Northwest Arkansas Community College to welcome summer campers

BENTONVILLE -- Summer camp for kids is coming back to Northwest Arkansas Community College.

"We had it at one time and it was dropped for whatever reason, but we are bringing it back next summer," said Evelyn Jorgenson, college president, at the Board of Trustees meeting on Monday.

2016 board officers

Daniel Shewmaker was chosen Monday as chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Community College Board of Trustees for 2016 by his fellow board members. Shewmaker, who served as vice chairman this year, was the only board member nominated for the position. Shewmaker will take over as chairman at the board’s next meeting on Jan. 11. He will take the place of Ric Clifford, who has served as chairman for three years. The board also chose Mauricio Herrera as vice chairman and Keven Anderson as secretary.

Source: Staff report

The camp will be for children ages 6-12. Sessions will run for four days each and will be offered from June 6 to July 28, Jorgenson said.

The college's Workforce and Economic Development department is organizing the camps. One of the main benefits for the college is getting kids acquainted with the campus early in their lives so they will think about it when it's time to consider their postsecondary plans, said Keith Peterson, the department's dean.

"If we can get several hundred students every summer doing that, when those students become 17 and 18, they know where we are," Peterson said.

The college hosted a robotics camp and a junior chefs camp this past summer, both of which were geared toward middle and junior high school students. Enrollment in those camps was limited, however. The college is hoping to enroll around 1,000 students in next summer's camps, Jorgenson said.

"I think it will be a lot of fun and I've already heard a couple of people in the community mention they are glad to hear it's coming back," she said.

The college is just starting to piece together details of the summer camps. They could cover a variety of topics, everything from art to computers, Jorgenson said.

Also at Monday's meeting, Jorgenson reviewed with the board the governor's master plan for higher education, adopted last month by the state Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The plan is focused on increasing by 50 percent the annual number of postsecondary credentials awarded in the state by 2020. That number for the 2013-14 academic year was 34,434, including bachelor's degrees, associate degrees and career and technical certificates.

The plan comes with four supporting goals. The first is to raise the completion and graduation rates of colleges and universities by 10 percent.

The second goal is to increase the enrollment of adult students -- those ages 25-54 -- by 75 percent within three years.

"That's a pretty lofty goal," Jorgenson said.

The plan suggests aiming to reduce remedial course enrollment for adults by 50 percent through "alternative means" of preparing them for college-level work.

Another goal calls on colleges and universities to improve affordability through "effective resource allocation," which Jorgenson called "a nice way of saying do more with less." The college already has implemented several measures to cut costs, including switching this year to a partially self-insured health plan, she said.

Debi Buckley, vice president of finance and administration, said administrators are "guardedly optimistic" the new insurance program will prove to be a wise financial move when the year ends, though she noted people are meeting their deductibles and the school's related expenses are rising.

Buckley also reported to the board Monday college revenues are down 3.6 percent, but expenditures are down 6.8 percent from initial projections. She credited faculty and staff members' conservatism for keeping spending down.

Ric Clifford, board chairman, asked whether progress toward the state's master plan goals will affect how much funding institutions receive.

"That is the talk right now," Jorgenson said.

NW News on 11/10/2015

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