We move mountains by breaking down barriers! South Texas College’s campuses are spread across two of the most economically distressed counties in the U.S. By utilizing Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing, we are striving to overcome the many challenges we face in providing our community with access to our college and services.
Starr County, Texas was listed by the 2016 U.S. Census as the 86th poorest county in the United States. A 2017 study by the Economic Innovation Group listed Hidalgo County, Texas as 8th in U.S. counties with the largest number of people living in distressed zip codes. With 33,000 plus non-traditional students, living in two of the most economically disadvantaged counties in the United States, our challenge has been to remove barriers inherent in our communities while working within a budget that is vulnerable to decreases in state funding. In our short time together, we will present our initial efforts, discuss our logistical obstacles and gather ideas for improving our work from our conference attendees.
Of South Texas College’s six campuses, three are specialized in nature; our Nursing-Allied Health campus, our Technology Campus and our Virtual Campus. Our two outermost campuses, Starr County Campus and Mid-Valley Campus are sixty miles apart. Some of the students in our service area live in colonias. These unincorporated areas often consist of substandard housing and lack basic services such as potable water, electricity, paved roads, proper drainage, and waste management. Add to this, we face challenges such as a student having to travel from Starr County to Mid-Valley to attend a nursing class because that is the only offering of that course available to that student. And while we strive to offer most of our courses at all campuses, many times we find ourselves asking our instructors to drive to multiple campuses to deliver those courses.
In addition, we had to decide how to make sure all students had access to the support services we have to offer. This ranged from simple office hours and student tutoring services, to student recruitment and orientation. Along the way, we were also faced with an urgent request to help meet a federal grant requirement. We quickly realized it would take an interdepartmental team effort to accomplish all this. The Distance Learning Department at South Texas College utilized one of its tools, Blackboard Collaborate, to facilitate and coordinate the work of several departments, and also serve as the main delivery platform for courses and services.
In our Emerging Ideas session, we will share:
- our current work
- what we learned the hard way
- how we developed strong cooperative teams
- the technical requirements needed
At the end of our session, we hope to:
- provide assistance to institutions facing similar challenges
- gain new ideas to improve our work
- create new partnerships for future collaboration in this and other areas