High School Counselors | NorthWest Arkansas Community College

Early College Experience

High School Counselors

High School Counselors are essential to the relationship between Early College Experience (ECE) and the high schools. Counselors advocate for the success of students by providing access to rigorous and meaningful educational experiences. In collaboration with Early College Experience, counselors promote a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.

Counselors coordinate course requests to ECE, communicate with ECE faculty and staff, and assist students with ECE applications, transcripts, test scores and other academic information.

Each January, Counselors submit a Course Request (link to Forms) with a list of the concurrent courses they would like to be offered at their schools. Course Requests are reviewed by the Academic Deans and letters of approval and contracts are sent to the high schools in May.

Maximum enrollment for English Composition courses is 25 students per section. Maximum enrollment for all other college-credit courses is 30.

ECE courses are taught by NWACC faculty and by qualified high school instructors. A variety of formats allows flexibility of enrollment and increased access for students.

On-site by qualified high school instructors
AP/concurrent blend
Compressed interactive video (CIV)
Online

NWACC Division Chairs must approve all ECE instructors. High school instructors teaching an ECE course must have a Master's Degree with 18 hours in the subject to be taught.

ECE courses can be blended with AP courses provided that at least 51% of students are enrolled in ECE.

Courses taught by Compressed Interactive Video (CIV) are capped for enrollment to include high school and non-high school students. CIV courses follow the NWACC academic year each semester. Distractions and interruptions to CIV courses affect no only the students on the high school campus but the students in the NWACC campus as well. Every effort should be made to minimize disruption of these classes. Example: Not interrupting the class to pull students for activities such as homecoming or class pictures, and silencing the Public Address system in the classroom. Students in a CIV classroom taking a college class should be considered as being on the NWACC campus, when at all possible.