Located at the former Lampasas Middle School campus, the Lampasas County Higher Education Center offers a variety of college-level classes for teenage and adult students. With the help of distance-learning video equipment, LCHEC soon may offer teaching degree plans as well. PHOTO BY DAVID LOWE With the second year of classes at the Lampasas County Higher Education Center set to begin soon, LCHEC officials are making plans to expand the course offerings at the new center.

LCHEC Foundation members met recently with representatives of Central Texas College, Texas A&M University-Central Texas and Texas Tech University to discuss possible collaborations among the various educational entities.

While making plans for full degree opportunities at LCHEC, officials are increasing the number of freshman- and sophomore-level college classes offered at the center, located at the former Lampasas Middle School campus.

CTC will offer 11 night courses — including anatomy and physiology, which has a laboratory requirement — this fall at LCHEC. The courses fulfill core curriculum requirements for degree plans at CTC and at four-year public universities across the state, said Greg Sanders, CTC student service adviser for Lampasas.

CTC courses at LCHEC are open to adults and high school students. Adults must have earned a high school diploma or a GED to enroll, Sanders said.

Additional classes may be offered through distance-learning agreements with area universities. Texas Tech officials, for instance, encouraged LCHEC Foundation members to consider partnerships with the university to offer coursework for educational aides, special education teachers and English as a Second Language instructors.

To offer two-year training programs for teachers, LCHEC needs to recruit a group of six to eight candidates who will progress through the program together, said Dr. Kelly Fox, a Texas Tech assistant professor and coordinator in the Texas Tech College of Education’s Division of Off-Campus Sites.

If LCHEC establishes an education degree program, students would attend three-hour video conference sessions, taught by Texas Tech faculty and delivered by live streaming video, each week at the Lampasas facility. Twice a semester, the “cohort” of students would be required to participate in Saturday intensive discussions in Marble Falls or Fredericksburg, Ms. Fox said.

The second year of the Texas Tech program emphasizes class- room-based assignments in public school districts. Clinical field supervisors oversee degree candidates’ student-teaching activities during that time, Ms. Fox said.

The Texas Tech coordinator encouraged the LCHEC Foundation to hire a local person to supervise education degree candidates during the student-teaching portion of the program.

Sanders noted at the recent meeting that LCHEC is well prepared to offer education degrees, as he said CTC already offers nearly all the courses needed for an associate of arts and sciences degree in teaching. LCHEC simply would need to add two education classes and one math course in order to offer a teaching program.

Mayor Judy Hetherly, an LCHEC Foundation member, added that LCHEC is being wired for Internetand video-based distance learning systems. AT&T is offering technical support at reasonable rates, she said.

Dr. Marc Nigliazzo, new president of Texas A&M University- Central Texas, said interactive video was an extremely important tool he used at the colleges he directed before returning to Texas. With determination and effective partnerships, even a small higher education facility can offer rural students many opportunities to earn degrees relatively inexpensively, Nigliazzo said.

“I want to work into the minds of these high school kids the fact that baccalaureate [study] and above is available to them — and is available to them without leaving the area,” he said.