Weekend College Orientation Video
0:03
Hello folks, thanks for joining me for this brief on demand information session for our Weekend College program here at Houston Community College. The Weekend College program is designed for working adults and other students who have commitments during the week that make it difficult for them to attend in person classes during the week, but they still want to attend in person classes at for at least for some of their courses.

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So this program makes that possible by offering a specific kind of Saturday class program. In the Weekend College program, you'll attend classes only on Saturdays.

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They're the class sizes are small. Instructors get to know the students very well. You take two classes at a time that last eight weeks at a time. You complete your degree in two years or your certificate in one year. You are full time student who's eligible for financial aid, scholarships and Pell grants.

1:01
We have academic support systems in place to help you complete your courses. We're centrally located at the central campus of HCC, which is adjacent to the Metro rail and bus lines, to make it easy to travel to campus. There's less traffic on the weekends and it's easy to reach the campus, and the parking is free. We also offer flexible scheduling options so that you can combine the best of both worlds, meaning that you can take some of your courses online if you'd like.

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And take some in person. Or you can take them all in person. Or you could even take all of your classes online and still complete our weekend college program either one year certificate or two year degree.

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The weekend college is a cohort based structured schedule. Classes are offered, as I noted in eight week sessions and they're taught in a hybrid format. Hybrid means that you're going to have in person meetings and some assignments. In person perhaps, but you're also going to have some online work to do reading assignments and some online assignments and due dates that are online. So the hybrid courses are a combination of online and on ground assignments.

2:13
As I mentioned, students take two courses, each two courses at a time. So you're always taking two at a time. And in during the spring and fall, those are eight week courses. So you'll take your your your sessions. In the fall it'll be 8 the first eight weeks, In the second eight weeks you'll take a total of four courses. In the spring you'll have the first eight weeks, In the second eight weeks you'll take a total of four courses. And then in the summer there's a 10 week session instead of eight weeks.

2:41
And you take two courses during the summer, so you take a total of 10 classes per year for two years. Once again this you are considered a full time HCC student and you're eligible for all forms of aid and assistance that you would normally be eligible for. The Saturday classes meet from 9:00 to 11:50 AM

and then there's a break. We get a lunch break and come back at 1:00 o'clock. And your second class meets from 1:00 o'clock to 3:50 PM.

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All classes are taught at the central campus on Holman St. We offer four options for our students, a one year business management certificate.

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A twoyear business management associate of applied sciences and management, that's an that's an associate's degree and Associates of Arts and business, that's also a twoyear associate's degree. And we you can also just take your core curriculum classes. Now the core curriculum is going to be the requirements for the state of Texas for you to transfer to a fouryear university. So you're going to take things like sociology, history, English, mathematics. So this is this option the core curriculum option makes.

3:51
Since if you're not interested in business degree, you want to transfer to some other kind of degree, maybe you're going on to nursing or you're going on to you know, to be a teacher and and and seek a degree in education, elementary education or something like that. The core curriculum makes sense for students that aren't interested in a business degree. Just a word about the two associates degrees, the business management, the associative of of of applied.

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Sciences is really a degree for people who just want a two year degree in business. They're planning to work in business and they would need a two year credential to get a raise or to get the job they're interested in. They're probably not going on to a four year degree. The Associate of Arts and Business was built to be transferable to four year institution. So if you're interested in a business degree at a four year institution like University of Houston or Texas A and M or something of that nature, all the state colleges in the state of.

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Texas will accept the Associate of Arts and Business and transfer you and you will enter that program as a third year business student. So the Associate of Arts and Business makes sense for students who plan to go on to a four year degree in business. While the A AS and Business Management makes sense for students who will probably stop at two years and that will be their credential will be a two year associates in Business.

5:17
Okay, let me cover some frequently asked questions. We get a lot of questions about the program, so I wanted to discuss some of those questions here. Hopefully I can address your question before you have to reach out and ask it. Here's some frequently asked questions. Can I take cosmetology classes at weekend college? Can I complete my AS and accounting at weekend college? Can I complete any other credential or degree programs at weekend college?

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Currently, the only programs being offered by the weekend college are the Business certificate and Management, the A AS and business management, the A A and Business, or taking your core curriculum courses. However, this does not mean that the program you're interested in does not offer any weekend classes.

