Ranger AMARILLO COLLEGE’S NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1930
VOLUME 89 | ISSUE 11
April 18, 2019
Early voting begins for bond Funds needed to carry out campus master plan By STEVI BRESHEARS Editor-in-Chief
STEVI BRESHEARS | The Ranger
Summer, fall registration begins By MICHAEL SULLEN Staff Reporter
Registration is underway for fall and summer semesters at Amarillo College. “A lot of students do not realize we are registering for both summer and fall semester,” Ruth De Anda, a division adviser, said. Advisers meet with students by appointment only, Monday through Thursday, and take and walk-ins on Fridays only. They suggest appointments and urge students not to wait until the last minute to register. “You risk a class being full,” De Anda said. “You risk getting class times that you are not OK with, for example: 7:30 a.m. or 7 p.m. If you are in a program that requires classes that are only available at certain times, for example: spring only or fall only, you could delay completing your program and graduating.” AC will offer two six-week summer terms. “Summer 1 classes will be May 20 through June 28 and our Summer 2 classes start July 1 through Aug. 8,” Emily Showers, an advising associate, said. Students enrolling in Summer 1 classes must register by May 17 and payments for Summer 1 classes must be in by May 10. The Summer 2 registration deadline is June 28. Online classes are also available for eight weeks during the summer from June 3 to July 25.
Amarillo College, along with help from architecture firm Parkhill, Smith and Cooper, has developed a ‘master plan’ of projects to improve the AC campuses. “It was developed as the precursor to the next strategic plan,” AC President Russell Lowery-Hart said. “The master plan gives us economic and employment projections and data. It assesses future needs and with it we can build a new strategic plan and ensure our physical spaces allow us to meet future needs. No Excuses 2020 is our current strategic plan that ends next year.” The master plan addresses issues based on current and future enrollment and the things needed to serve those students efficiently. Changes such as additional parking, technology upgrades, building upgrades and renovations to ensure Americans with Disabilities Act compliance are all a part of the various projects that make up the master plan. “One thing led to another, one discussion led to another,” Mark White, the college’s executive vice president, said. “The board of regents has a longterm vision about things and determined that we should simply have an entire master plan done instead of just looking at one thing, so it became one large, comprehensive project.” After about eight months of planning, the board came down to a figure of approximately $110-120 million to finish all the projects that need to be completed. White said that there are three options for funding — charitable contributions,
reallocating money within the existing college budget or issuing bonds. According to White, bonds are “investment vehicles” for investors to purchase. AC would make money by selling the bonds to investors. The college would then repay the investors plus interest, which would be funded by an increase in property taxes. The regents placed a master plan bond measure on the ballot for the upcoming May 4 election. Amarillo citizens will have the opportunity to vote on the bond, which is set at $89,206 million. If it passes, AC will have the authority to issue bonds for up to $89, 206, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they will and especially not all at once. “It would be done in fairly small increments over a number of years,” White said. In the event that the bond passes, property owners would see an increase in taxes. In total, the property taxes would increase approximately $40 for every $100,000 in property valuation. Essentially that means if you own a $100,000 home, your taxes would increase $40 over a span of several years. While passage of the bond would supply a major source of funding for completing the master plan proposals, it isn’t the deciding factor in whether or not all the projects will be completed. “All of these things, they’re not emergencies,” White said. He explained that if the bond doesn’t pass, it will take longer to complete all the upgrades included in the master plan. “At the end of the day, AC wants to do what the community wants,” he said. “After all, it’s their college.” More information about the different aspects of the master plan can be found on pages 4-5.
Liberal arts welcomes new dean By ISABELLE LINK Staff Reporter
Amarillo College have officials announced the selection of a new dean for the liberal arts division, Becky Easton. Easton has been serving as chair of the English department. She and Dan Ferguson, an English professor, both applied for the job “With two candidates this was an extremely difficult decision,” Dr. Tamara Clunis, vice president of academic affairs, said in an email to AC staff. “I am confident that Becky will serve the liberal arts division with distinction.”
BECKY EASTON
Easton said she is looking forward to helping students prepare for their futures. “I am most excited to find new ways for the Liberal Arts
departments to prepare our students for what comes next, whether it be a career or transferring to a university,” she said. “Most of our majors in liberal arts areas need to graduate not only from Amarillo College, but also from a university to get interesting, well-paying jobs. I want to ensure that our students continue to shine when they transfer to finish their bachelor’s degrees,” Easton said. Ferguson will move into Easton’s vacated position as English department chair. “I am very excited about our new dean,” he said. Ferguson described Easton as hard-
working and knows the in’s and out’s of Amarillo College. “She will do a fantastic job,” he said. “I have worked with Mrs. Easton since 2002, and I have never known her to be anything but cordial and professional all the way,” Ferguson said. “She and I work really well together, and I am looking forward to working with her in this new capacity.” The liberal arts division is comprised of visual arts, the Matney Mass Media Program, English, speech, theatre, humanities, foreign language, music, social sciences/ psychology and education. “I feel grateful that so many of my peers and administrators have trusted me to serve a whole academic division,” Easton said.
Faculty propose strategies for dev ed change By JEREMY STITSWORTH Staff Reporter
Amarillo College faculty members are getting ready for the changes coming to developmental education in the fall 2019 semester. Developmental education courses are being eliminated. Instead, these remedial classes will be integrated into college-level courses through corequisite classes, tutoring or other methods. Corequisites or other support methods will run concurrently with college-level classes, such as composition and college algebra. This means
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students will no longer have to complete remediation before starting to earn credits that count toward a degree. Faculty members have submitted Plan on Achieving Student Success (or PASS) proposals to give AC leadership an idea of how they plan to approach the upcoming changes. Edythe Carter, a math professor and dean of academic success, said that instructors have been collaborating with each other to ensure the material covered in the corequisite class will match up with what is being taught in the college level algebra course. www.acranger.com
“What the developmental math department and the college math department are doing is we are trying to weave our course work together so students can take what they learn in the corequisite class and use it in the college level classes,” Carter said. This way students are becoming more successful in the college credit courses, while also being taught the foundations, she said. Frank Sobey, associate vice president of student affairs, said the new approach is likely to evolve over time. “It is entirely possible that we will be making changes because at
this point, we don’t have any data. Once we receive the data on how the course integration and corequisite classes have impacted students, we may have to rework those classes that may not be performing well,” he said. Sobey also said that academic preparation is just one aspect of student success. “We can’t measure motivation; students have many things going on in their lives,” he said. “For instance, 11 percent of our students are homeless and that is something that we can’t control. We can help students in many ways, but some factors are out of our control,” Sobey said.
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