Nationwide, higher education has been in trouble for some time. Fueled by a mix of rising tuition and a declining birth rate, total college enrollment in the U.S. has been in decline since 2010. By 2021, enrollment had declined 14.6% overall. Two-year public colleges nationwide saw significantly larger losses — with enrollment declining by 38% between 2010 and 2021 according to BestColleges.com.
Here in Louisiana, however, Northshore Technical Community College (NTCC) is bucking that trend in a big way. At a time when many institutions of higher learning are struggling to maintain enrollment – the five-campus community college system — with locations in Lacombe, Greensburg, Walker, Hammond and Bogalusa — is operating at nearly full capacity and seeking to expand its facilities. In fact, the 2023-24 school year has brought the community college system its largest enrollment numbers in its almost 100-year history, serving close to 6,000 students.
Two additional specialty locations — at Southeastern Louisiana University’s Hammond campus and the B.B. Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie — reach even more area residents.
Across the system, approximately two dozen technical and health science programs, three associate of arts transfer degrees, and a wide variety of certifications are offered. From automotive technology to information technology, from EMT to culinary arts, the list is diverse and comprehensive.
Last fall, Dr. Jim Carlson was named NTCC’s new chancellor. Carlson first joined NTCC in 2014 and has 25 years of experience in the junior and community college realm. His approach to leading the college is a combination of continuing what is working well, while seeking new opportunities to serve NTCC’s constituencies. Recently, he spoke with Biz New Orleans on his way to participate in the annual Community College Day at the Louisiana State Legislature.
NTCC started with one campus in Bogalusa in 1930. Tell us about that origin, and the growth that has led to five campuses in five parishes.
The Bogalusa campus was the original trade school in Louisiana, and it started as a giving campaign with the local lumber company in Bogalusa. They raised a little over $8,000, and decided to build a trade school to prepare people to work in the lumber company, along with the soon-to-be-built paper mill.
Fast forward many years, Louisiana had what we called the Louisiana technical colleges. We didn’t have a community college on the Northshore. We had technical colleges in Bogalusa, Hammond and Greensburg.
In 2011, the legislators did a study to determine if the Northshore was being served properly in higher education. The study ultimately said no, so the legislators created Northshore Technical College, where they combined the Bogalusa, Hammond and Greensburg campuses in 2011. A year later, in 2012, they came back and decided to make it Northshore Technical Community College and add the two new campuses in Lacombe and Walker, which would allow us to provide instruction on the academic side.
We became a full, comprehensive community college as of 2012. That was our new focus, our new mission that we set. We did not build the Lacombe campus until 2016, then Livingston was opened in 2018. That was the final of the expansion projects. Once we were able to stop building, stop expansion, and focus on becoming a fully comprehensive community college, that allowed us in 2020 to become accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) — the regional accreditation for the Southeast.
Your current enrollment is the largest ever. Does this reflect annual growth, or is something else driving this?
Certainly, having access in St. Tammany Parish and Livingston Parish has helped spur our growth. With the new campuses since 2016, we’ve been able to grow each year, but another part of that is we’ve expanded our dual enrollment with the high schools, which has also been a big part of why our overall total hit the all-time high of 5,800 students last fall.
NTCC is the largest provider of dual enrollment programs for high school students among all the technical colleges in Louisiana. What are the benefits of this?
I think it’s twofold: There are a lot of benefits for a community college to provide access to the local high school students to begin exploring some opportunities beyond high school. The other part of it is it allows students to begin weeding out things they don’t want to do before it begins costing mega-money.
Our high school student tuition is covered by the school boards, so let’s say you are interested in welding — it’s a great time to figure out whether it’s for you before you have to pay for tuition post-high school. You can begin seeing what you like as well as what you don’t like, which ultimately will hopefully cut down on costs post high school.
The other thing is that our high school students are usually making decisions based off their own personal environment, what their parents do, what their parents’ friends do. Having exposure to different things really helps open people’s eyes at a younger age so they can begin seeing what they might want to do for their careers.
Tell us more about your main campus in Lacombe that spans 12.6 acres of a 41-acre plot of land along Highway 434.
The St. Tammany Advanced Campus is part of a larger St. Tammany project. The Weyerhaeuser Company owns the land, the development area where we are located. St. Tammany high schools have a plot of land there for future expansion. We have the Northshore Technical Community College, and then parish government owns some land out there, which in the bigger picture will be providing some additional opportunities for collaboration amongst the community college, the high schools and the parish.
We’ve got two buildings out there right now. We’ve got our STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] building, where we focus on STEM-related programs, as well as our transfer degrees, which are the Associate of Arts, Associate of Science and Associate of General Studies degrees. Those are for people who want to go on to the university route. Then we have the Advanced Technology Center, the ATC, which is next door, and that is where we do a lot of our training programs such as HVAC, welding, electrical, in addition to health sciences, nursing, medical assisting. We also have drafting and design and much more.
Do you anticipate expanding any further soon?
Yes, our goal is to have another building for Northshore to be able to expand into new program opportunities. We’re going to launch a new program in the fall, in advanced manufacturing, and our hope is to grow into a new building somewhere down the road. That is our focus, to continue to grow the footprint in St. Tammany Parish.
