Second in a series
Re “West L.A. College Outlook Sprayed with Golden Sunshine”
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Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh with state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City)
Economically speaking, from how far back has West Los Angeles College rallied to present an impressive lineup of summer classes?
That question widens the already open-faced smile that is embedded in the gentle, collegial personality of president Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh.
Several years ago, there were none.
Training Students Early
Last summer, there were between 60 and 70 classes. In addition to reprising that comparatively broad palette this year, Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh said that “summer bridge courses” for high school graduates will be available “to help prepare them for college.
“A student moving from spring into the next year might notice fewer surprised looks on the incoming students. That will be because we will have made a concerted effort to prepare them for the new year.”
Question: Do you find yourself in position to recruit students? Or are you turning them away?
“We do both. It is our job to reach out to students. We advertise in a number of ways. We are adding bus advertising, as we speak, for a May campaign to specifically focus on summer. We want to make sure everybody in our service area is prepared to attempt.”
You turn away students for reasons of capacity?
“Some students don’t get the courses they want. But we are looking to make sure everybody who could benefit from our courses actually is aware of them. While we may fill some classes, others classes will have openings, and we don’t want to miss those opportunities.
“As we grow our enrollment… this year we have grown 4 percent, in addition to the summer enrollment we pushed into last year and the coming summer we are going to push into next year.
“We are actually growing at a much higher rate than 4 percent. We are accepting more and more students, and our enrollment is up to 10,500,” Mr, Abu-Ghazaleh said.
“But that is an artificial number because we are rolling our enrollments into the out year because we can’t accept funding for them this year. We have used up all the funding.”
(To be continued)
