AWC seeing several under-17s enrolling
A reduced tuition rate for high-schoolers taking credits at Arizona Western College is showing promising results, the district governing board heard Monday morning.
“We have some early data that is very encouraging,” AWC President Daniel Corr said toward the end of the panel’s meeting at the college.
“For summer, we saw a 68 percent increase in the number of students 17 and under (enrolling), and thus far for fall, we can only go up from here, we’ve seen an 80 percent increase, an additional 484 students age 17 and under who are enrolled in courses,” Corr told the board.
The school now has almost 1,100 under-17s enrolled either in career and technical education courses or otherwise, Corr said. Tuition was reduced to $25 per credit hour starting in the summer session for students under age 17 as a way to jumpstart AWC’s goal of creating a “college-goingculture” in the two counties it serves.
“And that number will only go up,” he noted, once final enrollment numbers are compiled. That data is usually presented at the January board meeting.
Board member Richard Lamb, who represents La Paz County on the community college district board, asked if Corr knew what type of courses the students were enrolling in. Board member Maria Chavoya pondered if data showed (or could show) from what area students were enrolling. Corr indicated those items would be presented at a later meeting.
“The college is just absolutely thrilled with the early community reaction to the reduced tuition rate,” Corr said Monday afternoon. “We hope that this is simply the beginning of a continued increase in the number of academically capable youth who take an opportunity to earn college credit.”
“Our big audacious goal is to create this college-going culture for Yuma and La Paz counties.”
The college will take a look at how those students are doing in the program, to gauge the quality of the success of the program.
“We will also be tracking the academic success of these students, to make sure they are in fact able to handle college-level work,” Corr said. “But the preliminary research on that indicates that students 17 and under eventually outperform our native population. We’re building something quite, quite impressive here.”
The board also approved amendments and updated documents with the Yuma Area Benefits Consortium trust presented by Shahrooz Roohparvar, the college’s vice president of finance and administrative service. During discussion on the item, Human Resources lead Kari Gardner noted that the trust has two new partners.
A consulting contract for the college’s radio station, KAWC, to assist in its development and fundraising was also approved in the amount of $50,000 with the current contractor. The board also approved a contract with Educational Services Inc. to keep retiring controller Dianna Doucette on board while her replacement is trained.
Roohparvar also noted that the college district has not yet received taxes from the two counties.
Linda Elliott-Nelson noted that the college’s project summary was accepted by the Higher Learning Commission and the site review is set for Feb. 2019.
Joann Chang gave the faculty report, and Dean Reetika Dhawan noted the college had made a number of international hires with highly competent instructors from Greece, Nepal and other far-off places.
The board also heard reports from the Student Government Association, Student Services; an update on the strategic planning process; the college’s writing intensives; student activities; and student services day. The student of the month is Cynthia LaMothe.