There is a thing called “Educational Adequacy”. And there is another thing called “Capacity”. It seems that College of The Mainland has done such an exceptional job at providing Educational Excellence, that they have reached their physical Capacity. There are, quite literally, way more students wanting to attend College of The Mainland than they have room for. One program offered, the Accelerated Nursing Program, makes it possible for a student to acquire a nursing degree in only two years. Healthcare Magazine says “Texas is among the states most severely hit by the nursing shortage. Moody’s Investors Service says the issue is most prevalent in Florida, Georgia, Texas, and California, where growing and aging populations are combining with low numbers of new nurses entering the workforce.” Unfortunately, COM is suffering from a severe shortage of space to teach the large number, up to three times as many, students as they can currently accommodate. This fact is, quite simply, an economic loss for Galveston County, for our hospitals and medical facilities, and for the young people who live here that are forced to go elsewhere to receive their training. COM’s Educational Master Plan has, over the last three years of continued research and study, come up with a plan to meet and exceed this very real need along with the other vitally important programs COM offers, such as the equally important needs of our industrial complex. College of The Mainland was the very first to develop a Petrochemical Process Technology Program to meet those needs and provide students with a way to ensure a viable career path locally and across the Gulf Coast. Rather than taking the route of so many high school graduates that go directly into a retail or food service job, these young people receive training that prepares them for genuine career positions with a starting base pay of around $80,000. Yet here too, we fall short. Class sizes are, by necessity, kept to around 14 students for 4 classes. They learn on equipment that was donated 17 years ago when BP took one of their machines off service. The upside is that they get a great deal of experience with down time. The downside is that they get a great deal of experience with down time. This last Tuesday, the COM Citizens Advisory Committee received a tour of the facilities that serve the PTEC and Nursing Programs and being fairly new to the area, I was surprised by the size and condition of some of the classrooms. The campus from the outside is beautiful. Even with all the work being done to update basic infrastructure, the initial impression is that it is a lovely, contemporary place for learning. Once inside however, one begins to realize the
challenges COM is facing to accommodate the student population. Classrooms are small, equipment is our of date. Some updating has been done within the confines of this very well build concrete structure which only makes the limitations of these classroom sizes more apparent. Quite simply, all that can be done within the current physical parameters has been or is being done. One of the labs will be completely redone this summer. Unfortunately this puts a strain on teachers during the summer sessions but COM has developed remarkable coping methods for overcoming the limitations they face. If you were to visit the www.compass2025. com , the website that provides much of the information the Advisory Committee sees, you could click on NextGen Learning Environments to get an idea of what a lab should look like. These are the kinds of improvements that will allow COM to offer the level of learning environments required to attract and keep the qualified students they already attract and cannot yet serve. The Bond Program that should come up for consideration this November is a direct reflection of the Academic Master Plan that has been in the works for the last three years. It is a physical complement to the needs for growth and expansion that is the COM vision. This is where the “Educational Adequacy” aspect comes in. Communities need to meet the educational needs of their children and shipping them off to other cities often means those children do not come back to their home towns. Meeting the needs of
local industry and the medical community is a powerful economic growth generator, especially as both fields provide excellent paying jobs the career growth opportunities for individuals with community college degrees. The cost of attending a semester of college at COM is about $700. A student that qualifies for the FAFSA Pell Grant receives $6000 per year to cover expenses
while attending college – be they housing, tuition, books, transportation, child care, etc. This makes it affordable for students to attend and COM offers the guidance to help their students transition successfully from high school to a college environment. But as wonderful as the opportunities are; as excellent as the level of education is, facilities fall far behind what they may have seen at their high schools. These are the challenges and the opportunities the bond will address. Over the next six months, The Post will be providing specifics on the progress of this and many other topics involving College of The Mainland. We hope to give you the opportunity to become familiar with your community college; to hear about the successes of the students, the improvements being made and the additional programs they hope to begin offering in the near future as well as keeping you abreast of the progress being made with the bond program. One new feature is our Letters Section which will give each of you the opportunity to share your thoughts, ideas and concerns as we move through this very important process. It is our hope that we can all become involved in Understanding and supporting a project so vital to the growth and general health of our city and our county. Your understanding, your input, your support is all that is needed to bring a much
needed level of educational service to fruition.
