Montgomery College student, Nyenpu Kamei, has to board the bus from the Germantown campus to arrive to her class at the Rockville campus. According to Kamei, the bus ride between these campuses is one hour and fifteen minutes long. She has to make this commute on a daily basis because some required classes are only offered at the Rockville campus. This ride stands in the way of many multi-campus students who try to make it to class on time.
Another issue students face is inconsistency, such as the difference in textbooks used at each campus as well as different operations of each tutoring center. President of the college, DeRionne Pollard, plans to change that.
During her annual State of the College speech, Pollard announced a plan for academic restructuring. Pollard said that restructuring is necessary for the college to fulfill student needs. “What do MC students need? A consistent, aligned, and affordable educational experience.
The academic restructuring is essential to this goal.”
Pollard revolved this restructuring around four other “student needs.” These needs include a devoted community and staff that receive institutional support for providing a good education.
According to Pollard, student needs also include a college environment that has the basics to support student success and a college that will work around the students needs and where the students are.
Vice President and Provost of the Rockville Campus Judy Ackerman said, “The new structure that we have will have one dean who will work with all of the faculty [in one department] collegewide and that dean will report to one provost. So it gives responsibility and authority to more people.”
Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, Sanjay Rai, said academic changes are necessary in order for the college to keep up with four year institutions. “Our degrees are aligned with major transfer institutions like the University of Maryland, College Park. Four year colleges have made some changes in the last few years and we are creating this new structure to respond to these changes quickly.”
MC’s current tuition model will also change. According to Ackerman, no definite changes have been announced. “Right now, any of the things that we are talking about are just ideas. To keep it affordable we try to have a minimum increase each year. We have looked at models and so far have not acted on any.”
Though Pollard said there will be many trials and errors in MC’s academic restructuring, Rai is optimistic that the restructuring will be implemented well on all three campuses. “I am very confident that we have the best faculty in the nation. Because of that I am reasonably confident that academic restructuring will be implemented well and our goals and objectives will be met.”
Pollard said all changes will be implemented by July.
