Workforce academic programs were first in line to take part in Northwest Vista College’s Wildcat Wow Day on Nov. 8. This is a chance to hear the best and brightest achievements presented to college leaders and the NVC community.
NVC’s academic disciplines will present on Nov. 22; and the last Wildcat Wow Day is Dec. 13 where the presenters are from College Services, Student Success, and the President’s Area.
Below are just some of highlights of the programs. To see the full presentation, go here: Wildcat Wow Nov. 2019 Presentation
Network & Cloud Architecture
- In July 2019, Northwest Vista College became the only certified Amazon Web Services (AWS) Academy in South Central Texas. The Cloud Fundamentals Course was created in Flex 2 this fall. The AWS Cloud Developer & Architect Course will be offered in the spring of 2020.
Digital Video & Cinema Production
- The improvement plan for academic year 2019-2020 is to increase the number of FLMC 2280 internships from spring 2019 total of 8 to 12.
Animation
- In September 2019, a meeting was held with eight employees from Booz Allen Hamilton – a U.S. management and information technology consulting firm that have a number of animation and gaming contracts. The discussions ranged from what they were looking for in graduates and the expectations for workforce readiness. This collaboration and communication with such content developers will provide guidelines to strive toward for future Animation AAS graduates.
Advanced Materials Technology (Nano)
- Ten students have completed student internships at Southwest Research Institute and the University of Texas at San Antonio. Students completed training and hands on experience working with advanced Nanotechnology instrumentation. Students increased their work readiness skills and are being encouraged to publish research data.
Education
- One of the outcomes in the 2301 Student Populations class is a group teaching presentation. In 2017, only 75% received a score of 3 or higher. At that time, our goal was 70%. In the fall of 2018, 100% of the students assessed received a score of 3 or higher. The goal was 80%. As an improvement strategy, students were given a checklist to stay on track.
Clinical Research
- An internship orientation class will be required of all students prior to their first day at the internship site. Emphasis will be given to the student’s responsibility to identify opportunities for completing the Internship Evaluation Checklist successfully.
Community Health Program
- One goal is to train all current students and former graduates to be AlamoPROMISE “Ambassadors” to spread the word and facilitate recruitment of high school seniors who have no previous family college experience in vulnerable communities. Over 60 CHWs provided AlamoPROMISE orientation last month.
Customer Services/Sales Operations
- One of the goals was for students to have workforce readiness skills: Understand, write and demonstrate work readiness skills for job cover letters, interviews and resumes. The target was that 80% of students in MRKG 1301 will score 70% or higher on the exam. The result was that 94% of students achieved a 70% or better on the final exam.
Digital Media
- A goal was that students in the Web Design II class would actively participate and complete assignments and projects. The target was that 70% of the students will receive a grade average above 70% on all projects and assignments. The findings were that in the spring 2019 semester, 16 student(s) actively participated in the IMED 2315 courses. 94% of the students successfully passed the course, including the final project.
Game Development, Game Production, Game Programming
- An improvement plan for academic year 2019-2020 is to try to hold more game-making events and game jams, for students to get more experience before the class. Also the program was active in helping to open up the NVC Makerspace lab. Now students have access to other technology for their projects and further learning (motion capture, sound recording equipment, 3D printers, etc.
Cybersecurity
- The program implemented a job readiness learning outcome for its students from the recommendation of its advisory committee. The committee said they need people who are not only technical, but can talk, work independently and communicate effectively.
Network Administration
- In spring 2021, Cisco’s new DevOps curriculum will be incorporated as a new program in the Associate of Applied Science. This will bring together organizational philosophy, front-end, back-end programmers, and network administrators for quicker implementation of applications.
Personal Fitness Trainer
- Students are required to complete a literature review, and learn how to use the NVC databases to find credible information. The target is that 70% of students will pass the assignment with a grade of 70 or higher. The results were that 76.9% of students passed with a grade of 70% or higher. Students in the this program are at times taking this course with Engl 1301 if they are enrolled in the AAS program. The literature review is challenging and we are wowed by these students determination and attention to detail when working on this assignment as they do not always have the same background in data collection and analysis as students who have completed both Engl 1301 & 1302.
Water Resource Science
- In order to increase the number of students enrolled in and graduating from the Water Resource Science program, in January 2019, NVC began offering college credit for licensed operators working in the water industry.
Associate of Arts
- Fall-to-fall persistence rates have been increasing for the Associates of Arts program. From 2016 to 2018, persistence rates have increased from 59.34% to 61.74%
Associate of Science
- Anthropology, Psychology, Geography were added to the Associate of Science program last year. The goal is to collaborate with coordinators to develop an appropriate scorecard to assess the success of individual disciplines in a rolling five-year cycle.