By Audrey Werth/tr news editor
After one semester of offering TCC courses at Tarleton State University’s Fort Worth Campus, administrators said they have plans for the program to grow.
“Students will take classes at TCC and another four-year school, so imagine doing that on the same campus,” said Bryan Stewart, TR vice president of academic affairs.
This development was made possible by the ongoing collaboration between TCC and Tarleton that began two years ago when Tarleton professors started teaching in the nursing program on TR East Campus.
Stewart said he recognized that Tarleton’s classrooms were available during the day. Most of the courses already taught at the Fort Worth location were offered as evening classes. With the help of Tarleton assistant vice president for outreach and off-campus programs Kim Rynearson, TCC began offering 14 15-week classes and nine seven-week classes different from the typical 16-week and 8-week courses.
That schedule offers more options to TCC students, Stewart said.
TR student Andrea Tabuyo said she decided to start taking college classes and signed up for the second seven-week session. She could take speech at the Tarleton location when it was not offered on her main campus.
“My main campus is SE, but I don’t mind the drive because I like the class,” said Linette Garcia, also in a TCC speech class at Tarleton.
Patricia Velazquez said she is glad to take TCC courses at the Tarleton location because that is where she eventually hopes to transfer.
“It feels closer to that step to transferring to Tarleton,” she said.
Stewart said the program’s main goal is to offer core classes for TCC and Tarleton students at this location. However, the program does not have the proper facilities for certain classes, such as chemistry or any class requiring a specialized lab.
Stewart and Rynearson said they hope to offer English and physical education. Rynearson is looking at collaborating with the YMCA on physical education courses.
Stewart’s goal is that students can fulfill all their core classes at Tarleton in Fort Worth.
“I really think we could offer 50 sections out here,” he said. “We could have a thousand students easily if we had enough professors to teach the classes.”
Both adjunct and permanent faculty members are teaching classes at the Fort Worth Tarleton location, he said.
Irene Thrower, TR communication arts department chair, teaches several classes at the Tarleton location.
“Speech being a core class, I think it was important to have speech offered here,” she said.
