Turn Your Weekend Get-Away Into a Weekend Get-Ahead

Tarrant County College is clearing new paths for individuals whose Monday-Friday schedules are too packed with work and home responsibilities to pursue a degree.

Starting Jan. 22, 2010, its Trinity River and Northeast campuses will offer Friday nights and other weekend blocks of time to earn an associate degree by taking classes entirely on the weekend.

More than 100 on-campus sections in subjects ranging from English and algebra to government and macroeconomics will be offered along with online classes.

The Trinity Campus will offer courses on Friday evenings, Saturday mornings and afternoons, and Sunday afternoons. The Northeast Campus will offer courses all day Saturday and Friday and Saturday evenings.  

Additional weekend classes are also offered at the TCC South and Northwest campuses in Fort Worth and the Southeast Campus in Arlington.

A "weekend experience" envisioned by Interim Chancellor Erma Johnson Hadley shortly after taking TCC's helm, Weekend College will allow students to take up to a 12-hour load, including labs.

"Our students will be able to do more than take classes on weekends, which they were already able to do on a limited basis," Hadley said. "Now, they will be able to complete their associate degree on the weekend."

Fulkerson and Darlage said planning is well under way to staff and equip Weekend College.

"Trinity River Campus is joining its sister institutions in a long-established practice of offering Saturday classes and some Friday evening classes," Fulkerson said, noting that there were 360 enrollments in Saturday classes for the Trinity River Campus its first fall semester.

"Saturday classes have been offered at NE for 12 years," Darlage said, "so this will be expanding what we do for the spring semester. We currently have about 1,600 students taking Saturday classes at NE."

The presidents said Weekend College will offer college core curriculum -- those 46 required hours for TCC's students to be termed core-complete. 

"That's important in that core-complete students who transfer to other Texas public institutions do not have to take the four-year school's core," Fulkerson said. "It's a huge savings for students and a tremendous help in transferring."

Operating hours will be extended at the campuses' libraries, tutorial labs and testing centers. Plans also include extended hours for services including the bookstores, financial aid and counseling.

"What we are proposing as a Weekend College," Fulkerson said, "is an extended schedule to allow serious, self-motivated students to take as many as 12 hours in a weekend."    

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