Presidents give updates over breakfast

NEWBERRY — Exciting things are happening on the Piedmont Technical College and Newberry College campuses and during the Newberry County Chamber of Commerce’s Business Over Breakfast, Presidents Dr. Hope Rivers and Dr. Maurice Scherrens gave updates of what’s been happening on their respective campuses.

During the last academic year, Rivers said PTC had over 7,000 students enrolled. In addition to that, students had 109 credit hours and there were 1,466 students enrolled in continuing education courses.

The students enrolled in continuing education courses, she said, are students who have decided to come back to PTC and receive a certification in one of the number of areas offered by the college.

“The great part about that is our courses many times are going to be free or nearly free. It’s not so expensive that you can’t do it so if you have a son or daughter that can’t seem to get it together, send them on over,” she said.

Enrollment increased by about 15%, but Rivers said that number does not include those enrolled in summer school. Dual enrollment also skyrocketed by 52%.

“That means when your son or daughter decides they want to go to Newberry College, they are coming in with a leg up. They have already taken some of those general education courses and can jump in on the other courses,” she said.

Later down the road, if a former student goes to work and doesn’t have a specific skill needed for their job, they can return to PTC and get retrained to fill the missing skill as part of PTC’s Job Ready Guarantee.

Other highlights Rivers mentioned: record grant funding of over $9 million from private donors as well as those from the local, state and federal levels, a new Health Science Building, a new Family Life and Conference Center and new Center for Manufacturing Excellence buildings in Edgefield and Saluda.

Rivers also highlighted PTC’s MODELS Academy, which aims to transform the lives of young men, particularly African American males who are often not in higher education institutions.

“We want to change that by making sure we can get more young males into higher education. The program works with grades 4-12 and Newberry County has 82 students currently in the program. It’s designed to give young men training opportunities and making sure they get the education they need and more importantly a male figure with them at all times,” she said.

If you’ve gone by the Newberry College campus lately, you may have noticed new buildings popping up. To make it all happen, Scherrens said 100% of the money was raised through the college and people in the community who believe in private higher education. In the last year, the college has grown 60% – from 950 students to 1,521 students and over the years has added new majors for students to choose from.

“I would never have dreamt that we would have majors in neuroscience, cyber security, computer sciences, etc. In 2012, we had an incoming class of 325 students, this past fall we had 575 incoming students,” he said.

Eight years ago, Newberry College implemented its tuition promise for students. Scherrens said while that may not mean a lot to students, it means so much more to families because for four years their son or daughter will not have a tuition increase.

Other highlights from Scherrens: the recent completion of the Nursing and Health Science Center on the corner of College and Evans Street, new residence halls for students, future plans for a new business building on the corner of Chapman and College Street and raising money for the first ever Student Center for Newberry College students.

Reach Kelly Duncan at 806-768-3122 ext. 1867 or kduncan@championcarolinas.com.