SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Bridge Valley Community and Technical College is making some positive strides for a few new efforts to increase and retain enrollment, as well as transform the overall student-experience.
The Bridge Valley board met Friday to give an update about the new dual enrollment program they have been implementing with regional high schools along with work being done to standardize certain areas of the institution to make the student experience better.
The dual enrollment program the college has launched this year allows high school students to take a Bridge Valley course while still in high school if there is a teacher at that high school who has a certification allowing them to be an adjunct to Bridge Valley.
Bridge Valley President Casey Sacks said the program is working smoothly in Clay County so far.
“For example, in Clay County there is a group of students who has a teacher who has an MBA and she’s teaching one of our business classes and that means the students in Clay County have the opportunity to earn college credit concurrently with their high school credit, so that’s what the dual enrollment is, and it’s a great experience for students,” Sacks said.
Sacks said currently there are a total of 34 high school students taking advantage of the dual enrollment in some form or another and from various districts. She said Clay County and Nitro High School are so far their biggest participants in the program.
Sacks went on to say the state reimburses $75 per student taking a dual credit course.
Sacks also gave a retention and completion update, which pertains specifically to improvements being done on the overall student experience at the institution.
She said they have been doing work on process mapping around the recruitment and admission teams, as well as a reorganization of student affairs. Sacks said the maps have been helping the process go smoother in the areas of recruitment and admission, and gives an example of that.
“If Christopher comes in as a new student and has submitted an application but hasn’t signed up for classes yet, what’s the text message that goes out to him in two days, what’s the text message that goes out to him in three weeks,” Sacks said. “Standardizing the scripts to all of these things has become what we’re doing with these maps.”
Sacks said they also started the mapping process with financial aid, as Bridge Valley officials say they had some challenges in that area and felt they can do better at standardizing it.
Sacks said they have been standardizing the process of student relationships, as well, and she believes it to really be helping.
She said they have a CRM relationship management tool that interfaces with the student information system allowing the college to send information out in a much more standardized way then ever before.
“I think a lot of this work has been what has driven some of our enrollment increase, because it has led us to a better job of communicating with people who are interested in the college, so it’s something that we all recognize that we’re going to continue doing moving forward,” Sacks said.