Do different campuses have different specialties?
Yes. Every location has nursing and welding — our primary two staples at every location — but certain campuses do have some specialties. Our Greensburg campus is the only one that offers culinary arts, as well as what they call veterinary technician, which is kind of like a nurse for pets and farm animals. Bogalusa is the only place where we offer diesel technology, which is a big opportunity for people. St. Tammany is the only place where we have RN nursing right now, though we plan to expand that in the future to the left side of our service area.
At our Hammond campus, we couldn’t serve another person there if we wanted to because we’re out of space. It’s an aging building that’s been around since the ’70s. Both the Livingston Parish and Lacombe campuses are almost completely full as well.
What are the most in-demand specialties right now?
Certainly nursing, welding, HVAC, IT (information technology), are probably our bigger ones. Our transfer degrees are some of our faster-growing opportunities for people, because we didn’t have them before. That’s for people to get their freshman level, general education courses out of the way before they go to LSU or Southeastern, or wherever they choose to enroll.
You launched the Northshore’s first RN associate degree last fall. What led to this, and do you have any partnerships with local healthcare providers or institutions?
It led basically from industry demand. The need for more trained nurses was a huge thing when COVID was going on, and that helped spur us toward where we are today. The plan was already in place prior to COVID, it just sort of exaggerated the need for more RN nurses.
We have very strong partnerships with our local healthcare systems such as St. Tammany Health Center, North Oaks Health Systems, as well as Ochsner, Slidell Memorial, pretty much all the major healthcare providers. We have Franciscan, FMOL hospitals, which are both on the west side as well as up to Bogalusa. We’ve been working with them for years.
We do a lot of customized training for our health systems. The St. Tammany health system in Covington has stepped up and has provided the training space for the RN program, which is at the St. Tammany Academic Center in Covington. That’s where all our RN students go to school.
Let’s talk about this fall’s upcoming launch of your first associate degree in advanced manufacturing. Where is the demand coming from for this?
The demand has really been coming on for six years now. In 2018, we began a partnership with GNO, Inc., Delgado Community College and Nunez Community College where we do what we call a Mechatronics apprenticeship program. In addition, we had companies that would host apprentices for a two-year period, and those apprentices would go to school at each one of these institutions during that two-year period and work for eight weeks and go to school for eight weeks, and they would rotate during that time.
Thanks to a new Department of Labor grant, we will be kicking off the associate’s degree in advanced manufacturing, as well as certificate programs in supply chain logistics and industrial safety. This is all part of the master plan on the Northshore. On I-12 a new Gulf Commerce Park is coming, which will be a big hub for manufacturing and supply chain logistics industry partners.
Tell us about your career path to becoming the NTCC chancellor.
I began in 1998 as an instructor of speech communication at Jones Junior College in Mississippi. I spent seven years there, then went to Baton Rouge Community College, where I was assistant professor, department chair, and then eventually got into administration.
I came to NTCC as the dean of academics in December of 2014, and since that time I’ve served in that role, and vice-chancellor for strategic initiatives. Then I had the opportunity to be interim chancellor at River Parishes Community College while they were doing a search for a new chancellor in 2020 almost to 2022. When I got back to NTCC, six months later Dr. Wainwright became the new president of Southeastern Louisiana University, and I was asked to be the interim at Northshore. I became the permanent chancellor last October.
What have been the biggest challenges you have faced as chancellor?
I would say probably the biggest challenge is just making that transition from being an employee of the college under the former chancellor to becoming the new chancellor. It’s a little different than when I had the experience of going to River Parishes because I had never been there before, so I was kind of a brand new entity, and the process was a lot different. At Northshore, I’ve known people for nearly 10 years, so it’s been just a different path.
I don’t think it’s necessarily as difficult of a challenge, it’s more of a different perspective. You want to bring your own way of doing things, but you also want to honor the things that are going well. It’s been an interesting balance, because you want to make sure that you make decisions that are best for the college long term.
What are your future goals for NTCC?
I think the next steps for us involve working with the Louisiana legislative system to get some more infrastructure so that we can properly serve all the people in Louisiana who want to be a part of NTCC. At our Hammond campus, we couldn’t serve another person there if we wanted to because we’re out of space. It’s an aging building that’s been around since the ‘70s. Both the Livingston Parish and Lacombe campuses are almost completely full as well. So, long term, if we’re going to do our job, we’ve got to grow infrastructure so we can provide more access to more people.
It’s simple, I want to create a community college where people feel as if they have a place to go to be able to get to where they want to be. For that to make sense, we need people to understand that the community college is the college for the Northshore in terms of if you want to come to school for one day and get forklift certified, or if you want to come get an associate degree that will take two years. We want to provide that opportunity for people.
Did you know? Louisiana Community and Technical Colleges aim to graduate 330,000 individuals by 2030 who will earn on average 150% of the area median income (or $41,885). Together, the 12 colleges served 126,945 students in 2022/23 and graduated 29,589 students. Source: LCTCS Foundation.
