Houston Community College

Geared up for the cyber age┬áOver the past ten years the community college system has had to embrace technological advances, leading to significant upgrades in facilities across the country. Houston Community College certainly felt the winds of change, and in 2002 decided to do something about it, Andrew Pelis learns. Drawing students from near and far, Houston Community College offers relevance, access, and opportunity, with more than 1.3 million students passing through its doors to date.  The College is committed to meeting the needs of its diverse communities, providing academic courses for transfer to four-year institutions, terminal degrees and certificates in more than 70 fields of work, continuing education and corporate training. This commitment has been the starting point for the transformation that it has undertaken in recent years.Dr. Art Tyler has been the collegeÔÇÖs chief operating officer and deputy chancellor for just under two years and takes up the story. ÔÇ£Houston Community College broke away from the Houston Independent School District back in May 1971. Over the past seven years we have seen a tremendous growth in online and distance learning, and in the last year alone there has been 20 percent growth (some 12,000 students) taking an online or hybrid instruction course.ÔÇ£To date we have spent somewhere in the range of $524 million on refurbishment projects with plans starting in 2002. At that time we were initially asking ourselves if we had enough classroom space for growth. We wanted to create a collegiate learning environment, having started out 38 years ago in high schools, small establishments and storefronts.ÔÇØ So where exactly does the funding come from for such extensive work? ÔÇ£In Texas we have a three-part funding model,ÔÇØ Tyler explains. ÔÇ£Roughly 27 percent of our funding comes from the State, based on the number of student hours in the classroom. We can also raise funds through local taxationÔÇöour board is able to levy taxes, and then student tuition fees also bring in revenue for improvements. ÔÇ£We initially launched a general bond in 2002 that raised $156 millionÔÇöthis was leveraged with student funding bonds and Public Facilities Corporation help. PFC is a non-profit organization that allowed the college to use additional funds on capital projects,ÔÇØ Tyler adds. ÔÇ£We operate a public safety center to train firefighters and police, and they receive their training in a building constructed with PFC funding.ÔÇØThe transition requires Tyler to wear many hats. ÔÇ£My role covers all aspects of the internal workings of the college apart from the college presidents,ÔÇØ he states. ÔÇ£I manage and lead in areas such as IT, finance, facilities, our own police department, and procedures, and I report to our CEO, Dr. Mary Spangler, who reports in turn to our elected board. So the changes weÔÇÖve been undertaking have affected my own workload.ÔÇØ To give you some idea of the scale of the tasks Tyler and his team face, itÔÇÖs worth mentioning that Houston Community College has 840 full-time faculty (at six separate colleges) and some 62,000 students. ÔÇ£We tend to concentrate on the greater Houston area, but roughly 10 percent of students hail from 120 countries, and we have the largest overseas intake of any community college in the country,ÔÇØ Tyler comments.Interestingly, the college is also partnered with Saigon Tech in Vietnam, where its curriculum and accreditation are used. HCC is the only community college offering a US associate degree in Vietnam.ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖre a comprehensive college and offer general educational programs for two-year degrees in science,ÔÇØ states Tyler. ÔÇ£Additionally, we run 25 workforce-type programs in health science, pharmacy technology, registered nursing and computer science. We also offer business courses in areas such as accounting.ÔÇØSignificantly, some 12 percent of college students are now Web-basedÔÇöa figure that seems likely to continue growing. This again has been one of the catalysts for the continuing redevelopment of Houston Community College. With such extensive investment over the last seven years, itÔÇÖs natural to ask what the results have been to date. ÔÇ£WeÔÇÖve seen growth in every college,ÔÇØ Tyler asserts. ÔÇ£As a result of our program, almost every college now has a learning hub, which is a combination of an old-style library with state-of-the-art electronic labs and meeting and tutorial spaces. ItÔÇÖs somewhere that students can meet to study or discuss course work. Research has shown that the longer a student is engaged in a learning environment, the better the results will be.ÔÇØAnother area that HCC has invested in is the use of iPhones. ÔÇ£In 2008 we were one of the first colleges to engage in mobile learning. We conducted research first, and once we rolled out the scheme, we transferred lecture and notes into podcasts and other downloadable entities so that students who are constantly on the go can learn at any time and in any place,ÔÇØ Tyler explains. ÔÇ£Our feedback indicated that students were spending more time using the iPhone as a refresher and learning tool,ÔÇØ he adds. Affordability is of course an issue with such an ambitious project, and Tyler says that the supplier, AT&T, has been very supportive, lending the hope that the experiment can be extended.Elsewhere, the college has spent money upgrading its nursing facilities at its Coleman College site. In particular, one of the areas of nurse training involves clinical rotations, where nurses get to practice what has been learned in real-life scenarios. Significant investment in computer simulation equipment has reduced the amount of clinical rotation, allowing trainee nurses more opportunity to practice in a safe environment, without risk to real patients. As a signatory to ACUPCC (American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment), Houston Community College is very serious about sustainability. Old buildings have been retrofitted with new energy-efficient lighting, and there has been talk of an alternative-energy generation project. Seven years into the project, Houston Community College is showing clear signs of leaping into the 21st century and offering its students the most varied learning experiences available. ItÔÇÖs fair to say they have come a long way from the storefront sites of the seventies.┬áÔÇô Editorial research by Dan Finn┬á