6:00
At one of the campuses or even at the central campus, it just means that it's not officially part of the Weekend College program. If you're interested in Saturday classes in another program, you need to reach out to that program individually or discuss that with our advisors or enrollment counselors. They can tell you more about the availability of Saturday classes and other programs. The Weekend College officially offers only the programs I discussed on the previous slide.

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Can I take weekend college at Other campuses are only at Central Campus. At 1300 Holman currently, the only campus offering the official Weekend College program is our Central campus.

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Again there there may be Saturday classes offered at other campuses like W Looper, Missouri City, but those are not considered the weekend college program. So if you're interested in taking college taking courses at another campus, again, I would check with your enrollment or advising personnel who are going to be able to guide you in that search.

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Can I take weekend college courses online? Absolutely. All of our courses are offered both online and on Saturdays, so that that, for example.

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For one eight week, eight week. Maybe you can't travel for Saturday, but you can still take two online classes during that eight week. Or you could take a morning class on Saturday and then take an online class and get your two classes at a time done that way. Or you could take an online class and take an evening class. If the schedule works better for you to come half a day, you are allowed to do that each term. The courses you need to advance to the next portion of your degree are always going to.

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Be offered or almost always going to be offered both on ground and online so that you can choose which now you have once you commit to an on ground class, you need to come to class okay. So those eight Saturdays that are going to be your required attendance, you do need to make it to those eight Saturdays. You may lose points if you don't attend or you might miss out on material etcetera. So you you can't pick and choose, OK, I'm going to go some weeks and some weeks I'm just going to do my work online that is not okay once.

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You sign up for online class. You need to attend those Saturday sessions. Do you have to take all your courses on Saturday? No. As I just stated, you can take some online courses and some Saturday courses. And let's say that you have a campus that is close to you. Maybe you live close to West Loop or the Southeast or one of our other campuses and they have a Monday, Wednesday night class that you like it. You want to take that Monday, Wednesday night class.

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Instead of driving to Central or or taking the bus to central, you can do that. We don't put any limitations around the student. You have the right to do whatever combination of things is going to serve you best. We do show you that if you just follow this program in the schedule for two years, you

will complete your degree on time. So you you there are no limitations on you as a student to not take other in person classes and other campuses, to not take online courses or to not take 60.

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Courses, you still have an option to do those things. We simply give you guidance that if you take these Saturday classes and take them for two years, you get your degree and and so those eight week courses are designed to allow you to do that on a very convenient two year time frame.

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Are you a full time student and week in college? Yes, you are considered a full time student and that you know full time student status across the board just like you would be at any other program that was full time. You have access to all the financial aid and and scholarships and Pell grants and all the things that a full time student can qualify for. Do you qualify for financial aid, scholarships and Pell Grants As I mentioned? Yes you do.

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Do you need to register for weekend college separately? No. If you are already a student at HCC and you're already registered, you already have a student ID number, then you are eligible to take classes in the weekend college. There's no separate registration, no separate sign up, no separate enrollment.

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All HCC students are eligible, and if you're if you're not an HCC student yet, all you have to do to qualify for week in college is just become an HCC student, Go through the regular enrollment process, go to the website and start the enrollment process and you can sign up for weekend college courses.

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We're going to go over the individual courses that we offer that we recommend to get your degree. We have a list that we send out. We share that with you as part of our Weekend College Information packet. You can request that packet. We will send you a list of the courses for each of the programs that I've discussed in this video. Can anyone take call weekend college courses? Yes, any HCC student is allowed to take weekend college courses.

11:05
Do the certificate courses apply to the two year A AS in management? Yeah. So if you take the one year certificate in business management, that's the same courses as the first year of the two year associates degree in Business management. And so if you want to take the certificate and then keep going for the two year degree, you can do that. If you want to take the certificate and then stop, you can do that.

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As well sure option after you finish the certificate to go on to the second year of the program and earn your associates in Applied Sciences in Management and I complete both the core curriculum courses and the A, A and Business Administration.

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Yes, you can. The core curriculum might have a couple of courses that are not in the A, A and the A. A has a few courses that are not in the core curriculum. So that will take longer than two years to complete. But if you stay on track with just A, probably an extra semester or so, you can qualify for both. Now you will. The core curriculum is not a degree. You don't get an associate's degree in the

core curriculum. The A A in business is an associate's degree. Now once you have an associate's degree in business, any Texas.

