New Director of Dual Enrollment Juliann Jankowski brings to Southwestern Michigan College her extensive higher education experience and a wealth of stories from her time at Club MTV.

Club MTV was a half-hour television show modeled after American Bandstand that aired on MTV from Aug. 31, 1987-June 26, 1992. It was part of the channel’s second generation of programming, when it phased out the original five VJs to introduce new ones.

Jankowski, who joined SMC’s Niles campus in June, took a public speaking class at the college from which her mother graduated before heading off to Michigan State University to study telecommunications.

As Juliann Locke, the Granger resident graduated from Ross Beatty High School and reigned as Miss Cassopolis in 1985. “When I was in high school, I did radio commercials at WDOW with Dean Bussler.”

Jankowski graduated from MSU and the University of Notre Dame. She brings 12 years of higher education experience in enrollment and teaching and 14 years in leadership development and training to her new position.

“I took the SMC class the summer before I went to college to give myself confidence I could do well with college-level work. I originally intended to be a news reporter.

“When I was a junior, the summer before my senior year, I had three jobs and got an internship at MTV. I went back to MTV after I graduated and moved to New York City. I wanted to experience a big city, but my grandparents who raised me became ill, so I came back to this area to take care of them and took a job at WNIT, ran their big auction and worked in development for four years, then went into higher ed.”

“I worked for Ivy Tech in business and industry training,” Jankowski said. “Telecommunications came in handy facilitating panel discussions. I’ve done different things in radio and television throughout my career. I went to graduate school at Notre Dame and one of my classmates recruited me to come to Davenport University.”

“I was hired as Director of Enrollment at Davenport, working with the South Bend and Goshen campuses,” Jankowski said.

“I never went back to New York because I started having children. I ran Leadership South Bend Mishawaka for 12 years and did a lot of traveling as president of our national association, then went back to higher ed at Ivy Tech for four years during COVID.”

Now she’s an “empty nester” with her son at Indiana University Bloomington, a daughter in Chicago and a daughter in Australia. “I brought my kids to tour the Dowagiac campus and they were super impressed,” she said.

SMC’s dual enrollment numbers have bounced back post-pandemic to 512. The program lets students get a jump-start on degrees by earning college credit while still in high school — often for free.

Dual enrollment offers an introduction to the college environment, full access to college facilities, taking classes with higher-achieving students and college faculty. As long as they pass with a C or better, they complete the high school requirement and are granted highly transferable college credit on an official transcript.

Most students take two or three Michigan Transfer Agreement courses per semester, which are the English, math, science and humanities courses common to the first two years of study at any college.

“A number of students take online classes as part of their dual enrollment,” Jankowski said.

Michigan expects local school districts to pay for up to 10 courses during their overall high school career unless the students are in Early Middle College, which 12 students are.

Jankowski also works with Heritage Southwest Intermediate School District in Cassopolis, whose Career Tech Education Department oversees vocational “career academies” with local high schools.

“Indiana does dual enrollment very differently,” Jankowski said. “Their focus is on students who probably wouldn’t go to college, from first generation to under-represented minorities. High school teachers get credentialed to teach college courses. Ninety-five percent of our dual enrollment was direct credit. The state reimbursed a certain amount to whoever delivers credits. I love that most dual-enrolled SMC students come on campus here to really feel like college students.”

Jankowski focuses on Cass and Berrien counties and recently met with Berrien Springs and Watervliet officials. She also works with home-school partnerships such as Berrien Springs and Niles, or they can come on their own if certain standards are met.

“I’m a big believer in dual enrollment,” she said. “I’m very passionate about what is such a great opportunity for high school students.”