Dr. Allen Goben, Executive Campus Dean, DMACC Boone, February 16, 2026

On our program we are visiting with Dr. Alan Gopin from the Des Moines Area Community College. He is our executive campus dean. Good to have you back. Great to be here.

This week, well last week I'm gonna say we did have the DMACC trustees met and I know that's one of those things they met down on Ankeny so yes it was Ankeny this time around. Keep moving that meeting around and make you guys all travel.

I gotta ask you right away because obviously the big story from last week was the Iowa Lakes school or the bus baseball team going going south and I'm thinking right away as soon as I saw that I wonder what you're thinking because you have teams traveling south too.

Yeah you know our hearts go out to the Iowa Lakes family and coaches, athletic director, the teams there that that was just an unspeakable tragedy and you know that when things like that happen in life people have to I think hit the pause button for a minute and you really stop all the busy stuff that goes on in your life and you really reflect on what really matters and what really matters is our human connection.

Our ability to be together and to to create support for each other and tragedies like that they really don't make any sense you know you can't make sense of them but our condolences and sympathy our hearts go out to the Iowa Lakes family for what they're going through and you know certainly it reminds us to ever be vigilant with our own teams traveling and and that sort of thing.

And they are for those that are wondering yes our our teams are yeah they are headed south this time of the year.

They are baseball and softball and we have track track and field teams getting their season going and then of course we're still wrapping up we're not to the finish line yet on basketball so this is a really busy time of year on campus with everything.

We've got a lot of things happening there. Well I know that when the board has their meetings one of the things you do is and I think all all campuses you have a presentation you do a presentation no.

We have done those we're actually turning those into more of a written report now and they're streamlining the board meeting a little bit so that's more the nature. It allows them to get done faster.

Hey they got enough to do they get their budget coming up and everything else and and the search the president search is still going on too. So yes yeah I know your written report that you had you made mention of Tammy Foltz who's a professor philosophy for you.

I remember when she was just a student.

Oh yeah yeah Tammy's been at the campus for a long time and hit a milestone I believe it was a 20th anniversary working at DMACC and so it's really neat when people have these milestone points in their career you know it takes a lot of time and energy just to do one year let alone to do that many and so we just really appreciate her work and appreciate the the service of all of our faculty members and the time they spend with our students.

She was one of those students again a again an adult student coming back and going on from there but she got recognized with Phi Theta Kappa something that she had not accepted when she was a student.

Well and when when the Phi Theta Kappa is at the honors one of the honors programs and we often call it PTK for short that's what that acronym is so if we say PTK that's what we're talking about but you know when when our faculty members are a part of the community of the campus and of Boone and surrounding communities and it's really neat because their focus is on their curriculum as it should be and on teaching and learning but they do so much more.

There's so much that people give of themselves and really help our students grow and and advance their lives.

Well I know that got a lot of different things that have been happening so let's talk a little bit about we did mention the sports teams basketball men's women had a big win the other day.

Oh wow I mean they're our women's team lost their leading scorer at the time to an injury and she may get back at a very very end of the season that's kind of uncertain I think at this point but they really had to adjust they had to adapt quite a bit and and so they seem to be settling into a good routine now they had a huge win this week against a very good NIAAC team and they really just commanded the game from start to finish and and had a really blowout victory so women's teams really they're doing really well Jim and the neat thing about them is they're such nice people all the players the coaches as I've gotten to know them they're they're on campus in all kinds of different ways and so nice.

I know that the men's team let's just say it they are one of the community college powers in the country.

They are the the men's team has one loss right now and both men's and women's we have a double header and then we're playing double header games double header games and yeah we have lots of double headers and so there's gonna be opportunities for people to get out and see the games and the men's team they're they're fun to watch they they're one of the deeper teams probably talent wise you know that you have teams play a rotation of players and and this team seems to be pretty unselfish they just share the ball and they love to play the game and they really get after it so they're a lot of fun and still ranked number two in the country right now.

