Even though the fall 2018 semester is still almost a year away, Cleveland State Community College has already started making plans for a new Weekend College to reach students who have Monday – Friday work schedules.
According to Dr. Denise King, vice president for Academic Affairs, the initial idea for a weekend college emerged from a SACS-COC meeting that she and President Bill Seymour attended. “There was a session conducted by Terrent County Community College out of Dallas, Texas with a very successful weekend college, and we gained some valuable information from that session.”
Dr. King said CSCC has had a weekend college before, but not like the one coming in the fall of 2018. Before, CSCC offered a variety of general education classes, but this time, the college will be scheduling by program rather than by class. This way, students will be able to get all of the courses needed for the degree program in the weekend college. CSCC will be using the Terrent County model to build a weekend college for those who are working Monday–Friday, 9-5 jobs who could attend classes on Friday nights and Saturday mornings to pursue a degree program.
“There is a big difference on what we want to do now than what we did in the past,” stated Dr. King. “It’s part of our entire initiative to re-engineer the way in which we schedule to better serve our students, most of whom are working. Even many of our traditional aged students have jobs, and that makes it challenging to juggle the responsibilities of work, attending class, studying, and all of the responsibilities that go along with being a student.”
In an effort to offer flexible learning opportunities, the college recently developed an Adult Learner Survey to gain information from potential adult students on what kind of programs interest them, their financial needs and suitable times for classes.
“The faculty are now putting a plan together, but we know that we will offer those degree programs that are most highly sought after by working adults in the areas of business, education and healthcare,” stated Dr. King.
The proposed format of the weekend college would be Friday evenings (two courses meeting) and Saturday mornings (two courses meeting). Currently, the times proposed for the course meetings are under consideration by CSCC’s Academic Calendar Committee.
For more information on CSCC’s upcoming Weekend College, contact Dr. Michael Stokes at 478-6218. To take the Adult Learner survey, visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/csccadults.