Humanities I-Degree Helps Improve Columbia State's Evening Program

Columbia State Community College has announced the launch of a Humanities Degree option that focuses on night time classes and allows students to get an Associate of Art or Associate of Science degree via a cohort group. The program will be referred to as the Humanities I-Degree.

"This Fall, Columbia State Community College is seeking to enroll a cohort, a group of individuals that will have fun taking a series of classes together to obtain an Associate of Art or Associate of Science degree in the Humanities," said Dr. Stuart Lenig, Coordinator of History, Humanities, Geography, Political Science, Foreign Language, and Philosophy. "Since 1966, Columbia State has always had night programs to accommodate day workers and people who had family and life obligations during the day. The school has even had specialized programs in the health sciences and business to make sure people in the health care and business had a chance to grow while they were on the job. Columbia State is expanding on that idea and wants to start offering a wider range of night programs to include people with lots of different schedules who maybe thought college was beyond their reach."

The Evening and Community Services office led by Monteia Moore is collaborating with a committee including Matt Lewis (admissions), Vanessa Hill (financial aid), Spence Dowlen (assistant professor), Barry Gidcomb (professor), Stu Lenig (professor) and Paula Petty-Ward (counseling and orientation).

The Humanities I-Degree, a general transfer degree, will be the first of many innovative new projects to reach students in our community that might be missed by traditional programs. It is a basic utilitarian degree in the liberal arts and fine arts that gives adults a comfortable re-introduction to college after some time in the world of work.

"It is a Swiss Army Knife degree," added Lenig. "It cuts through the need for a complex major that gears students towards only a specific career path and lets the mature student experiment and take a few arts and culture classes that in the past seemed like a luxury. It welcomes variety, independence of thinking, and new media for doing things. It is not only for working adults, rather, for anyone who would like to fast-track through a degree with concentration in the arts without needing a specific goal in mind."

The Humanities I-Degree night program contains great flexibility and offers students a combination of night, weekend, online, and hybrid classes that could graduate a class of students in two years from start to finish. Some students who have the time could conceivably do a full schedule of classes in two-to-three nights a week with some online course work. Students could work out schedules that may take longer if they need more time for family or work, or if they have learning support requirements.

The goal of the program is two-fold - produce a cohort of like-minded students that are going to work together, bond together and perform well in all their classes. They can form study groups and extend their learning by supporting and building up interests together. The second part is to prepare students for pre-arts degrees by giving them a little taste of the arts in the two year humanities program. Each semester, students have at least one humanities class offered at night and a variety of ways to complete the other requirements for a degree over the next two years.

To get started, call Stuart Lenig in Humanities at 931-540-2877 or slenig@columbiastate.edu for more information. Ask about the I-Degree.

Columbia State is a two-year college, serving a nine-county area in southern Middle Tennessee with locations in Columbia, Franklin, Lawrenceburg, Lewisburg, and Clifton. As Tennessee's first community college, Columbia State is committed to increasing access and enhancing diversity at all five campuses. Columbia State is a member of the Tennessee Board of Regents, the sixth largest education system in the nation. For more information, please visit www.columbiastate.edu.