I gotta I gotta say that after we kind of wondered you know we had when you had Josh Sasse and things really were taking off I know BJ was very excited and all the coaches he but is those coaches have moved on we've been able to get some really good you get Blake Sankos right now he's he's really got a solid like you said a little more depth than we've had on some of the other teams.

Yeah Blake Blake's done Brett Blake and his entire coaching staff they've done a really good job recruiting they they're very attentive to recruiting the whole person they try to get students in that are students and athletes and he seems to have developed a team with pretty good chemistry that's probably you know you can always have a good team but if you want a great team you have to really get that chemistry going and this team seems to gel and they they look completely different now than they did the first three or four games I mean they've really progressed where they won the games earlier in the year but they you know you could tell they weren't quite playing together yet and they've just come together as a unit and they seem tremendously talented and unselfish and that's a good combination they're fun to watch.

And I've been folks you if you went to like the pufferbilly parade you had they were walking in the parade some of them were some of them were wise and road no these are the kinds of things we've seen from all the teams.

Yeah they try to try to be good role models for young kids and also you know try to provide a nice entertainment outlet in the community so people can come up to the campus and take in a game and and really enjoy having some good sports to watch.

The you know we've talked also about the academics of this group across all sports 78% of our athletes last fall had above a 3.0 GPA and and our women's basketball team in particular I think almost the entire team was on first or second all academic all region I guess is what it's called.

So it's really really a good group to watch. You know you had Amanda with you last time visiting and we talked about the different activities she ch...

and some of the things she comes up are more like in a mural type things but a lot of them are for a lot of you just all these students to have opportunities and have that campus life.

Absolutely it's one of the more active campuses I've seen in terms of student life and it also ties the in with the athletics sometimes you know we had the American Heart Association read out fundraiser in conjunction with a recent ball game and Amanda spearheaded that and so that was a huge success they had a record fundraising amount I don't recall the exact amount but it was it was an all-time record for us.

Well it keeps going up every year. Yeah. You get more and more participants in there too but that's just one of the things and we haven't even talked about how great eSports is.

eSports is doing so well that we we had to move them to a bigger space so they're they are just now settling into their new space and we're excited about that. And a lot of people are going what is eSports? You play games competitively.

Competitively, intercollegiately yes absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about housing you got some projects that are going on around housing in particular not only inside some of the buildings but you got some plans for outside as well.

Outside we're looking ahead and so we're in the earlier stages but planning for some outside amenities that we'd like to develop with outdoor basketball and sand volleyball and inside we're actually finishing a project right now we're not quite done but probably in the next couple weeks we'll have an open house for the housing students to come in and really settle into their new student lounge so the furniture is set up and we're doing some finishing touches over the next week or two.

Alright pretty well filled up on the housing side because I know first of all we do have a lot of the athletes here but we do have other students that are in the housing.

Yeah yeah and the housing stays pretty full we had a waiting list going into the fall semester so we would anticipate we'll probably be similar this coming year. We're not gonna build any new ones yet. Not yet not yet I don't have any any concrete plans for it.

We got to finish a few other projects around there to the west patio area I know that's oh I'm really excited about this one Jim that the this is the west side of the building where youth soccer plays in that open area we donate the use of our that part of campus for our Boone youth soccer and it it's really exciting because that patio it needed some attention it had really not had a lot of upgrade for many many years and so this week is this next over the next week it will come to life with new furniture on the patio we're supposed to have the installation happening in a few days and so over this next week that will get settled in and set up and then it'll be open for use.

It'll be one of those where students said if they don't want to be in the quarter center or something like that or if it's too busy or they can slip out to that side.

Yeah and we we actually set it up so that it should be big enough to even take a small class out there if a faculty member wants to go outside with a class and get a little change of scenery and nice comfortable place to be and then of course you know if the community is using the area for youth soccer there's gonna be some nice comfortable seating there.

They'll be able to sit there in the shade. Well we'll see. Some of those mornings it's a little cool a little better to be in the sunlight over there too.

