Monday, October 13, 2008 Issue 3
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Regents discuss future residence halls

by Jason Hartline, staff writer

A proposal for the construction of new residence halls and the television commercial advertising budget were among the main issues discussed during the October meeting of the South Plains College Board of Regents.

South Plains College is looking to construct new residence halls, or add on to existing facilities on the Levelland campus. These new buildings will offer a chance to house new students and increase the on-campus population.

There are currently 566 beds on the Levelland campus. In order to increase this number, the Board was presented with four different building schemes.

The first scheme would demolish all existing residence halls except for the Smallwood Apartments. In their place, two separate buildings would be constructed. These buildings could be one, two or three stories.

A one-story building would house 34 beds, a two-story building would house 70 beds and a three-story building would house 110 beds.

By demolishing existing structures and replacing them with two new buildings, 10 total facilities would be designed and built. The dormitories would be straight buildings, as opposed to the T-shaped and L-shaped ones currently being used.

It would cost an estimated $2.8 million to construct these new facilities. After soft costs are added, the Board is looking at a total of $3.4 million, roughly $83,000 per room. Soft costs consist of charges varying from landscaping to additional unplanned surprises.

The second scheme would consist of seven “L” shaped buildings. Like the first scheme, the old residence halls would be demolished and replaced.

These residence halls were presented as being co-ed. This is one of the major differences in the second scheme from the first.

The “L” shape would allow women to reside in one wing and men in the other. One central lobby area separating the two wings would allow ultimate supervision and almost eliminate mischievous activity.

A three-floor plan also was presented with various capacities. With a single-floor plan, the capacity will max at 64 beds, a two-floor plan with 128, and a three-floor plan with 192 beds. After soft costs, the second scheme came to a projected total of $6.3 million.

The third and fourth schemes add isolated additional facilities to the southwest corner of the campus.

“I personally lean more toward the third and fourth schemes,” said Dr. Kelvin Sharp, SPC president. “It seems more reasonable to utilize the unused land in that southwest corner before we start tearing down existing dorms.”

The third scheme would consist of two buildings, both being L-shaped. Again, these facilities were presented as co-ed. The third scheme was presented with three floors for both buildings. Each building had a different capacity level.

The single-floor plan for the first building would hold 78 beds, the double-floor plan could hold 156 beds and the triple could hold 234 beds. The second building would hold 64 for the single-floor plan, 128 for the double and 192 for the triple.  A projected total after soft-costs would be $8.6 million at $77,000 per room.

The fourth scheme is also isolated in the southwest corner of the campus. This scheme is presented as a single-floor facility that could hold 94 beds. This building is priced at $8.6 million.

The presenters suggested single or double-story buildings are more likely for SPC. Because of that, the total projections were based off of single-story plans. If SPC wanted to add multiple floors, the cost would increase.

All floor plans included a basement that would be big enough to house the resident population in the event of an emergency. The basement use would have much potential. They could be transformed into game rooms for students or meeting rooms for any occasion.

Stephen John, vice president of institutional advancement, gave his report on the development of promotional television commercials for SPC.

Four different commercials were created to showcase academic transfer, health occupations, technical development and workforce development. Each commercial shows the success that can be achieved through SPC.

“Our plan is to create and present as much awareness as we can to our youth,” said John. “We really want to show the success that is offered here at SPC. I honestly think these commercials will help to achieve that.”

The commercial advertisements are on a $40,000 budget. The commercials will run for six weeks in 575 TV spots. The commercials will air at the end of October or early November.

Dr. Sharp’s report consisted of upcoming events and the closing of the new Plainview property deal. Dr. Sharp mentioned the Scholarship Banquet on Oct. 23, Meet the Texans on Oct. 27 and recognition of Max Evans on Nov. 10.

In other action, Darrel Grimes, vice president of academic affairs, addressed the recent concerns of several Lubbock residents who wanted to develop an additional community college in east Lubbock.

“My recommendation is that we use the facilities we already have in existence,” said Grimes. “We can recruit local students from the community, help in their success and plug them back into the community to show others that a successful college career is possible.”

Building an entire new community college in east Lubbock would be unnecessary because of the SPC campuses that already exist at Reese Center and in Plainview.

“Some day, it might evolve into something bigger,” said Grimes. “For now, we’re going to keep doing what we do best, providing for the students.”

David Jones, vice president of student affairs, presented a report on how the college’s fall enrollment numbers were very strong.

Hurricane Ike impacted many community colleges in southern Texas. San Jacinto, Southwest Texas and Texas Southmost have not reported enrollment numbers for this year.

With SPC’s current enrollment at 9,265, SPC is only down by .34 percent. This was derived from enrollment reports during the past three years.

“We are still one of the largest community colleges in Texas,” said Jones. “At number 14 out of 50, our numbers are very strong.”

