A Different View of My NWACC
by
Grace Woodson

On Saturday, January 19, 2013, I attended the Board of Trustees Mid-Year Retreat and boy was I impressed.  I have worked for the college for a total of eleven (11) months, but I learned more about the college's success in two hours than I learned in the time I have worked here.  As each college administrator gave his/her report to the Trustees, I was astounded as to the student related initiatives that NorthWest Arkansas Community College (NWACC) was the first to do. Wow! The College is really thinking "Outside the Box." Not only is NWACC thinking "outside of the box," they are actually doing things "outside the box." With this kind of forward thinking, it will not be long before the College moves up from the second largest community college in the state to the largest.

NWACC was the first two-year college in Arkansas to implement a "reverse transfer" agreement with a four-year institution. This type of agreement allows a student who has taken courses at NWACC to count credits from the four-year institution he/she is attending college to be applied to a degree from NWACC. This degree will allow the student to have a degree on their resume instead of just a high school diploma when applying for a job.  This gives the student the possibility to earn more money and a possible higher position with the associate degree on the job while still working on their Bachelor degree.  This is diffinitely a step in the right directions for NWACC students!  

NWACC also is able to track the success of many of its graduates in finding employment by working with the Arkansas Research Center.  NWACC was one of the first community colleges in the state to partner with the Research Center to better track the employment of its graduates. The Center is able to track graduate employment by comparing selected student lists with records of employers' payments of unemployment insurance.  

Another interesting item was the fact that the national system for calculating two-year colleges' graduation rates only tracks those entering freshmen who are first-time, full-time students who earn a degree in three years. Part-time students, students in noncredit programs or students who transfer to a four-year institution without completing an associate degree are not considered in the graduation rate. So, data addressing graduation rates for NWACC aren't reflecting the entire population NWACC serves.  For the most recent three-year period that students were tracked, the cohort followed was only 668 students.  Annually, through all programs - credit and noncredit - NWACC serves approximately 19,000 students.  If all of the non-traditional students, students taking longer than three (3) years to graduate, transfer students, and students successfully completing non-credit programs were counted, then it is evident that NWACC has done a wonderful job over the past 23 years!    

I commend the College for thinking about training the workforce for the needs of the Fortune 500 companies that are in Northwest Arkansas (NWA) in order to keep businesses in our area. Otherwise, those businesses could relocate to areas where they can get qualified workers. I would rather attend a college that "thinks outside the box" and trains their students to "think outside the box" so that they are prepared for the business world. I wholeheartedly believe NWACC is staying true to its commitment to the workforce needs of the community and corporate America.