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November 16, 2009

DSC building at Career Academy will mean "an easier transiition" for students

Rachel Brown

Construction on the $2.6 million Dalton State College campus next to the Whitfield Career Academy is expected to be finished in less than six months.

John Hutcheson, the college’s vice president for academic affairs, said the college might offer some summer classes there but classes will kick off in full force in August 2010. College officials say they hope the campus will bring more dual enrollment students from the Whitfield Career Academy, though it isn’t limited only to those students. There are currently 5,720 DSC students of which 100 are dual enrollment.

Dual enrollment students simultaneously earn high school and college credit by taking lower level college classes. The DSC building is designed to serve 250 to 300 students.

“What that really means (for us) is when we have students ready to attend college it would be an easier transition,” said Career Academy principal Phillip Brown.

Brown said some students are currently enrolled in online classes through DSC which they complete on the Career Academy campus. He said he expects the number of dual enrollment students to increase, though he wouldn’t venture to say by how much.

“I think over a period of time it’s going to expand the opportunity,” Brown said. “I can’t imagine if I were a high school senior ready to transition in some of my strength areas that I wouldn’t take that opportunity.”

Dual enrollment students are required to have a high school grade point average of at least 3.0 and an SAT score of at least 1,060 or an ACT score of at least 23. The student must also have approval from his or her high school and usually must have junior status.

The new building won’t be limited to Career Academy students, however, nor are dual enrollment students the only ones who will be served.

Hutcheson said offerings will likely include basic English, math, science, history and social sciences classes. He said the college originally envisioned moving some of its technical programs to the campus, but later decided that the specialized equipment required for some of the classes made them more suited to staying on the main campus.

Construction on the 18,000-square-foot building began Nov. 24 of last year. It will include nine classrooms, one general lab, one computer lab and 11 faculty and staff offices. The contractor is Samples Construction, and the architect is Turner Associates. It is being paid for through state bonds.

Jodi Johnson, the college’s vice president for enrollment and student services, said the satellite campus allows college officials to work with Career Academy officials and complement what they do. The new campus is part of a larger scheme to provide more avenues by which people can enter college — including through dual enrollment, officials said.

“This model is not that common, and I think we can still say this is something of a pilot project,” Hutcheson added.

College officials are closing down a satellite campus in Catoosa County at the end of this year.

“The Catoosa program was one, for whatever reason, that really never caught fire,” Hutcheson said. “Frankly, we had trouble filling those classes.”

He said about 95 percent of the students enrolled there were also enrolled on the main campus, leaving little reason to keep the other facility open.

“We hope to reach a new market of dual enrollment students that aren’t currently here whereas in Catoosa, those were our students anyway,” Johnson said.

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Education