Even before he became president of Rowan College at Burlington County (RCBC) in 2018, Dr. Michael A. Cioce has been adamant about upholding the school’s mission of putting students first and transforming their lives for the better.
And while it undoubtedly takes a team to ensure that avenues of higher education are accessible to everyone, Dr. Cioce has certainly earned the “Chief Instigator” nickname he wears as a badge of honor.
Take, for example, 2021’s success in reforming the state college operating funding, which ushered in a more equitable model for students statewide, including low-income, minority and adult learners. It led to a $10 million increase in operating aid to county colleges throughout New Jersey; specifically to RCBC, that meant a jump from fiscal year 2021’s $7.1 million in state aid, or 5.3% of the state’s total, to $10.6 million—6.3% of the state’s total aid—in fiscal year 2025.
As a brand-new president, Dr. Cioce had been reviewing the college’s three main sources of funding, including ”a state-funding formula and a state bucket of appropriations” that had been plagued with “some serious problems.” By early 2020, he was spearheading the effort that ultimately and positively impacted both the RCBC community and all of the state’s 18 community colleges after successfully pitching the idea to their leadership, then lobbying the state legislature and the governor’s office, and finally revamping a funding formula “almost old enough to vote.”
“The funding formula was adopted in 1997 and hadn’t been updated since then: There were components locked into the formula that didn’t change whether schools had higher enrollment, lower enrollment, whether there was any sort of performance metric, there were no diversity metrics,” he begins. “[When] the governor included the first increase in over a decade of $10 million to the county-college sector, RCBC saw a $2 million increase that year, which proved my thesis that we had been underfunded for the past decade. Any sort of infusion of dollars like that has a direct impact on our tuition rate and the services we offer.”
Saving students money while providing stellar educational opportunities has been a hallmark of Dr. Cioce’s time at RCBC. In 2017, as vice president of enrollment management and student success, he was instrumental in establishing the school as the region’s first community college to offer junior-year courses, thanks to a partnership with Rowan University. That 3+1 program allows students to “prepare for the future without crippling college debt” while working toward their associate and bachelor's degrees—and saving an average of $75,000.
“We went to the secretary of higher ed, we went to HESSA [New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority], we went to the governor’s office, we went to legislature, and we got amendments to the legislation that allowed for a partnership like this to even exist, because it was against the rules. There were caps on the number of credits a student could take at a county college and how many of those credits could transfer,” Dr. Cioce explains. “RCBC broke the glass on that as the first to offer 3+1 programs.”
To date, the “baccalaureate completion pathway” boasts nearly 1,500 alumni who have collectively saved nearly $36 million in tuition. It currently offers 13 majors with a 14th on the way, as 3+1 proactively expands in relation to professional areas demonstrating an increased need for well-trained talent.
Dr. Cioce always looks to evolve RCBC to benefit students. One recent example is adjustments to the academic schedule that “meets students where they are,” an especially important consideration for its significant population of working students. The most profound and promising example converting winter session to a fully online, monthlong general-education core classes: More students enrolled in that inaugural model than the previous three winter sessions combined, and this year’s session more than doubled that enrollment.
“The winter session was a grand-slam home run,” Dr. Cioce says. “Enrollment was trending in the wrong direction, and the first answer was to kill it [but] we reimagined something that is resonating with current and prospective students.”
Dr. Cioce, who started at the college in 2010 as financial aid director, notes that having held multiple roles at RCBC provided him with both the broad perspective and firsthand experience to assemble the strong leadership necessary in pulling off sweeping transformations.
“It’s definitely a benefit: I know where things need to be and I also know who can help. Some teams you inherit and some teams you build as you go, and I’ve been lucky in the sense that we have some amazing folks working at RCBC,” he affirms—and adds with a laugh that he’s “had a lot of latitude in who I’ve been able to sort of drag along with me.”
RCBC’s president isn’t content to rest on his laurels, though. While he’s wildly proud of how the college has evolved during his tenure and how 95.3% of last year’s graduates are either continuing their education or entering the workforce, he remains committed to constantly elevating its offerings.
“It’s our job in higher education to challenge the status quo,” Dr. Cioce says. “I think we’re demonstrating the value that we provide with a high-quality education right here in the community where our students live and we’re positioning them for success.”
Rowan College at Burlington County
Mount Laurel
(856) 222-9311
RCBC.edu
