Summer course registration is now open to students and includes 150 courses to choose from, according to the Keene State College website.
“If you’re transferring in, if you’re changing your major, if you want to get a second major or a minor, anything where you’re going to be having a pretty tight schedule … Summers a great way to be caught up,” Program Coordinator for the Office of Graduate Studies and Extended Education Heather Jasmin said.
Students can take a variety of course offerings throughout the summer including, but not limited to, courses such as Forest Aliens, New England Witchcraft and Writing the Plot.
According to Jasmin, 577 students took classes in the summer of 2023 and over 100 students are already enrolled for courses this summer. She said about 22% of students who take spring courses also take summer courses and she is, ‘Hoping to have it be more because it’s a great opportunity for students.”
Vice President for Enrollment and Student Engagement MB Lufkin said summer courses are a great way to increase revenue for the college. According to Lufkin, these courses make up about 2% of the revenue which is around 2 million dollars.
“We’re always looking for ways to increase revenues so that we don’t have to increase our tuition prices,” Lufkin said. “We have to generate enough revenue to offset all of our expenses so this is a great way to increase revenue.”
Lufkin said, “Students have an advantage in taking the class from a Keene State faculty member at Keene State not only because we’re the number one undergraduate college for teaching in our region, but also because there’s no hassle with having to transfer back in a class if you take a class someplace else over the summer.”
Additionally, Lufkin said courses over the years have been switched to virtual rather than in-person due to convenience for the students.
“Once COVID happened, a lot of classes shifted online and we’ve seen that students really resonated with that,” Lufkin said.
Lufkin said another benefit of taking online courses is the opportunity to be housed on campus if needed.
“Even though the classes are online, there are still options to live on campus this summer that are pretty reasonably priced, so I would encourage people [who] wanted to stay in the Keene area to check it out,” Lufkin said.
Director of Graduate Studies and Extended Education Jennifer Fritz said the program was made to be flexible for students.
“I spent a lot of time this fall working on the [KSC website] to make sure it’s hopefully getting everyone’s questions answered,” Fritz said. “There was a survey done last fall about summer so that the courses offered are usually the ones that students are the most needing.”
Fritz added, “You can go home [and] continue your summer, but stay here at Keene State and keep moving your degree forward.”
Nicole Dumont can be contacted at
ndumont@kscequinox.com