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Public institution of higher education must accept that degree and transfer you in as a third year student. So it's not completely clear why you would want to complete the courses related to both of these things. What it would do is give you an option of whether or not to pursue a business degree next or a non business degree. So after you had your A, A and business administration and you completed the core curriculum courses, you could go on to a Bachelors of Science in Nursing for example. So there.

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May be a reason why you want to do that, but it's not necessary to do that. But it is possible to do it and you transfer to a four year degree program. Yes and maybe so with the A, A and business administration. As I said earlier, you can transfer to any Texas State school. Now private schools in Texas may or may not accept that degree. They will audit your transcript and decide. But public schools, Texas public schools will accept it.

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Now if you get the A AS in business management, there is only one school currently that will accept the A AS and business Management and then admit you as a thirdyear business student into what they call their BAAS in Business Management and that is the University of Houston Downtown campus. Currently the University of Houston downtown campus has an agreement with HCC that our Saturday class students can come over to that program and take Saturday classes there and earn.

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And a Bachelor's in applied Sciences and Management. And so there is one program currently that will take the A AS and and business management. But any Texas public school will accept your A, A and business Administration as a twoyear Associates and admits you to A a fouryear business degree.

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As I noted earlier, the core curriculum program is 2 years of taking your basics, your science and math and history and English and so on. And that is designed to allow you to transfer to any four year degree program. That is not an associate's degree, but it's just what we call getting the basics out of the way. So you get the basics out of the way at Houston Community College and you go on to a four year degree and whatever you want to study at a Texas public school.

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Our classes start at the beginning of each regular term. So if you look up the academic calendar for Houston Community College, we start courses in the fall. We start courses in the spring, we start courses in the summer. We start on the regular start time for eight week courses. So you can find that information for whatever semester you might happen to be interested in, whatever term you want to look at and it and you can also start at the second start, meaning that we have a first eight weeks because we have a week.

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Classes in a second, eight weeks. You can start in the middle too. We'll start in the second eight weeks. So if you get a late start in the fall, spring or summer, well, not in the summer because we only have one term in the summer. So if you get a late start getting registered and getting enrolled for the fall or

spring, you can start with the second eight week of courses. You can start at any point where our next group of courses is about to begin.

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What do you have to do to get started? Well, if you're already an HCC student, all you have to do is enroll in the appropriate courses. And if you want to list of our current week in college courses, you can reach out to me if you or you can speak to an advisor. If you are not yet an HCC student, you just need to enroll at HCC through the normal enrollment process. You can Google that, you can look it up online, and you can get started online. You can also visit one of our campuses and talk to an advisor.

16:08
After you start you have to go straight through. Can you take some time off? Do you lose your progress? No, you can. You can take some time off. So if you have something going on in your life, new job, new family members, something like that, illness and you want to take some time off and then come back and complete the program within reason you can do that. I think your courses count for up to five years so you have time to come back if you do need to take a break from the program and some students do and then come back and complete the the two year degree a little bit.

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But later you can do that. Do your previous HCC courses count toward your degree or certificate? Yes, they might, if they were the right courses. So if you previously took some of the courses that apply to the degree, they still apply. You can you can you can count those toward your degree in our program.

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Can you transfer courses from other schools into the weekend college? Yes. If you completed courses at University of Houston or at Lone Star or or some other, maybe you can you move to to the Houston area from out of state or or potentially even out of the country. You you may be able to transfer some credits and advisor will help you figure out which of the courses on your transcript will count towards your weekend college degree program.

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You didn't answer my question. How can I ask it? So if I didn't cover your question in these frequently asked questions, or if you still have additional questions, you can reach out. For more information, visit our weekend College program page is at hccs dot Edu\ programs\ weekend dash, college\ So if you.

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Visit this website. There'll be additional information there, and there will also be a place where you can ask questions. Those questions will be logged and sent to the Weekend College Coordinator.

18:01
Okay, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this section of the presentation. I just wanted to show you how we break down the two years. So here you see fall first eight weeks, fall first second eight weeks, spring first eight weeks, spring second eight weeks and the summer 10 week program. And this is the year one at the top and year two at the bottom. This is for the Applied, the associates of applied sciences and business, that's the a AS and business management.

