Student Learning
Greetings from the Executive Vice President
for Student Learning Dr. Chip Ates
NorthWest Arkansas Community College strives to provide high quality academic courses and services for its learners.
 In serving a dynamic region of the state, we recognize the importance of providing varied and abundant opportunities for learning.
As a comprehensive, learning-centered community college, we are dedicated to meeting the educational needs of our service area. We offer an education program that includes technical occupational programs, freshman and sophomore programs for learners to transfer to 4-year colleges, specialty courses, professional continuing education courses, community enrichment classes, and business and industry training to meet the needs of the emerging and existing workforce.
As a learning-centered institution, we have established specific learning outcomes that embrace the College’s mission of providing “learning for living.”
These learner-outcomes include developing higher order thinking skills, gaining greater awareness of cultural perspectives, writing clear, coherent, well-organized documents, which are substantially free of errors.
Our learners develop effective oral communication skills, can achieve mathematical literacy, use computers proficiently, and employ a variety of sources to locate, evaluate, and use information.
You will find these outcomes discussed in greater detail in our College Catalog.
NWACC places learning first and provides educational experiences for learners anyway, anyplace, anytime. We believe that educational experiences are designed for the convenience of learners rather than for the convenience of the institution and staff. We embrace the six key principles* of a Learning College:
- Creating substantive change in individual learners.
- Engaging learners as full partners in the learning process, with learners assuming primary responsibility for their own choices.
- Creating and offering as many options for learning as possible.
- Assisting learners to form and participate in collaborative learning activities.
- Defining the roles of learning facilitators by the needs of the learners, and
- Succeeding as a learning college and learning facilitators only when improved and expanded learning can be documented for our learners.
Finally, we take pride in our well-prepared faculty and an up-to-date program of study, offered in a variety of formats that provide learners with the flexibility needed in today’s busy world. Our services to students are geared to helping students succeed by accomplishing their academic goals.
We welcome you to NWACC and challenge you to take advantage of what we have to offer.
Chip Ates, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President for Student Learning
479-619-4145
cates@nwacc.edu
For questions/comments on this content, please contact Dr. Chip Ates.
*(O'Banion, 1995-96)
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