"Project Complete" Achieves 60% Program Enrollment Growth in Three Years

Recovering college stops

Launched in 2003, Project Complete is a program to recover college stops. More than 300 have returned with more than 60% graduating to date. The program has the highest campus one semester retention rate at 91%. Adult students in the degree completion program take most of their courses in the ACCELerated Evening College in the hybrid format. Program growth has created a capacity problem being addressed through course restrictions and developing additional hybrid courses.

Presented by: Fred Hakes
Director, Continuing Studies, Indiana University Kokomo

Mr. Hakes is Director of the Division of Continuing Studies at Indiana University Kokomo. His responsibilities at IU Kokomo include oversight of the Accelerated Evening College program developed in the hybrid format, administration of the General Studies Degree program and emerging activities to support economic development. He previously held positions as Assistant Director of Operations for the 21st Century Scholars Program with the State Student Assistance Commission of Indiana; Manager, Indiana Education Policy Center and a Lecturer in Education at IUPUI; and Financial Development Officer and Manager of Planning with the Indianapolis Private Industry Council.

Mr. Hakes has secured more than $45 million in federal, state and private foundation grants and contracts to support higher education research and training program needs He served on a national grant review panel at the invitation of the U.S. Department of labor, has been a presenter at state, national and international conferences and has provided testimony at State of Indiana legislative committee hearings. In 2003 he was among thirty educators across the nation to be invited as discussants to the Sloan C 2005 Workshop on Blended Learning.

An active volunteer, Mr. Hakes is a past president of the Indiana University School of Education Alumni Association Board and a former member of the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Alumni Advisory Council. He received the Indiana University Alumni Association President’s Award for Distinguished Alumni Service and the Maynard K. Hine Medal for Unique and Significant Alumni Contributions to IUPUI. He has served in voluntary roles for the Indiana Academic Decathlon, the United Way, Hendricks County Indiana 4–H, and Brownsburg Schools where he served as vice-president of a school building board.

He earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science Degrees from Indiana University. Mr. Hakes is a Hoosier native and Vietnam veteran. He and his wife, Jan, reside in Brownsburg, Indiana and have four grown children.