By: Steven Appelbaum
ABC President & CEO
Howdy everybody, and welcome to a different version of “What’s Waggin.”
It’s laborious to imagine that 2024 is half over, however right here we’re. Enrollments 12 months up to now are up over final 12 months. A part of the rationale for elevated enrollments is our diminished tuition value for a few of our hottest packages. We perceive how inflationary pressures make it tougher for animal lovers to pursue their goals of a profession within the pet trade and are doing every thing in our energy to ease a few of these monetary challenges by conserving our costs low.
Our Alumni group continues to develop, and we’re approaching 38,000 graduates. This all the time excites me as a result of it speaks to the long-standing attraction of our packages. Has everybody who graduated from our program gone on to work within the pet trade? No, after all not, though when wanting on the profession trajectories of ABC graduates, the very first thing we discover is {that a} shocking variety of them by no means deliberate on working within the pet trade however as an alternative use the data and abilities they realized via ABC to volunteer at rescues and shelters all throughout the continent. At this level, it’s all internationally, as I do know of a number of who work(ed) at shelters/rescues in Japan, China, South Korea, Germany, France, and the UK. Apart from rescue volunteering, some graduates determine they’d relatively keep of their present non-pet associated jobs however use what they realized at ABC to strengthen their relationship with their pets and assist pals. Lastly, a fantastic many graduates work part-time within the pet trade. The reality is that the profession paths of our graduates are diverse and numerous, as they’re. Now we have college students from all walks of life, from these simply out of highschool and attempting to determine what they need to do as adults to retired people trying to preserve busy, give again, and set up secondary sources of revenue to complement their golden years.
We’ve additionally labored with veterans, together with those that participated in each battle from World Warfare II onward. For these of you who need to do the mathematics on that final assertion, bear in mind the varsity began in 1998, and after I consider World Warfare II vets, I can recall one gentleman who took our program in 2000 at 74. Like I stated earlier, all walks of life.
Whereas reflecting on our previous is necessary, let’s additionally sit up for the long run. Thrilling modifications are on the horizon at ABC.
First, we are going to launch just a few new short-term packages within the subsequent 6-12 months. We are going to share extra about these after we get nearer, however we imagine they may have widespread attraction.
Second, we are going to revamp our Studying Administration System (LMS) within the not-too-distant future. Whereas this received’t impression graduates as a lot as college students, Alumni who use the alumni heart to evaluate up to date variations of our supplies will discover operations streamlined and far simpler.
Third, we will even provide a web-based enrollment course of, making it a lot simpler for college kids to enroll in considered one of our packages.
Fourth, we’re severely exploring the impression AI might have on our packages. A few of the supplies I’ve seen generated with AI are superb. AI can enable us so as to add extra visible aids, extra narration, and fewer textual content studying, and it’ll usually allow the varsity to modernize how we disseminate data to our college students. AI might additionally help us in doing one thing I’ve wished to do for a very long time: translating our packages into different languages in a fraction of the effort and time.
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’ll preserve everybody posted as issues progress. Till then, preserve cool, and do not forget that serving to animals makes the world a greater place.
