The Yavapai Community College administration has announced that this fall it will offer 28 degree or certificate programs that can be completed entirely online. For additional information about the online offerings, click here.
Over 200 high school students in the Prescott area are estimated to enroll this fall in vocational training classes at the Prescott CTEC campus. Some of them will seek an electric line worker certificate. Almost immediately after completing the two-year course, they will be hired at a lucrative beginning salary. Sad to say that not a single Verde Valley high school student will be enrolled at CTEC this fall.
Why the difference between the West and East sides of the County? The reason is that the distance to travel from the Verde Valley to the CTEC campus is too great and sometimes too dangerous with ice covered roads in the winter on 89A over Mingus mountain. It is also too time-consuming for most with round trips taking three or more hours. Furthermore, there is no public or private bus transportation available. This is another reason why vocational training facilities should be built in the Verde Valley.
What if you managed a theater and it lost a half million dollars or more every year over the past five years? What if you obtained a $5 million dollar loan to improve the seating, lighting, technology, and add a fancy kitchen to the theater? Then, after all that, you incurred a loss this past year of $680,000? What do you think would happen to you? And your theater project?
Well, for Prescott based Yavapai Community College administrators there is nothing to worry about when projects like these lose millions of dollars. They simply dip into the taxpayer pot of money available to them and make-up for the losses. No fuss; no concern; for them, no big deal.
For example, the 1105 seat theater on the Prescott campus, dubbed by campus administrators as the Performing Arts Center, is now estimated to have gone into the hole the past academic year by at least $680 thousand dollars. The huge loss was incurred in spite of a $5 million dollar renovation project covering the past five years, which was paid for through county property taxes.
The theater, with many programs not reasonably accessible to many County residents outside the Prescott area, continues to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.
One of the renovation projects many felt was not needed involved installation of a kitchen at a cost of around $750,000 to make the campus theater a dinner theater. If financial loses are any indication of how well the dinner theater worked, well, it didn’t work.
Auxiliaries, which are viewed as campus businesses of sorts, are intended to break even. This past year the Community College auxiliaries, which include the theater, failed to break-even by $871,000. Recall that Prescott administrators closed the Sedona Film school, an actual academic program, because they claimed it was being too highly subsidized. However, it is doubtful they would ever consider closing a nonacademic project such as this theater because, as they see it, it brings culture to the city of Prescott and prestige to them. Source: August 2014 Governing Board Agenda with reports.
The process that may be followed to select members to the Yavapai Community College Governing Board Advisory Committee has been sketched by Al Filardo and Harold Harrington and will be submitted to the board at that meeting. The following is the process they believe will be followed:
Each municipality and the Supervisors for Yavapai County Districts 2 and 3 nominate two candidates each creating a pool of nominated candidates for the selection process. Nomination to the pool does not guarantee selection.
In addition, interested District 2 or 3 residents in the Verde Valley may self-nominate. The College will advertise that option in local papers. Those self-nominations shall be received by Superintendent Tim Carter on or before 3 PM on September 30, 2014. Paperwork received after the deadline will not be considered.
Each nominated candidate submits a letter of interest and qualifications to Tim Carter, Yavapai County Superintendent of Schools on or before 3 PM on September 30, 2014. Paperwork received after the deadline will not be considered.Superintendent Carter will select the best 7 candidates from the total applicant pool based on qualifications. There will not necessarily be one representative from each community. For example, there may be two candidates from Sedona, two from Camp Verde, one from Clarkdale, one from Cottonwood and one from Jerome.
The Yavapai-Apache Nation has passed a resolution asking for greater communication, participation and collaboration between Verde Valley Communities, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, and the Yavapai Community College.
The resolution, initially drafted by Sedona Mayor Rob Adams, has been approved by the governments of Sedona, Camp Verde and now the Yavapai-Apache nation. The governments in Cottonwood and Clarkdale apparently felt that with two advisory committees being formed, there was no need for the resolution.
The Cottonwood City Council at its August 5 meeting selected three names and an alternate to participate on the Yavapai Community College Campus Advisory Committee that was created by Dean James Perey. This is the second advisory committee being set up to consider the future of Yavapai Community College in Sedona and the Verde Valley.
Those nominated were Billie Jane Macintosh, Dan Mabery, and City Manager Doug Bartosh. Casey Rooney was selected as an alternate.
Randy Garrison and Karen Pfeifer were nominated by the Cottonwood City Council Tuesday, August 5
to work as liaisons on the Yavapai Community College Governing Board. Both are members of the Cottonwood City Council and Ms. Pfeifer is the Vice Mayor.
Apparently, one of the two nominees will be selected to become a member of the Committee that will consider the future of the Yavapai College Verde Valley campus and Sedona Center. The Yavapai Community College Governing Board is expected to approve creating the Governing Board advisory committee at its August 12 meeting.
Ms. Deb McCasland
Ms. Deb McCasland and Mr. Harold Harrington are vying for a seat on the 2nd District Community College Governing Board. Ms. McCasland filed her papers on Tuesday, August 5 and Mr. Harrington filed a day later. He is trying to hold on to the seat he has occupied for several years while Ms. McCasland is intending to bring new ideas and a new vision to the Governing Board. Mr. Harrington is a resident of Cornville while Ms. McCasland is a resident of Prescott Valley.
McCasland earned both a bachelor of science and a master’s degree from Northern Arizona University. Her master’s is in Community College Education with an emphasis on guidance and counseling. During her years as a student, she was involved in student government and activities. She worked as a secretary in the student activities office at the Community College, where she decided she “wanted to be more than a secretary. I wanted to be the boss.” Read More→
Artists concept posted by Yavapai College of kitchen area of new student housing.
The Yavapai Community College estimates that about 130 students will be living in the new Marapai residence hall dorm this semester. Another 90 students will be living in the Kachina residence, which was completely renovated last year. There are no student housing plans for the Verde Valley. Source: Prescott Courier. For artist renderings of the new facilities, please click here.
To the left is an artist’s rendering of the renovated kitchen area of one of the new student housing projects. The estimated cost for renovating the two dormitory areas is $5 million dollars. The project was approved in 2012 – 2013 by the Yavapai Community College Governing Board.
The Board has refused to construct student housing anywhere outside Prescott. This has been a major barrier to full development of the Verde campus in Clarkdale. It is in part responsible for problems with supporting the Sedona Film School, which was closed by the College this year.