IT'S LIKE there is an elephant in the room. Whenever I mention it, people will nod or agree, but wont dare say anything else. What are we scared of? Did I miss the memo or are we not supposed to talk about it?
I feel this is a subject we need address and people need to start talking. Our College is facing a 1.7 million dollar deficit and that’s scary. Great, now we’ve established our problem. Now what is our solution?
In times of budget shortfalls or projected deficits, organizations typically go into a 'trim the fat' mentality and everything ends up with a target on it. While that can be a good thing if there is lots of fat to trim, is it necessary to sacrifice things we love about the College or can we look towards more innovative strategies.
Personally I’m a fan of NWCC, and how could you not be? I’m able to cheaply live and go to a very reasonably priced college. My professors are amazing and the class sizes are so small they are able to take the time to learn why each of us is in our program, ensuring that the materials we learn are relevant to our needs. Not to mention I love Terrace. It has everything you want to do outdoors less than 20 minutes away. Why on earth would I want to move to a fast paced city and spend all my time commuting back and forth! Did I mention it takes me 6 minutes to get to College on a busy day?
I challenge NWCC and the students to take a step back from what they are doing and look at the big picture. ‘If you do what you’ve always done, then you’ll get when you’ve always got’ – Mark Twain. We have an awesome college and an incredible community, let’s do something to make things work.
A few ideas I came up with while writing this blog are:
· Try to get rid of the ‘it’s JUST a community college’ mentality.
· NWCC management to perform a SWOT(Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats/limitations) analysis monthly, put your goals into action. (thanks LP)
· Sell success stories from other students. My sister went to SMUS which still sends semi annual publications which tells what they offer, talks about the school and shares success stories about their graduates.
· It’s great to target the high school teenagers as they are finishing, but only one person in my class is under 20. Clearly the high school students are only a small fraction of who we should be going after (and yes I understand that other programs like CPP would have higher numbers of high school students)
· Brag about our professors. I have two classes with 6 people! For a smaller price than most colleges I am getting a better education
· The north is booming and there is lots of jobs coming our way. Which of them need post secondary education, and what education do they require? Do we offer this?
· Sell our city! I’ve said this before and I will say it again. I find that Terrace doesn’t work together enough to market ourselves. The college and the city could be working together to promote each other.
And if we are already doing any of these things, that’s awesome! Then we need to work on making people more aware of it.
So that is my ranting on this subject, but I would love to hear what you think. What are some ideas you can share so that we can help our college to succeed?
Christine Leclerc is NWCC's first ever full-time student blogger! She's a second-year Business Administration student in Terrace who took part in a study exchange to China earlier this year. Over the fall and winter semesters, she'll be giving her take on student life at NWCC. We're excited to see and read her posts and encourage you - the college community - to follow along. She's looking forward to getting your feedback and maybe some inspiration, too, throughout her blogging experience. And in case you're wondering, that's her beloved English bulldog Maddox