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ST. CLAIRSVILLE - Paul Gasparro feels strongly about goals he has established for himself and for Belmont College, with the top priority being to provide affordable higher education.
Gasparro is in his eighth year as president of the institution, and he has a background in higher education. Ever since 1994, his work has involved such two-year schools.
For more than 50 years Belmont College, located in St. Clairsville, has provided a wide range of education courses ranging from technology, to arts and sciences, business and health care.
"All of the community colleges in our area ... we all try to do the best we can, being affordable. And then each of us has the standard scholarships, and we have a couple of special ones, each of us do that," Gasparro said. "But it doesn't really drop the total cost."
What Belmont College leaders did was a little forward thinking, implementing the ability for students to work from home before the COVID-19 pandemic made that a necessity. The program, which began several years ago, was for students to have the ability to work online after they were issued iPads "whether they were registered as credit or non-credit" students. Once the pandemic hit, students were ready for remote learning. Yet Gasparro doesn't see it as something that would overtake traditional in-class learning.
"I see more and more schools not doing online," he said. "Online at the two-year school, I think, is a start. Depends on really where.
"(In the) larger cities, (it) seems like it's easier but it's not," Gasparro continued. "It's just that you have a bigger pool of students, those are the ones that are comfortable with it. Here in the valley, looking at our students. For the most part, according to the polls that we did with them, our students prefer face-to-face."
Gasparro said that, for the past two semesters, students who have been enrolled in at least six credit hours were given MacBook Air laptops. This allows the students everything they need in case of another situation that may call for remote work. But Gasparro returned to a more affordable education and the subject of textbooks was raised.
"I'd like to see more and more of our textbooks go to open source or free," he said. "We already do that for first-year students and high school classes, for example. These books are free or open source, and we would like to see more schools practice this.
"Everywhere I've gone we've tried to do that, but it hasn't been until recently, like the last five, 10 years, that it's able to be done," Gasparro said. "But I'd like to have that trend continue."
In revisiting online learning, he said he felt that the practice would more than likely fade, with students becoming more comfortable with a mixture of face-to-face learning, whether it be video conferencing or traditional, but not strictly online.
"So I think they will continue to be comfortable with that," he said. "Most programs are designed to bring students that graduate and complete their certifications and what have you into the family-sustaining income area. And, to do that, a lot of these require hands-on, whether it's nursing or health department, any of the health programs and welding. These are things that just don't lend themselves to over-the-internet technology."
Gasparro does feel the lecture side of learning could swing that way enough to where students are more comfortable with it.
Gasparro would like to see continued improvement to existing programs but also wants to supplement that by helping students prepare for future jobs. He cited the recent announcement that Intel will build a chip-making facility in Ohio as an example of future job growth that students could prepare for.
Belmont College is also looking at agriculture-based programs, and to "not only improve what we have, but to adapt the curriculum to apparent need."
Gasparro doesn't want to see students only go through the motions while in college, but become prepared for the real world.
"At the same time, if they're just looking for the transfer, the four-year (university), that's kind of a no-brainer, because we have to provide them with what the universities are expecting and we do," he said, adding that Belmont is set up to transfer via an Ohio transfer agreement to any university in Ohio and a majority of schools outside the state.
When it comes to the technical side of things, Gasparro said Belmont College likes to prepare students for a career in a hands-on way.
"We often say the difference between us and universities is that we can turn on a dime, produce a program on a dime," he said.
An example he used was the recent signing of a memorandum of understanding with East Ohio Regional Hospital to provide practical training and certification "to meet the growing need for health care providers."
Gasparro said it's also convenient, considering the position he's in, to not have to answer to anyone higher up where an approval such as the agreement with EORH might take weeks, as opposed to the days that they actually did it in.
"There's so many community colleges across the state that are so different depending on the regions, and we try to suit the needs of the region. So trying to compare ourselves to the other 22 in Ohio is a little bit difficult," Gasparro said.