Southern Utah University (SUU) was literally built by its community. Founded in 1897 as a teacher training school, residents of Cedar City contributed resources and physical labor to erect the first building, driven by a mission to widen access to education for those overlooked by the existing system. The great-grandfathers of SUU’s current president, Mindy Benson, were among those early builders. More than a century later, the institution still defines itself by that deep connection to place.
“As a regional institution, that’s part of who SUU is and what we do,” Benson said. “We’re the economic driver, we’re the cultural center, and we try to provide access where others wouldn’t have it.”
Holding to that commitment in the 2020s meant meeting people who could no longer sit in a classroom in Cedar City five days a week. Many of them already hold a degree from the university and want to return to reskill or advance while working full time and raising families. Others live in rural stretches of southern Utah, where the nearest campus is a long drive and the local economy needs credentialed workers it cannot easily import. Serving both groups required SUU to deliver its programs online without diluting them — a challenge for a relatively small regional institution.
Building Online Capacity Through Partnership
SUU partnered with Risepoint, an education technology company, to build that capacity. James Sage, the university’s associate provost, described the contribution as less about outsourcing than about clarified self-knowledge. “They really helped us have a vision for what we could be in the online space,” he said. “They’ve helped us with market research, so we know what students are interested in. They’ve helped us align our academic programs to what the industry needs.”
The university retained ownership of admissions, curriculum, instruction, and financial aid, while Risepoint provided services like outreach, online infrastructure development, and student support.
Community Impact Over Headline Growth
Since the partnership began, SUU has enrolled more than 4,600 new online students across nursing, business, communication, cybersecurity, and music. Its online MBA grew from 84 students to more than 1,000, aided by a seven-week course format and a price working adults can manage. Much of that growth has come from students who already live and work in the region.
Ken Hall, dean of the Dixie L. Leavitt School of Business, framed the stakes locally: the school’s job, he said, is “to raise the overall economic condition of individuals and families that live here in Southern Utah.”
Meeting Rural Healthcare Needs
Nowhere is the regional logic clearer than in healthcare. Southern Utah is rural, and its medical system is stretched thin. The university’s nursing programs partner with local hospitals so that online and in-person students alike train in real clinical settings, keeping graduates prepared to practice where shortages are most severe.
“We’re in a rural area, and there are doctors, but there are very few,” said Taylor Harris, a family nurse practitioner student who earned her bachelor’s degree on campus. “Family nurse practitioners can step in and bridge the gap between people being seen or not seen. Having nurses pursue an advanced degree helps your own community to strengthen their healthcare system.”
Salvador Rodriguez, another nurse practitioner student, plans to use his Spanish to serve the area’s Hispanic residents directly, so patients do not have to depend on an interpreter.
The flexibility matters even in fields that look nothing like nursing. Percussionist and music educator Kit Chatham earned a graduate music technology degree through the university’s asynchronous program while keeping a working musician’s schedule. “There were times that I was doing 10 shows a week,” he said. The format gave him room to do both, and he now directs the program he came through, serving as SUU’s Director of Graduate Music Technology.
What distinguishes Southern Utah University’s story from a standard growth narrative is the absence of a crisis. The university was financially healthy when it began, and its aim was to honor an old promise to its community in a format more of that community could reach. Through its partnership with Risepoint, it has been able to extend the same career-connected, faculty-led education its campus students receive to working adults across the region, in the same fields the area depends on. For a university that was built by Cedar City, continuing to serve Cedar City is the assignment itself, and online learning has become one of the main ways it gets done.
