Enrollment on the rise

A two percent bump may be attributed to recent changes on campus

KAYLA BERENSON Reporter @@kayla_berenson

Perhaps it’s the new classrooms, more instructors and opportunities available at Pierce. Faculty and staff aren’t sure why, but enrollment has increased by 2 percent this semester.

According to Dean of Academic Affairs Mary Anne Gavarra-Oh, Pierce is at 99 percent enrollment compared to the spring 2016 semester and 96 percent compared to the other colleges in the district. Additionally, the college saw a six percent increase in new students, as well as a four percent increase in students ages 19 and under.

“We’re good at keeping stable right now,” Gavarra-Oh said. “It’s great that the college is recruiting students.”

There are various outreach programs at Pierce that help recruit new students. Some of these outreach efforts include visits to feeder high schools, Discover Pierce (formerly Farm Walk), and extension programs on campus, according to Angela Belden, co-chair of the Enrollment Management Committee.

Belden said that while enrollment increases and decreases frequently, there could be several contributing factors to the increase.

“It could be the number of section offerings, or that more students

WIFI Security

[From WIFI, pg. 3]

“They’re telling us the new WiFi system will up in a few weeks, but they’re also having to do a lot of background stuff to make it work, and that's taking a lot more time than they thought it would,” Gediman said.

Another measure taken to increase security online is backing up data. Bass said that IT has been are ready to go back to school this semester,” Belden said. “It could also be the new construction and the fact that students have less of a hard time getting from one place to another on campus.”

In addition to the recruitment programs, Pierce also has programs that help students return to the college, complete their education and transfer.

Belden said that the summer bridge program and the orientation programs help students feel ready to start their education at Pierce, and the programs offered by Student Services help students become engaged on campus.

Belden also said that the faculty and staff at Pierce have a significant impact on the retention rate.

“The things that the faculty and staff do are so wonderful,” Belden said. “Many of them started in community college themselves, and then went on to get [multiple doctorates] and came back to teach. I think it inspires students that their professors were once in the exact same position as them.”

Like Belden, Gavarra-Oh said that the staff is a large contributor to keeping students enrolled at Pierce.

“We have hired new instructors and counselors this year,” GavarraOh said. “I think they bring a new life to Pierce and they’re connecting with the students.”

Other retention programs that Gavarra-Oh and Belden spoke of were the learning communities at Pierce, the first-year experience pushing to backup data for a while, and since the cyber attack, the backups are finally happening.

“They’ve been discussing backups forever, and we’re finally doing it, but that was something that had been brought to the attention of our board, and our board didn’t necessarily see it as being as important as some of our IT people did,” Bass said.

Bass explained that having the data backed up could have prevented the need to comply with hackers.

“If we had backup, we could have