RSS
Home
PCC Rock Creek President promises more opportunities for county residents
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
ST. HELENS – When Portland Community College representatives met with community members in St. Helens on Oct. 21, Dr. David Rule, president of the Rock Creek campus, promised that within two years, county residents would see increased opportunities through the college.
Since 2001, when the St. Helens center closed for budgetary reasons, county residents attending classes at Portland Community College have had to travel to the Rock Creek, Sylvania or Cascade campuses for classes, to take online classes or, in some cases, have been able to take courses offered locally, but the college has not had a strong presence in the county. Now, college officials want to change that.
Officials at Portland Community College are working with local politicians, school districts and local businesses to create an academic master plan for course offerings to benefit attendees from Columbia County, Rule said.
Discussion has centered on ways to create an academic strategic plan that is sustainable, meaning that if students want to register for a series of classes, they can sign up for the first in the series and know that the future classes will be offered.
“By December, we will have a broad outline of an academic plan,” Rule said. The next step will occur during the first half of winter term, when the college will develop a model that will include specifics of how and where courses will be delivered.
At this time, the college is not offering classes in Vernonia, but students in St. Helens and Scappoose High Schools participate in the Portland Area Vocational Technical and Educational Consortium, according to Rule. Last year, between 93 and 95 local students used PAVTEC, he said.
A handful of community members attended the forum, and several spoke up.
“People get frustrated with [PCC] not serving the rural areas,” said St. Helens resident Al Petersen, who suggested that the college could learn from another community college headquartered in Pendleton. “Blue Mountain Community College serves an area twice as big [as PCC],” he said. “There could be some lessons learned [from] BMCC’s outreach beyond where the central campuses are located. That’s a policy decision we’re glad you’re trying to change.”
“Many feel that Columbia County is a cash cow for PCC taxes,” commented Brian Little, a Columbia Learning Center board member. Little also said that the CLC Board would be interested in a partnership with PCC to offer services.
An alumna of PCC asked that tutoring services be offered locally for courses that county residents are taking. “I’ve had to do the traveling, and there’s no tutoring locally [for PCC classes],” she said. “I would like to see some tutoring for the classes you’re providing out here.”
“When you’re talking about people in Columbia County, these people out here are not exactly following through with the plan of going to college right after high school graduation,” she said. “I can very easily see people being very hesitant to pay $7.60 to ride the bus to PCC for tutoring.”
There are several factors that the college considers in determining which courses will be offered to Columbia County residents each term, Rule said.
One is that classes require a minimum enrollment to schedule them, although there have been instances where PCC has held classes for local students at lower than the minimum enrollment, sometimes with as few as three students. It can be challenging to find venues to hold courses, as rent can be prohibitive, and not all venues are suitable for instruction. The third issue is that finding community members qualified to act as PCC instructors can be challenging.
Currently, Portland Community College offers the following services locally: Math, English, Social Studies, and Art classes held in Columbia County, access to Teleweb DVD at the Vernonia Learning Center, the Columbia County Rider shuttle, which runs from Columbia County to PCC several times a day and a partnership in the Regional Public Safety Training Center Project targeted for Scappoose.
For information on scholarships available to county residents, click here
Like this article? Click here to read others like it, or click the “subscribe” button for a note when new content is published.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
