Information: ncchristian.org or 770-975-0252.
A typical day for many of the advanced high school students at North Cobb Christian last year didn’t end until well after 7 p.m. And it wasn’t unusual to find them back in class on Saturday mornings. The commitment was part of being a dual-enrollment student who took college-level courses away from the school’s Kennesaw campus.
NCC officials realized that these students were heavily involved in other activities such as drama, music and athletics that added to their intense schedules. So they designed a program that put dual-enrollment courses into their regular school day on the campus where they already spent most of their time.
“The schedule was the real pickle,” said Todd Clingman, who has led the 33-year-old school for the last nine years. “For years, our students were going to Kennesaw State or Liberty University online, but it wasn’t with our instructors on our campus within our schedule. The idea of having an on-campus dual-enrollment was really cool.”
NCC leaders contacted Shorter University in Rome about forming a dual-enrollment partnership.
“We’ve had students go there after graduation, and it’s a Christian university, too,” said Clingman. “They interviewed our NCC teachers with master’s degrees and hired two of them as adjunct professors to teach math and English.”
Since the program launched this fall, about 30 students have added the dual-enrollment classes to their schedules. The juniors and seniors who qualified through Shorter’s admission program take general education courses that transfer for college credit. NCC students pay an additional $100 for each 3-credit course.
“We do offer a full slate of Advanced Placement classes, and we kept hearing from our alumni that their first couple of years in college were quite easy because of the rigorous classes they took their last two years here,” said Clingman. “We figured if they’re already working that hard in high school, why not get some college credit?”
Instructor Amber Timms conducts her classes as if they were taking place in college, with the same slant on argumentative and research-based writing typical of first-year English courses.
“AP English is mainly literature based; in this course, kids are writing observation papers, informative papers, rhetorical analyses and literacy narratives,” she said. “They can pick their topics, which makes my science kids happy that they can write about NASA. At first, five to eight pages can seem daunting, but I’ve seen some of them really blossom. It’s a great program to get them ready for what’s to come in college.”
Senior Ethan Thomas enrolled in the college algebra class and is delighted with the level of rigor taught by NCC teachers he knows. “It’s amazing that I have the opportunity to obtain college credit with teachers who have taught me throughout the years,” he said.
Clingman said the school has already had discussions with Shorter about adding more courses to the dual-enrollment roster.
“Next year, we’ll have six credit hours in Spanish and French, and in the future, we’ll focus on history, general science and speech,” he said. “Ultimately, I’d like kids to get 18 to 21 credit hours as a prelude to college. At the same time, it’s an exclusive program that gives kids something to work toward.”
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