New GCC, Hoover High joint program receives large applicant pool
More than 80 applicants, most hailing from Hoover High School, have applied for admission into the first joint Glendale Community College-Hoover Early College Academy, set to debut this summer.
Paul Schlossman, the college’s vice president of student services, said last week during a Glendale Community College board meeting that the number was 84, which has been revised to 81 due to three duplicate applications.
“We have a very healthy application return for that first cohort,” Schlossman said. “I think we’re in great shape to find the very first early college academy class.”
Of those 81 students, 75% are from Hoover High, 11% from Clark Magnet High, 6% from Glendale High and 4% from Crescenta Valley High. There was also one student from the Verdugo Academy, one out-of-district candidate and even one ineligible eighth-grade applicant.
Non-Hoover High students accepted to the academy would have to transfer to Hoover to be in the program.
About 60 to 70 will be accepted in the first academy class, according to the college’s dean of student affairs, Tzoler Oukayan.
The Early College Academy will start this summer at Hoover and offer students a way to earn college credits while in high school.
The academy will begin with 10th-graders, who will enroll in a one-credit student-development class during the summer.
From there, a sophomore in the academy can take regular high school classes, along with 10 units of college courses, consisting of history, speech and music.
The workload will increase significantly during each student’s junior year, with 16 units of college coursework, followed by 18 units during their senior year.
Like college, academy students will have access to a Glendale Community College counselor, a built-in study hall, supplemental instructions and all programs and services available to students at the local college, and the courses will be free.
The courses also follow the Intersegmental General Education Transfer Curriculum, better known as IGETC, needed for transfer to most University of California, California State universities and many private schools.
By high school graduation, an academy student should have completed all college-entry requirement classes.
Academy students will also have the option to take additional coursework through summer and winter sessions or through after-school dual enrollment to be able to complete an associate-transfer degree, should they wish.
“If everything goes the way it should and they follow all the rules, they could end up with an associate’s degree, a certificate degree as well as a high school diploma by the completion of their time in high school,” David Viar, superintendent/president of Glendale Community College, said. “That is something that is very exciting, and we’re looking forward to putting it all together and making it work well.”
Enrollment of the first class of students will cap two years of work on the academy project.
Discussions of a possible joint venture between Glendale Community College and Hoover date back to spring 2017 with a planning team of Hoover principal Jennifer Earl and Narineh Makijan, Glendale Unified career technical education coordinator, on the high school side working with Glendale Community College’s Nahal Ghodousi, a transfer center counselor, student outreach services interim program manager Meg Chil-Gevorkyan and Oukayan.
