For the last several years, Northwest Vista College has been blessed with strong enrollment counts with many semesters growing by leaps and bounds.
While our enrollment is still strong and positions us as the third largest college campus in San Antonio (even among universities), the steady growth has slowed down. We have initiated several strategies designed to enhance enrollment for the spring and aid our students in accessing the courses necessary for them to remain on-track in completing a degree or certificate.
One such strategy was to identify high-need courses and available faculty which could be added to the Flex II schedule. Through the collaborative efforts of our academic discipline chairs and student success professionals, over a dozen additional course sections were added in a wide variety of core and discipline concentrations to the Flex II term, which starts March 23. Public Relations staff have helped in getting the word out to our current students through several social media channels. If enrollments in these sections reflect the experience we had with two such course additions last week, they will fill in a matter of days.
While these strategies are helping to boost enrollment in the short term, we are hoping to develop a long-range enrollment management strategy to better manage our growth in light of our finite human capital and classroom space. One new tool we will be considering is the use of the AD ASTRA strategic schedule analysis in building future semester schedules. AD ASTRA has offered to provide the schedule analysis service as a no-cost pilot for NVC.
If you have additional ideas to share regarding how we might better serve our students with class offerings, please let me know.