ANC to Offer 2 New Scholarships

In a special board meeting of the Arkansas Northeastern College Board of Trustees held Wednesday
(March 26), two new institutional scholarships were approved.

An institutional scholarship was approved as a temporarily-available scholarship to be offered the Fall 2014 semester. The INET 40 Scholarship decreases the Internet courses to a flat $40 dollars per credit hour for students interested in pursuing an online degree at ANC who have either never attended ANC or who have not attended within the previous two years. The INET 40 Scholarship does not have a residency requirement and officials hope to reach individuals living inside Mississippi County as well within ANC’s service region, including Craighead and Greene Counties and the Bootheel of Missouri.

The INET 40 Scholarship offers qualifying students a net tuition/fee cost of $40 per credit hour for up to 12 credit hours per semester. It will be made available for the equivalent of up to approximately 100 full-time students and will be available to those attending either part-time or full-time. This scholarship is only available to students pursuing degrees that ANC offers entirely online.

Because developmental coursework is not currently designed or best delivered online, only students
not requiring remedial coursework will be academically eligible. The scholarship will carry forward for qualifying students enrolling in the Fall 2014 semester to provide these students the opportunity to finish their degrees with the scholarship’s assistance. Students starting the Fall 2014 semester on part-time status only will be able to receive elevated amounts of scholarship assistance in subsequent semesters (to attend full-time, for instance) if scholarship funds are available.

To take advantage of this scholarship opportunity, new students or students who have not attended ANC for at least two years, must enroll this coming Fall semester. This scholarship opportunity is temporarily available. There are no current plans to offer this scholarship to new students entering after the Fall 2014 semester. Students not taking advantage of the INET 40 Scholarship this Fall may not have the opportunity to receive it in the future.

The purpose of the INET 40 Scholarship is to advance online education and encourage college attendance at ANC for students who have never attended ANC or who have not attended in recent years.

The second institutional scholarship, the Early College Scholarship, was approved. It offers students
enrolled in all Mississippi County high schools, public or private and including Buffalo Island Central, net tuition/fee cost of $25 per credit hour for up to six hours of concurrent credit per semester for students. The Early College Scholarship applies to blended online/Advanced Placement courses, live general education offerings delivered to local high schools, and courses taken independently by county high school students while concurrently enrolled in high school.

ANC can serve up to 300 county high school students each year through this scholarship. If all 300
scholarships are not utilized by Mississippi County students during their registration process for each
upcoming school year, remaining concurrent credit scholarships would be offered to students at other
Arkansas high schools within the ANC service district such as Greene and Craighead Counties. ANC
officials met with all seven county school superintendents on March 19 to present this proposal. The
superintendents predicted high interest and demand. To allow the local schools to factor this opportunity into their planning for FY15 that is occurring presently, staff made a request of the Chairman to call a special meeting of the Board of Trustees.

The Early College Scholarship will be ongoing from year to year. The purpose of the scholarship is to
increase affordable college access to area high school students and to increase college matriculation rates, particularly students matriculating to ANC.