That's going on again the big thing we've got a lot of other things that are going on on campus and and I gotta ask about the cafe. How are we doing are we still seeing a lot of traffic in it out of there from the community do you know?

We really are we have folks that really enjoy it and then I don't know if everybody knows about the DOT partnership but with a Department of Transportation for the state has a partnership with with us and so they're located at Boone campus and I was talking to the the director of that the other day and he said that they have about 2,500 people attend per year coming to the campus for training and so we've had I don't I'm not sure what their schedule is because I don't really get into their scheduling but they have been just wall-to-wall people lately so the cafeteria has been trying to keep up it's been really busy.

Well and this is their busy time because they want to get all of their their materials training done all taken care of before they get to construction. Exactly yes they're getting all the last stuff in before they probably get right out there and go do the work.

And there are plenty of any time you go out there and you see a bunch of DOT trucks you know they're here they're going to school. Yes you'll see the orange trucks and and other ones with some signage on them.

I know there are other things that you're working on on campus services to students in particular as we mentioned we talked to about Amanda but you also have health mental health type projects that are going on to Lori Zahn's doing some things you got other staff members that are helping out.

Mental health is one of those things everybody knows but it is very important.

Well it's really prevalent and you know it's it's the same as physical health it's it's probably a little less well-known or publicized but all of us deal with mental issues of one sort or another just a stressful day and college can be very very stressful you know students some of the students are living life they're working jobs they're trying to juggle schedules we have traditional age students coming out of high school who maybe not had that much autonomy or responsibility before and so they're learning that.

We have a fantastic new counselor this year Michael Borscht is his name. I would love to get him up here sometime for a show and let him say hello but he and Lori work hand in glove and then the rest of our team to really support our students in all ways possible.

And we know I know another one that spends a lot of time talking about especially for veterans services but Shawn really we got the march coming up okay the in my boots.

The in my boots 5k or run slash walk is coming up and so I don't have the date committed in memory yet but it's about the third week of April. Yeah it's in April we have we have a little time for that.

And so 25th maybe don't quote me on that but so that that effort has grown and grown each year and it's been going for more than a decade and this year the proceeds will go to the Veterans Center in Boone.

So it's it's kind of a chance to not only participate in that particular event but also to support the Veterans Center fundraising. I remember when he got him started doing the 22 push-ups and stuff for the if we're veteran suicide.

Yes and we had still that's a big part of the mental health. Yeah we had we had that event earlier this year and they were the students just jammed into quarter center so that if you've been on campus and you know what the quarter center looks like. You can get it pretty full.

It was a lot of people in the space but and then people dropping down they not only did the push-ups but they they had a competition and they had big fun with it you know trying to see who could do the most push-ups in a certain amount of time.

I'm going with women's volleyball team or women's softball team. You know I'm trying to I can't remember who won. It was not me we know that. Nor me no.

Again even well again one of the other things I know that we talked about previously when you had Aaron come in with you we talked about the the food pantry and that's still something there and we've seen again it is part of the food bank.

You work with the the food bank of Iowa and and again they're one of the outlets here in Boone. Yeah yeah and people keep thinking it's just for DMACC but it's not.

We do have some other folks come in and it's kind of primary focus with the on-campus community but Aaron and Jamie Siderly and then a lot of volunteers really do a lot of work to support that and and we've had tremendous numbers there as well.

Well let's talk a little bit about we are into that time of the year okay so we've gotten spring semester going numbers were pretty good for you. Yeah I think we were fairly consistent with previous years.

Now we're all planning for summer and I'm guessing a lot of that's done and we're already looking at fall.

We are seems silly to be talking about winter's not even over yet but that is how we plan we operate on a fairly lockstep year so we're looking ahead to fall and right now a focus is for us is to just line up different summer projects and things like that.

Of course spring is going to be really really busy with a lot of academic classroom work going on and then we have just a tremendous flurry and overlapping of the athletics so different seasons that are all then simultaneously happening and so you're going to see the indoor orientation of basketball and then all of a sudden you're going to start seeing softball and baseball playing outside soon so.