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So those those would be a specific courses there and how how they lay out on the schedule. Here's the Associate of Arts in business, this is the one that transfers to any business degree, any public

school in Texas. And you again you see year one and year 2, there's the schedule and here's the core curriculum. And again you would see the the fall first eight weeks, second eight weeks, spring first eight weeks, second eight weeks, summer 10 weeks and then the second year remaining courses.

19:02
Okay this, this page breaks down tuition and I and I want to say a couple of things about this. First of all, this is being recorded in in the summer of 2023. These rates are are accurate as a spring of 2023. If you are watching this video later on our tuition rates may have changed. This is not a Guaranteed Rate of tuition. This is just a snapshot in time, you know enrollment and can tell you more about the action.

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Tuition associated with the program. Second thing I will tell you about this is there's a substantial discount if you live in the Houston Community College District. If you live outside of the district, the the the tuition is higher. If you live inside the district, you will be paying taxes at your address into the Houston Community College System. So you you can go to the ACADA cad.org.

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Which which is the the Harris County Taxing District. There you can look at the the taxation website or you can look at your your school taxes if you if you receive your tax bill, if HCC is listed as a taxing agency, where you are, if you are paying school taxes into HCC based on your address then you are in district and you will pay in district tuition. You're and again you're an advisor and enrollment counselor can help you determine with with with the.

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With more accuracy, whether you live in or outside of the district and whether you'll pay in district or out district tuition rates. Okay once again. How? How do you get started? Well, if you're not yet a student, go online and apply to HCC complete. If you've completed the application but you've never attended, reach out to an advisor and you can. You can Google HCC advisor and then you can meet with them virtually you. You can also walk into a campus that has advisors.

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Located there. If you're a current student who has a few classes, you can reach out to me to talk about whether or not those courses will apply. You can also speak with an advisor about that. My contact contact information is on the screen. Okay. Another question I didn't cover yet is do I have to take an entrance exam? The state of Texas requires you to take what's called the Texas Success Initiative or TSI Entrance Exam. It is mandated by the state.

21:25
Designed it to determine whether entering or not exempt students are ready for college level work in in the areas like English Language Arts, Reading, and Mathematics. You may be exempt from the TSI if you've taken an SAT, an A/C T and you hit a minimum score on it, or based on your STAR test results as a Texas high school student.

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Or you might successfully complete a high school college preparatory course. Or there might be other reasons you would be exempt. And again, I would contact your advisor to talk about this. Now you have to take the TSI to start the program if you're starting the A, A and Business Administration, the A AS and Management, or the core curriculum courses.

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You do not have to take the TSI if you are going for the certificate in Business Management. So some of our students start with the certificate in Business Management complete that year, then take the TSI before going on to the second year for their a AS in in Management Associate's degree. So if you want more information about that, again I would speak with an advisor. You may be exempt from the TSI. If not, you may need to take this TSI exam.

22:41
All right, have additional questions. There's a phone number listed here. That's my office number. My my e-mail address is listed typically during the terms where there are Saturday classes.

22:54
I am available and in my office at Central Campus in the San Jacinto building in room 237. I typically maintain office hours from around 8:30 in the morning until around 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturdays when classes are in session. So if the classes are currently in session, then you could typically find me in my office or or reach out to me by e-mail to set an appointment to meet with me and talk more about the weekend college program.

23:21
Once again, I'll just recap the advantages of our weekend college program. You only attend classes on Saturdays, or possibly a mixture of Saturdays and online classes. You have small classes and instructors who get to know you personally. You take two classes at a time every eight weeks. You complete your degree in two years or your business management certificate in one year. You are a fulltime student and eligible for financial aid. We have academic support systems and help in place to help you. We're centrally located.

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At the central campus on Holman and we're on the Metro rail and bus lines. There's less traffic on Saturdays and easy free parking is available on campus. We also allow you to combine flexible scheduling and you can really take advantage of the best of both worlds. Small in person classes and taking courses online if you'd like. And remember, we are here to help you.

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Okay, we want you to succeed and we think you can do that through our weekend college program here at Houston Community College. For more information, please visit HCC dot Edu slash programs slash weekend dash college slash. Thanks everybody. Take care.