Northampton Community College\u2019s president made a special trip to the Monroe County commissioners\u2019 meeting last week to dispel rumors that the Pocono Campus could be closing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been confronted with some rumors that our NCC Pocono campus is in distress and is closing,\u201d Dr. David A. Ruth, president of NCC, told the commissioners. \u201cThe answer is that\u2019s not the case. It\u2019s a complete rumor. We\u2019re not closing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ruth said in-class enrollment is down, and has been ever since the COVID pandemic, but online enrollment is up.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep in mind the campus was built for 5,000 students. We never had 5,000 students. In its heyday, we had maybe 3,200, but we\u2019ve been doing well,\u201d Ruth said.<\/p>\n
As a college administrator, Ruth said he and other administrators would like to see more students in the seats, and believe that being on campus is the best way to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to come on campus. You need to sit in a seat where all the services are here for you. This is how you learn best, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, thanks, no. We want online,\u2019 \u201d Ruth said.<\/p>\n
In an effort to provide their students the format of education they want, Ruth said the first they are doing is \u201cto bolster, enhance or create in some case, support services that will help all of our students whether they take classes online or on ground, and on any of our three campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second thing they plan to do is focus on the core programs they offer at the Pocono campus.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, there\u2019s six majors that you can get a complete degree at NCC Pocono without going to Bethlehem or online, and we will enhance those, so maybe there\u2019s a mixture of online and on campus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ruth also mentioned that NCC has an academic partnership with East Stroudsburg University. NCC students can get their \u201cfour-year degree with a four-year partner and actually finish your degree in Tannersville,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The third thing is to partner with major corporations and employers such as St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network and Lehigh Valley Health Network to do short-term program training at NCC to bolster a person\u2019s skills or provide an opportunity to learn new skills.<\/p>\n
Ruth said he is also looking at ways to work with the Monroe Carbon Technical Institute to provide them space at the NCC Pocono Campus for more students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have a 600-student waiting list right now and we have capacity, so let\u2019s partner,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ruth said MCTI could use a specific section of the campus for their classes and a school bus could provide transportation to the college for both the MCTI students and the high school students who are involved in dual enrollment at the college.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think there\u2019s a lot of great opportunities,\u201d Ruth said.<\/p>\n
Precie Schroyer, the executive dean of NCC Pocono, added that there would be some \u201cright sizing of staff\u201d due to fewer students in the seats.<\/p>\n
Ruth said he thinks a shifting of personnel and the low in-class enrollment may be what caused the rumor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to stay,\u201d Ruth said. \u201cWe\u2019re very proud of the work that we do at NCC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Chairman John Christy said he has two family members who work in higher education and talk about the 2008 bubble.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other words, the fiscal crisis in 2008 and how we had a dramatic downturn in people having kids, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re facing right now,\u201d Christy said. \u201cIt\u2019s not only Northampton; it\u2019s everywhere.<\/p>\n
Ruth agreed and said its called the demographic cliff. The next large group of students are currently in sixth grade, but even that group is not as large as the group from back in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a Monroe County thing or a Pennsylvania thing; it\u2019s a national thing. \u2026 This isn\u2019t something that we weren\u2019t expecting, but to switch to more online was something that caught us off guard but we\u2019re ready,\u201d Ruth said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Northampton Community College\u2019s president made a special trip to the Monroe County commissioners\u2019 meeting last week to dispel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-147229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}