It's going it'll be happening. It's going it's an exciting time. I'm guessing some of your coaches are already looking ahead of what they're going to do for camps in the summertime and things like that as well.

We do we have we have a host of different summer camps throughout the summer and so they're already getting those plans in place and getting everything ready to go. It'll be a busy time. We've got a lot of things that are happening there.

We also will have commencement coming up here. We do yeah May 8th I believe is a commencement coming up. And then the other big news. When you think about it that's not that far away. No that's coming right up. We've already been talking about it.

And then we have the big news lately is Ragbri coming to Boone and so we as I understand it the first week of March they're going to do maybe nail down some more details about things but but it sounds like we we may be pretty engaged in that with our campus as well. Right.

Well it was before I can't say so it might I could see very well would be busy with a number of different things. Opportunities again because that's a lot of people coming to town. Yeah yeah it is and it's a great opportunity for Boone you know.

You don't get to showcase your town to that many people from that many places very often and it it will certainly be disruptive to our day.

You know there'll be about a 24 hour stretch there where things will not be business as usual and but it's just one day out of the year you know and and what a neat opportunity and some entertainment options in town and and it is a great chance for people to see what a wonderful community this is.

As we're doing and a lot of have not probably seen what's going on with the DMACC campus so certainly that's certainly another opportunity if they haven't seen the new the new edition and things like that. Yes. Plenty of plenty of things that are happening there.

Again for those parents because this is the time of the year parents if you have a high school senior junior this is not a bad time to start doing what you need to do to plan and still the least costly.

Absolutely and you know one of the big things right now is sitting down and doing just doing the nuts and bolts of college planning. Part of that often is financial aid. It's doing a little bit of paperwork. There's a form called the FAFSA is how people refer to it.

It's scary for some people. It's the free application for federal student aid but it basically plugs people in for any sort of financial support and then that you know it's a paperwork thing. It's just a process thing and sometimes people get a little intimidated by that.

But if you've ever filled out paperwork for any virtually anything that's what it is and the college has folks that can help walk you through it and get that all done. Of course submitting applications and scholarships.

You know last year when we started the fall semester there was scholarship money left on the table that is designated for Boone campus students and for all the people out there listening if you have a student in your family or a friend who's going to DMACC please have them take the time to fill out a scholarship application.

If there's money in the foundation to help them go to school we want to help them out. That's why it's there. That's why it's there.

Some donor gave money to help people do this and when we get into classes and find out well there's still scholarship money there nobody applied for it. It just causes us pause to say gee we need to get this message out and let people know. Get these things filled out.

Make sure they know so that yeah because people didn't donate that to help those that were going to the Boone campus. And it's not a bad way to get started. I know that we do have other events that are going to be coming up. We have the STEM festival.

I know that's going to be held out there. That's what early April. Yeah that's coming up pretty quick. So we've got that going on. There are a number of things on campus that are going to keep things very busy plus all your projects you have happening too.

But people if you have an idea if you think someone's going to be maybe going maybe you want to pick up some summer classes some things like that. Credits easy to do. Make contact. Again make contact. You have people there that want to help.

Yeah it's really the first step is what it takes. You know it just takes the initiative do that first step and then the rest of the process if you're not familiar with it we have folks that can walk you through it.

You know they've done this hundreds of times and they help people all day every day. Dr. Allen Gopin by the way how's the trees doing? We take most of those trees out.

Yeah the ash borer blight that went through Iowa really hit the ash trees hard on the campus and so we actually just had a lot of them that were dead or dying cleaned up on the front of campus. It looks very different if you've been out there it opened it up a lot.

I could really see the front now. Yeah you can really see the front of the campus now from Hancock and it's just a different look. Not a bad look but it's different and then we have a conversation underway with our own horticulture program in Ankeny.

It's based in our Ankeny campus but the head of that program's already come up and talked with us and we're looking at a long range plan for kind of repopulating some of the trees or just developing more trees on campus. Dr.

Allen Gopin our guest on the program today from the DMACC Boom Campus. Thanks so much. Thank you Jim.