Nicholls signed a cross-enrollment agreement with River Parishes Community College (RPCC) in Sorrento at the beginning of this semester to make education more accessible for students in the Bayou Region.This agreement will allow RPCC students to enroll in classes at Nicholls that are not available at RPCC. Nicholls students will also be allowed to do the same at RPCC if space is available.

“This will be very similar to the agreement we signed with Fletcher Community College,” Carroll Falcon, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said. “It was something that Dr. Hulbert and I had discussed. We discussed this with the Chancellor, Dr. Joe Ben Welch, at River Parishes and Dr. Hulbert asked me to pursue it.”

The collaboration with RPCC is partly because of the conveniences it will provide to the students of both colleges.

“Students who live in the northern part of our service area, such as Assumption Parish, St. James Parish, St. John Parish, may not want to drive all the way to Houma to attend a community college if there is one in their region. That’s why we sought to establish a relationship with River Parishes Community College,” Falcon said.

“It might be more likely that we’ll get students transferring from River Parishes. One of the things we assume will occur this fall is that we’ll probably lose some students who won’t be eligible to attend because of selective admissions,” Falcon said.

“It’s something that we felt was the right thing to do because we’re all in the business of educating the students of our service area. Our service areas overlap, so we thought it would be very appropriate to have this,” Falcon said.

Nicholls is looking to establish a similar agreement with South Louisiana Community College in Lafayette, according to Falcon.

“Say they are enrolled 12 hours at River Parishes, but are living somewhere around Napoleonville. They might want to take three to six hours here at Nicholls. They can do so, and they are considered cross-enrolled. Their home institution would be River Parishes, and the host institution would be Nicholls.”

The program is designed to help ease the shortage of classes available to students, either because they are not offered at their home institution or they are full. Students who meet admission requirements at both institutions may enroll in a maximum of six hours at the host institution if the course is not available during the same semester at his or her home institution.

Students will be required to pay all applicable fees, such as lab fees. Courses taken at the host institution will count toward full-time status and will be included in the student’s transcript with an indication of where the credit was earned.