 

  

Florida college visits English Department

by Shelbi Wallace, online editor

The Developmental English program at South Plains College has been recognized for its efforts and hard work.

Tallahassee Community College in Florida took notice of the program and decided to further investigate SPC’s efforts. TCC’s faculty and administrators contacted Dr. Mike Felker, who was the chairperson of the English Department at the time and professor of English, regarding the success of SPC’s program.

Dr. Felker passed a long the news to Dr. Sandra Stephenson, professor of English, and Sharon Race, assistant professor of English, to coordinate with TCC about their fact- finding mission. Tallahassee faculty first found out about SPC while they were in the research phase for redesigning their developmental English program.

South Plains was featured in the “Affirmation and Discovery: Learning from Successful Community College Developmental Programs in Texas” by Hunter R. Boylan and D. Patrick Saxon. SPC was cited as being very innovative in its approach to teaching developmental English and yielded high success rates.

Because TCC is going through a program redesign, two of its faculty members thought it would be worthwhile to visit SPC to see what is being done in order to get some ideas.

“Faculty who teach developmental courses at South Plains College should be very proud of the outstanding work they do,” said Dr. Gail Platt, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at SPC. “SPC has been recognized by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, through the Legislative Budget Board’s Performance Funding for Developmental Education pilot, as the ‘best’ program in the state for all the years of the pilot project. Dr. Hunter Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education, in Boone, North Carolina, on behalf of the Texas Association of Community Colleges, visited to identify best practices, citing SPC as one of the best programs in the state.”

“Every year, people from other colleges contact us to ask questions about our programs,” Dr. Platt added. “When visitors come, they quickly see that the reasons for our success are the quality and commitment of our faculty and an administration that supports faculty.” 

TCC sent a two-person team to the Levelland and Reese Center campuses on Sept. 25 – Sept. 26 to meet with the faculty who teach Developmental English. The team from TCC consisted of Sharisse Turner, the college preparatory English instructor and Academic Support Program division leader, and Peter Johnston, academic support representative. On the day of their arrival, hospitality was extended when Dr. Stephenson hosted a dinner at her home for Race, Gary Poffenbarger, the new chairperson of the English Department, Turner and Johnston.

“It was an extremely nice, informal setting that gave us a chance to get to know one another and visit about our programs,” Race said.

Having driven from Florida, the TCC team was pleased with their welcome as well.

“The Mexican dinner we were treated to on Thursday night was very much unexpected, yet very much appreciated,” Johnston said. “It was so nice to have residents of Levelland open their home to us and to give us a taste of Texas culture.”

The following morning, the guests from TCC, a long with Dr. Stephenson and Race, began the learning process by sitting in with two developmental English classes held at the Reese Center campus. The two classes were taught by Randy Wall, assistant professor of English, and Joseph Fly, associate professor of English.

“Personally, I have always thought of SPC as being truly excellent in its attitude toward developmental education, but it’s wonderful to have people outside the college recognize our efforts,” Fly said. “It was an honor to have my class observed by our visitors, and I hope they gleaned something useful that they can take home and put to use.”

After observing the classes, the TCC visitors and their SPC hosts met again to exchange ideas and gain information.

“We believe that the gracious team from Tallahassee Community College took away from our nationally-recognized program some valuable ideas for reorganizing their Developmental English Program,” Poffenbarger said. “During their visit, our interaction was very positive and productive. Reciprocally, we also learned some new information and received some insight into developmental education that we may put to use.”

Some of the topics for discussion were the demographic makeup of SPC students, the environment and lab setting of the classes, and the number of students in a class compared to those at TCC. Also, noted was the fact that SPC has full-time faculty teaching its developmental courses, while TCC has four full-time faculty members and 13 adjunct instructors for their developmental English program. At SPC, instructors may not only teach developmental courses but upper-level classes as well.   

“Something that is a little different about our program opposed to theirs is we offer two levels of developmental English, a basic and then a more advanced,” Race said. “Tallahassee offers one developmental English course. It’s an advantage for the student, as well as the teacher, because we are able to see what skills a student needs and be there to assist them from step one to college level.”  

The meetings were very productive for both colleges, according to participants, and it was easy to gain very useful ideas. TCC also showed interest in how some of the classes were taught in a computer lab setting.

“ I think one of the keys to our success at SPC is that everybody who teaches developmental English is very devoted to what they do, and I think that is so incredibly important,” Dr. Stephenson said. “We want success for our students. We have technology programs, but it’s the teacher and student relationship that makes the difference.”

With new friends at TCC who are receptive and asked excellent questions, SPC was able to learn from their programs as well.

“We came away with a lot of ideas and information, thanks to the willingness of the South Plains faculty to meet with us and to spend a great deal of time with us to answer all the questions we had, to open campuses to us, and show us what Texas hospitality is all about,” Johnston says. “Thanks for everything.”

Photo Courtesy of Sharon Race



 


 
  
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