From Beaufort County Community College 

While Beaufort County Community College has passed many milestones this year, these are some of our biggest accomplishments. Without our dedicated faculty and staff, we could not have achieved these successes. We are resolved to make quality education accessible to students in Beaufort, Hyde, Tyrrell and Washington counties.

1. The newly established Learning Enhancement Center successfully combined the former Academic Support Center, Writing Center and Math Lab into a single, dynamic center offering professional, peer and faculty tutoring and support to all enrolled students. The LEC has seen a 22-percent increase in student usage during 2015-2016, despite a 25-percent drop in total enrollment for the college.

2. The Washington County Center opened to the public. The 7,500-square-foot facility features classrooms, computer workstations and a health sciences lab for nurse aide and other health-related classroom work. Classes offered at the center include small business management, defense driving, high school equivalency and adult basic education.

3. The Computer IT and Programming Department designed a new IT degree, with three different concentrations that can be achieved entirely online starting this fall.

4. A new tuition payment plan opened for the fall 2016 semester where students can spread their payments up to four months depending on when they sign up for the program.

5. The BCCC Foundation began the High Five Campaign, a workplace contribution program to support emergency grants for students. Emergency grants help students at risk of dropping out due to a financial crisis stay in school.

6. The newly implemented Beau-Fitt health and wellness program directly impacted the health outcomes of faculty, staff, students and community members.

7. By starting to use the N.C. State Virtual Computing Lab in classes, IT students got real-world, hands-on experience in different operating systems at no additional cost.

8. Beaufort County and the BCCC Foundation purchased 13 acres of farmland adjacent to BCCC for use by public safety programs. Since the purchase, the college has built the Fire Training Facility, has conducted extraction exercises for vehicular collisions and plans to build a driving pad for emergency vehicle driver training using funds allocated from the Connect NC bond.

9. The Mathematics and Physical Education departments designed new volleyball and badminton courts that were built behind Building 8. Math students helped out by measuring and marking dimensions. New volleyball and badminton courses were added to the fall 2016 schedule.

10. The Continuing Education Department opened a new Fire Training Facility in conjunction with offering its first-ever Fire Academy. The first cohort of students will complete the program in June 2016. Because of the new training facility, the college was able to hold its first Public Safety Weekend, where fire, law enforcement and emergency medical personnel could achieve their continuing education credits.