NORWICH - In his 17 years with Three Rivers Community College, 1992 remains the most turbulent one for Wayne Silver, now the interim academic dean.
That was the year the former Mohegan Community College, where Silver was a humanities department faculty member, merged with another college in the city just four miles away.
"The merger of two separate colleges with overlapping missions and with different histories and cultures was a dramatic transformation," Silver said. "But I believe it was all for the good."
In recent days, Three Rivers has been plunged once again into a time of uncertainty and is preparing for more major change - in course offerings, in the typical student and in technology - has become a theme of the college's history.

Adaptation
In fact, Mary Anne Cox, spokeswoman for the Connecticut Community Colleges system, said the strength of community colleges is the ability to respond quickly to the community's needs.
Each college has its own distinct character because of this, she said.
"They have their own unique programs that serve the needs of their individual regions," Cox said.
Over the years, Three Rivers has built relationships with nearly all the region's major employers, at one time providing courses, including noncredit ones, that benefited the work force at Electric Boat and the U. S. Submarine Base, both in Groton.
When the submarine manufacturer suffered massive layoffs in the early 1990s and the economy became anchored instead by tourism thanks to two new casinos, the college also shifted gears, offering such courses as hospitality and management to students.
"The college has been a major asset in the economic development of the region through our continuing education programs and traditional academic programs," Silver said. "We have been intertwined with business and industry, military and the nonprofit sector all through our history. If anything, we are more intertwined now."

Two campuses
Three Rivers' two campuses, products of the 1950s and 1960s, predominantly draw students from southeastern Connecticut, including Groton, Griswold, Montville, Preston, Ledyard and Norwich.
In the 2002 fall semester, there were 3,529 full-time-equivalent students. That year statewide enrollment at all the 12 community colleges reached a record high of 23,485 full-time-equivalent students. This fall semester at Three Rivers, tuition and basic fees will be $1,155 per full-time student.
The Mohegan site, next to Kelly Middle School, started as a Catholic girls' high school and the Thames facility, next to Norwich Regional Vocational Technical High School started as a vocational technical college.
Mohegan was on track for expansion and Thames Valley needed significant improvements when the Connecticut General Assembly mandated the merger of both sites into a community-technical college to spur program growth and development.
Two years later, the Board of Trustees of Community-Technical Colleges voted to consolidate both campuses to streamline services and the state authorized $61 million , for the project.

Setting the sites
Since then, the debate, with Gov. John G. Rowland weighing in at times, has centered on the most appropriate site for the consolidation.
Proposals have included the former Norwich State Hospital in Preston, a site south of the hospital on Route 12, the Norwich waterfront, another site in downtown Norwich, the Mahan campus, and the Thames Valley campus. And there is now talk of moving it to another site altogether.
Meanwhile, the profile of a typical student at the college is changing.
Robert Rue, founding president of Mohegan Community College who now lives in Niantic, said students were predominantly older women from the shoreline who attended the school part-time. Recently, the shift is toward full-time, younger students.

In the last few years the average age of a community college student in Connecticut, including at Three Rivers, has dropped slightly from the low 30s to 29 and the number of full-time students is growing, Cox said.
Since 1998, there also has been a 5-percent increase in the number of students under age 22.
She said the economy - both the need for high school graduates to get degrees to land jobs and the increasing costs of higher education - are driving students to community colleges.
Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic, where the tuition is $3,084 a year, and the University of Connecticut in Storrs, where tuition is $4,700 a year, are the closest four-year state universities.
Connecticut College, a liberal arts college in New London, is also nearby. Tuition there is nearly $19,000 a year.

Close to home
But students at Three Rivers opt for the community college typically because it is closer to home, it costs a lot less, and the academic program is strong enough to make a smooth transition into a four-year program.
"We've provided the avenue of higher education for thousands of people who might not have had that opportunity," Silver said.
And now there is a growing increase of students who speak English as a second language, another reflection of change in the region. Jobs at Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun are drawing thousands of immigrants into the region.
"People are coming from every part of the world," Silver said. "It's a fascinating challenge."

abowles@norwichbulletin.com