An Unusual Collaboration
Nevada community colleges and high schools make the most of limited resources

 

By William Doyle
IN BOOMING NEVADA, community colleges are planning to share facilities with public high schools in an effort to keep up with rapidly rising enrollments.

In Clark County (Las Vegas), where 5,000 new residents arrive each month and a 77 percent increase in high school graduates is expected in the next decade, a joint use plan calls for community college students to attend classes on high school campuses from 2 p.m. until late at night.

In addition, the University and Community College System of Nevada plans to build several small technical centers at high schools--in Las Vegas and elsewhere around the state. These, too, will be attended by high school students in the morning and early afternoon and by community college students in the late afternoon and evening.

Each center will have about 125 computer stations, as well as sophisticated laboratory and multimedia equipment. They will be staffed by computer technicians; librarians, who will teach students how to use the Internet; and tutors, who will help with the writing of papers.

Richard Jarvis, chancellor of the state system, said the technical centers can be built for about $5 million apiece, while a full-fledged community college campus would cost at least ten times that much.

They will be less expensive to operate as well, Jarvis said, since each center will have few administrators and most classes will be taught by part-time adjunct faculty members. The centers will have few amenities and faculty office space will be limited but "we are focusing on maximizing our instructional capabilities," the chancellor said.

The principal architects of this unusual high school-community college collaboration are Richard Moore, president of Southern Nevada Community College, and Brian Cram, superintendent of schools in Clark County. Both saw that the state could not afford to build enough new facilities to house the coming student surge.

They began by placing a high school center on a community college campus in Henderson, Nevada. Juniors and seniors take core high school classes in the morning, then are free to take community college classes as electives in the afternoon. The credit from these courses counts both toward a high school diploma and as college credit.

The program began with 87 students but now has more than 300. Students are "much more likely to go on to college," Moore said.

He said it is easier to try new things in Nevada than in California, where Moore formerly worked as president of Santa Monica College. In California, he said, every attempted innovation leads to "a first token step before the bureaucracy takes over and the idea is gone," while Nevada is geared toward rapid change.