In every team and department at Northwest Vista College, there are always great stories to tell that show faculty and staff going above and beyond.While it’s hard to capture every story, we hope to periodically share in this space some of the major accomplishments or projects that are taking place. Members of the executive team will write about important topics that they feel NVC employees should be made aware of.
Let us know about the positive things your area is doing to help students or improve processes by contacting myself or NVC Public Relations.
– Dr. Ric Baser, NVC President
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Charles Hinkley, Ph.D
NVC Dean of Academic Success
The Alamo Institutes model NVC has implemented includes the four main features of guided pathways:
- Providing academic pathways that lead to workforce success;
- Helping students choose and enter a pathway;
- Keeping students on path; and
- Ensuring students are learning.
Much of what NVC is doing connects to one of these aspects of pathways, and currently we have a lot of irons in the fire. Essentially, we want to provide students with the best possible academic experiences that prepare them for the workforce and long-term success in various aspects of their lives.
One important initiative we are working on right now is developing transfer advising guides (TAGS) which are posted on our website. We are also in the process of creating pre-major guides for students who know their pre-major but do not know their transfer institution. On the back of these guides, we will include a list of major transfer institutions and what courses they accept. These guides will be used as a resource for faculty to help mentor students.
Foremost among our goals is to improve the content related to Institutes on our website. We are working to improve the description of our Institutes, academic disciplines, a clarification of marketable skills, and an identification of potential careers related to our pre-majors. Updating our website will put students in a much better position to make informed choices.
As we move forward, it’s important for us to educate our students holistically—seeing them not only as future employees for a particular industry but also as individuals who are likely to change jobs and careers and who are also neighbors, family members, and citizens of countries and of the world. Our goal should be to prepare them for life, and in so doing, we will prepare them for professional success.