THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 31, 1995 TAG: 9501310261
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 43 lines
Tidewater Community College has received a $1,750,000 federal grant, the biggest in its history, for technology to improve its student services and health science courses.
The grant will allow the school to modernize such operations as registration and placement, said Mary Ruth Clowdsley, director of grants and acting dean of instruction and student services for TCC.
For example, placement tests for incoming students will be computerized and results will be calculated instantaneously, speeding registration, she said.
Now, Clowdsley said, many would-be students are ``pretty much bewildered by coming into a large educational institution with all the bureaucracy that goes with it. The first thing they hear, they have to come back and take a placement test,'' and then they have to come back again to get the results. Some, she suspects, never follow through.
Computers also will list a schedule of courses a student must complete to get a degree. If a student's course requests ``deviate from it, an at-risk flag will pop up and they won't be able to register until they see a counselor,'' she said.
In health sciences, the money will allow the college to expand high-tech approaches in two courses - anatomy and physiology, and microbiology - that sometimes confuse students. A computer program, Adam and Eve, will allow students to identify specific bones in the body and to see what the body looks like without them.
TCC also has launched a one-year degree program to train certified medical assistants, the ``all-purpose'' workers who Clowdsley said are in increasing demand at hospitals.
The grant, from the U.S. Department of Education, will be distributed over five years. ``This is not something that will stop once the grant is over,'' she said. ``I think we will see measurable improvements both in services to students and to the health sciences program.'' by CNB