Big Bend Community College enrollment up

MOSES LAKE - Fall enrollment at Big Bend Community College increased about 2.5 percent, bucking a statewide trend toward slightly lower enrollment.

The college had the equivalent of 1,540 full time students (defined as 15 or more credit hours) on the tenth day of classes, Doug Sly, the college's public information officer, said. That's the equivalent of 38 more students in 2013 than 2012, when the tenth-day enrollment equivalent was 1,502, Sly said.

Full time students make up 73 percent of enrollment; full time enrollment has been on an upward trend since about 2009, Sly said. Full time students made up about 60 percent of enrollment in 2006 and 63 percent of enrollment in 2009, he said.

Summer quarter enrollment was up about 7 percent, BBCC President Terry Leas said. Enrollment also is bucking a traditional trend, Sly said, where enrollment goes up in a poor economy and drops in a good economy. The Grant County economy is in relatively good shape, Sly said, and enrollment is still strong.

In addition, "we see a growing number of full time students and a shrinking number of part time students," Sly said.

Leas said college officials think the upward trend "is related to the initiatives we've employed to improve retention."

Leas called it the "flipped classroom," where students get information online, then bring their questions and the concepts they don't understand to class. It's been used in the college's mathematics program, he said.

Students who enroll in the college's math makeup program must complete a three-section class, Leas said, and some of those students are completing two courses, and sometimes all three, in one quarter, he said. Students are enrolling in the college-level courses with more confidence in their ability to do the work, he said. Under the previous method of instruction about 50 to 60 percent of students would enroll in college math, he said. Now it's 75 to 80 percent.

"We had a waiting list for students in calculus. That is unheard-of in a small rural community college," Leas said.

Sly said growth has been "a little bit across the board." Enrollment in the college's Running Start program is 213 students, a 46-student increase over 2012 and among the highest ever, he said.