Phase One ‘imminent,’ Hogan says
Phase One of National Park College’s master plan is “imminent,” National Park College President John Hogan said this week.
Phase One will include a new entrance on Mountain Pine Road for more visibility, and a new 51,000-square-foot student commons building, a marine technology building and a remodel of the Gerald Fisher Building.
Hogan, who spoke Wednesday to Hot Springs National Park Rotary Club at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa, said the student commons building will have classrooms and common space, and be a “one-stop-shop for students.”
“They’ll know this is where they come in, this is the front door and we can take care of everything here and we’re going to put you on that pathway to success as soon as you come in the
door. There’s symbolism to that and there’s a magnet element to that,” Hogan told the Rotarians.
“Phase One of the master plan is imminent; we’ve got the money, it’s moving forward. Our campus is excellent. We’re in one of the most picturesque places in the country, and our campus is one of the most picturesque campuses in the state of Arkansas because we’re in Garland County next to the national park. We have done very well compared to other colleges in terms of being blessed with beauty and a learning environment that is very safe and secure, and one that we’re proud of,” he said.
“It is, today, a very vibrant place,” Hogan told the Rotarians. “We have a lot of different initiatives and some of those are aspirational, some of those are happening. It’s all just coming together very well.”
Hogan expressed appreciation to the community for supporting the NPC Board of Trustees “and of the folks that are in the community that really stand behind what NPC is trying to do here in Garland County.”
In the past year, Hogan said NPC’s athletic program has been “emblematic” of the college’s overall goals to make students more successful, keep them in school and keep them on the trajectory to complete their degree.
“That’s what we wake up every day and think about doing,” he said. “Athletics and inter-murals, student clubs and student activities — we call it the university experience.
“We’re providing students the university experience with a twoyear college price. Athletics, which gets a lot of attention, is an outcome of that. The bigger picture is students are more successful if they are engaged in activities outside of the classroom.”
The college recently announced restructuring the existing Academic Achievement and President’s scholarships, in addition to creating a new Nighthawk Leadership Scholarship.
“Primarily in the past, our scholarships were focused on need,” he said. “We’re expanding that to include academic performance and leadership, in addition to need.”
The college also has incentives for high school students of National Park Technology Center, he said.
“One important scholarship is what we call the National Park College Promise and that’s what we offer to students who have come to the National Park Technology Center as a high school student,” he said. “They complete two years and they will not be paying tuition and fees out of their pocket to go to NPC. So we’ve taken that financial obstacle out of their way. They’ve already invested two years in us, so we’re repaying that investment.”
Hogan said as far as infrastructure is concerned, about 50 percent of the campus’ square footage is state-of-the-art instructional space that students will see is comparable to many of their high school facilities or other colleges.
“The problem is about 50 percent of it is not, in particular, the spaces where students learn in real lab intensive classes like anything we teach that’s more hands-on,” he said. “The old euphemism was vocational. Most of those courses and several of our other programs are taught in facilities that really were where you and I probably went to school in the 1970s and 1980s.
“By in large, the equipment is up to date — it has to be because we have to maintain that for our program accreditation. But we need to be on a long-term plan to upgrade our physical plan based on the eye appeal that it has for students, based on the longevity of the college and just based on the efficiency that we can get from really addressing that. So we’re programming that into phases.”
Hogan said because of the success of the college’s marine technology program, spaces will be constructed on campus for this program.
“Our marine technology program is blessed to be full every year, our program chair is excellent,” he said. “It’s the only program of its kind in a 500-mile radius, so we have students come from out of town to take our marine technology program. But the infrastructure is a 1970s infrastructure.
“In upgrading the marine technology building, that will enable us to do some musical chairs and double the size of our welding laboratory and modernize that. It’ll enable us to consolidate all of our automotive labs and we’ll make several other programmatic upgrades as part of Phase One.”
The Fisher Building remodel, he said, will bring more visibility to the hospitality program and Innovative Technologies Center.
“On the first floor of that facility, we will put our hospitality program which is growing and more successful. … We’re hoping to increase the size of that program and put it adjacent to Mid America Boulevard where folks can see that that program is there,” Hogan said. “And also our Innovative Technologies Center would occupy part of the first floor of the Fisher Building, classrooms would be on the second floor and third floor. So we’re going to add I think just under 60,000 square feet of new space and a dozen or more new classrooms and instructional spaces out of that conference space. Hopefully, some food service options for students and other things that we can talk about as time goes on.”
Hogan reiterated the importance of the community’s support in the college’s progress in recent years and moving forward.
“You’re going to see a lot happening, you’re going to see a lot of energy,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot of stories to tell, and it’s exciting to do that. But make no mistake, we don’t get to do that without the support of our community. That doesn’t happen without the excellent relationships and support that we get from our elected leaders, both in terms of the city and county but also at the state level. In that equation is, of course, our elected board.”