and the two partnering institutions, but Reddy

says the partnerships are for the students. “The University of Colorado is Colorado’s university. We are not just committed to serving students in that community, we are committed to serving students in El Paso County, in Colorado and beyond,” Reddy said.

“We are not considering this a partnership. We are really one team serving the state of Colorado.”