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Northern Oklahoma College Program Is a Gateway for Student Success
education, northern oklahoma college, oklahoma state university, statesville,
Northern Oklahoma College is the oldest community college in the state – even before there was a state. NOC was chartered in 1901 and began prepping Oklahoma Territory students for university, earning the moniker, Little Harvard on the Plains.
“They came from rural, one-room schoolhouses and we made up the difference,” says Debbie Quirey, NOC associate vice president and director of the Stillwater campus.
NOC still helps students attain college degrees.
Quirey directs the Gateway Program, a joint effort between NOC-Stillwater and Oklahoma State University.
Gateway assists high school graduates who want to attend OSU but don’t meet the admissions requirements. Those students attend classes on the NOC-Stillwater campus and then transfer to OSU after earning 24 hours of college credit with a 2.5 grade point average or above.
“We help students who aren’t academically eligible for OSU get to that point,” Quirey says.
The courses offered to Gateway students are general studies, including history, freshman composition, speech, psychology and college algebra. All courses are transferable to OSU, and a joint NOC-OSU board meets regularly to ensure the courses offered through Gateway have the same learning objectives as the courses offered to freshmen and sophomores on the OSU campus.
Gateway students have the same privileges given to regular OSU students, including meal plans, library access, housing and access to OSU facilities such as the student health center. These privileges are significant because the NOC-Stillwater campus is adjacent to OSU.
The Gateway program aside, NOC is the choice of many students who want to stay in the area to begin pursuing a college degree.
“Some students choose to go to school in a small-town environment,” Quirey says. “More and more of our freshmen are eligible for university, but they stay in Stillwater and go to Northern Oklahoma.”
Of 5,000 students at three NOC campuses around the state, 2,000 are in Stillwater – the fastest growing rural community college in the state.
Most NOC-Stillwater students are the conventional sort, with some 400 in the Gateway Program.
“The remedial role has become less prevalent,” Quirey says, and the school has become a major feeder into OSU, with 22,000 students, and the city of Stillwater itself.
“That is another part of the issue,” Quirey says. Namely: economic development.
“Students who might otherwise have left the area and not come back, stay in Stillwater, attend NOC, then graduate from OSU,” she says.
The next nearest community college is 60 miles away.
Recent and future initiatives are expanding NOC-Stillwater even more.
“Many of our first teachers [in 1901] were Harvard grads who came into the state to establish higher education in Oklahoma,” Quirey says.
Now they’re attracting non-traditional students, like adults who study at night or on weekends, as well as teaching accelerated courses and online classes.
Story by Paul Hughes
