Come for the views — stay for the academics.
The City University Board of Trustees of the City University of New York is expected to approve today the creation of the city’s first new community college in 40 years, with a preliminary home overlooking the scenic landmark Bryant Park in midtown.
If OK’d by the board and later by the State’s Board of Regents, the aptly-named New Community College would open in the former Katharine Gibbs School building on West 40th Street in late summer of 2012, with an initial crop of 500 students.
The establishment of the college, which will eventually move to Columbus Circle, comes after a decade in which CUNY saw enrollment at its half-dozen community colleges surge by 43 percent — to more than 90,000 students.
The seventh campus would grow to serve 5,000 students seeking associate degrees in eight areas that are meant to align with the city’s workforce needs — including energy services management, information technology and environmental science.
“Our students are low-income, first-generation students and they and their family members want them to get jobs,” said founding president Dr. Scott Evenback, 64, a former dean of University College at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis.
“We want students to be able to get jobs — because those two-year degrees help build the economy here in New York City — and we want them to go on for four-year degrees,” he added.
One challenge the college will be grappling with is the rock-bottom 3-year graduation rate at community colleges — which hovers around 25 percent nationally, and even lower in urban areas.
New Community College aims to supercede that average significantly, with a 3-year completion rate of 35 percent.
To do that, the school is introducing a number of measures that research has shown to improve outcomes for students — including a summer bridge program, a mandate that students attend classes full-time as freshmen, and groupings called “learning communities” in which students can study with and support one another.
Additionally, remedial work will be given only in conjunction with credit-bearing courses, to keep students from getting discouraged early on.
“It’s a great opportunity to start a college from scratch and to really build a new kind of experience for students that will hopefully make them more successful,” said Katherine Hughes, assistant director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia’s Teachers College. “I think people all over the country will be watching this.”
Admissions criteria at New Community College will be the same as at CUNY’s two-year schools, as will the pricetag — which is currently $3,300 per year, but likely to climb.
The city has already provided $9 million in baseline funding for the school.