Northwest Vista College has hit a huge milestone this year. The college can easily say behind UTSA, it has the largest incoming class of new students.
For the first time in NVC’s history, 3,157 students have registered for Student Development 0270/0171, commonly known as SDEV and Education 1300 (EDUC 1300) classes. These courses are key retention and success strategy classes for college students. All new students are required to sign up for either SDEV or EDUC 1300 once they attend orientation.
Gary Bowling, NVC’s SDEV/EDUC 1300 director, said out of the other Alamo Colleges’ campuses, NVC has the largest incoming class of students who have never been
to college before. He added so far, NVC has 120 sections of SDEV/EDUC classes running and the campus is starting to run out of room for more sections.
In addition to regular SDEV classes, NVC offers SDEV 0171, which is for students on academic dismissal. Gary said the average class size for the SDEV 0171 is 16, and with the support of NVC’s leadership team, this section is purposely lower than the other campuses to help with this at-risk population. SDEV and EDUC courses are designed to give students tools for academic success and are key to our first-time-in-college and at-risk students.
Northwest Vista’s SDEV 0171 course will be highlighted at the 23rd National Conference on Students in Transition next month in New Orleans. Gary will be co-presenting with Christina Brown, NVC director of Advising.
This past spring semester, Gary added, students in the SDEV 0171 had a 95 percentage rate of getting off of academic dismissal. Since SDEV 0171 started in 2008, it has consistently stayed over a 90 percentage rate of students getting off academic dismissal.