Two institutions have joined into an alliance, but not against the forces of evil.

Missouri Southern and Crowder College have combined their customized training departments into one to form the Alliance for Business Consulting and Development.

Both training departments specialized in offering training services to area corporations. Everything from consulting to training in managing was offered in both facilities. Roger Wagner, associate dean of instruction at Crowder, said this caused the problem of the companies having to choose between the two institutions for training. The alliance changes that.

“Another benefit is that the companies really didn’t have to make a choice,” Wagner said. “We’ve taken the best of two organizations and built one stronger organization.”

Dr. Jack Spurlin, vice president for lifelong learning, said the two institutions have basically competed against each other for the past three to four years. The merge allows both to be able to use each other’s faculty, resources and experience to better serve their customers.

“When you combine all that, you have a lot of power at your fingertips,” Spurlin said.

Rather than being located on either campus, the main offices and building for ABCD are located in part of the old armory behind McDonald’s in Webb City. Wagner said this is a good spot to serve the nine counties in southwest Missouri.

“That provides kind of a centralized location to the service area,” Wagner said.

Wagner also said the alliance is always willing to reach out past its normal area of coverage. He said in the past, both Southern and Crowder have branched out to Kansas and Oklahoma. Crowder has even serviced companies in Mexico and Canada within the past two years.

“We don’t limit ourselves to any geographic boundary,” Wagner said. “They [Southern] have not limited themselves by any specific boundary either.”

Nancy Kenney, co-director of ABCD, said the organization will be looking to branch out “everywhere” now that it has more resources at its disposal.

Terra Higgins, junior psychology major, works at the ABCD building in Webb City. She said the merger was a good thing because now ABCD can receive more funding, which translates into better services for its customers.

“It helps the companies, too, because we can get more money from the state,” Higgins said.

She expects the alliance to stick around.

“We get a lot of good feedback form the companies we work with,” Higgins said. “As long as we get funding from the state, we plan on being here.”

Kenney said this is the first time two institutions have ever joined into something on this level.