(Note: First of two parts. Coming Tuesday, a closer look at how Georgia Southern University, Ogeechee Technical College and East Georgia State College are focusing more on attracting dual enrollment students.)

Advanced students – and professors’ kids – such as Micah Kartchner are in growing company as a larger number of more typical high school students dual-enroll, earning both college and high school credits for the same courses.

“I guess I do miss a lot of my friends from high school, but I see a lot of them here,” said Kartchner, 17, speaking on his way into Arabic 1001 at Georgia Southern University last week.

Bulloch County’s three public high schools saw the number of their students dual-enrolled or joint-enrolled at a college or university rise from 201 in the last school year to 387 this year. That’s a 92.5 percent increase – almost double.

Kartchner, simultaneously a Georgia Southern University and Ogeechee Technical College student and a Statesboro High School 11th-grader, may be the current dual enrollment champion, at least among juniors. After starting with a single calculus class last semester, he is now taking a full load at Georgia Southern. Besides Arabic, his courses are physics, geography and U.S. history.

Meanwhile, his only class on the Statesboro High campus this semester is actually an Ogeechee Technical College class. The Nurse Aide course, one of three Ogeechee Tech programs currently taught at the high school by the college’s instructors, will enable him to take the state Certified Nursing Assistant exam this summer. In fact, Kartchner is on track to have more than three semesters of university courses under his belt by the time he graduates high school.

His father, Dr. Eric Kartchner, is chair of the GSU foreign languages department, and his mother, Nancy Kartchner, is a teaching assistant at the university.

Tuition-free

What Micah Kartchner does have in common with other dual-enrolled students is that his courses earn him college and university credits, while also appearing on his high school transcript. Dual credit is the essence of dual enrollment. High school students who take college courses for college credit only are joint enrolled, not dual enrolled.

Another thing dual-enrolled students have in common is that their approved college courses are tuition-free. Through a program called Accel, Georgia pays tuition for high school students who enroll in certain academic courses at a college or university.

Students must meet the college’s admissions requirements in terms of their high school grades and scores on an admissions test, such as the SAT, ACT or Compass.

Courses that qualify for Accel can be found through a database at www.gacollege411.org.

Jan Moore, dean of students at Ogeechee Technical College, emphasizes that the Accel list for technical colleges includes core courses that are the same at all the state’s public colleges and universities. Since Ogeechee Tech received SACSCOC regional accreditation last year, core courses offered there will transfer to university system schools.

Because Accel funding is neither a HOPE Scholarship nor a HOPE Grant, it does not count toward the cap on credit hours that HOPE will pay for after a student graduates high school.

Meanwhile, a special category of HOPE Grant covers tuition for high school students enrolled in technical college certificate programs. But it doesn’t count toward the postsecondary HOPE limits, either.

So either way, students who plan on a college degree or those aiming at a skills certificate for use in finding a job can take tuition-free classes while still in high school without reducing their future HOPE eligibility, Moore points out.

“That’s why every kid in the world needs to leave high school with at least 15 college core credits through the Accel program or a technical college certificate,” she said.

Not literally every kid is eligible, of course, but Georgia high school students who meet the entry requirements. Most are juniors and seniors.

“It’s a faster way to get your education, and for a lot of kids that don’t have the money for college, it’s a lot easier on your parents as well,” said Devan Hart, 18. “I know my parents appreciate it.”

Hart, a Southeast Bulloch High School senior interviewed after her English 1101 class at Ogeechee Tech, is joint-enrolled. She takes an art class and Math 4 at the high school in Brooklet, then drives to the OTC main campus for her English and anatomy classes.

These, and the three classes she took last semester, will count toward an associate degree in radiologic technology at Ogeechee Tech. She plans to go right to work after completing the two-year degree, then decide whether she wants a more advanced degree in radiology.

With Ogeechee Tech also exempting high school students from its fees, the only thing she had to buy is books.

Statesboro High

Two of Bulloch County’s public high schools currently play host to OTC certificate courses on their campuses. All three are working with Georgia Southern, East Georgia State College, and especially Ogeechee Tech, to offer students more dual enrollment opportunities.

“We’ve always had a lot of students go out to Georgia Southern to take dual enrollment courses, and now our East Georgia numbers are picking up,” said Tiffany Weathers, counselor to the SHS graduating class of 2016. “We have three great partnerships with those postsecondary institutions.”

In the 2013-14 academic year, 153 Statesboro High students took college classes, including 116 at Georgia Southern, 30 with Ogeechee Tech and seven at East Georgia

State, according to the count supplied from the Bulloch County Schools central office. For 2014-15, the count more than doubled, to 317. These included 175 at Georgia Southern, 130 with Ogeechee Tech and 12 with East Georgia.

In previous years, Ogeechee Tech offered just one certificate program on the Statesboro High campus, the Nurse Aide course. This year, an Emergency Medical Responder course and a cosmetology program called Shampoo Tech were added.

So of those 130 students dual-enrolled with Ogeechee Tech, 94 are in the classes at the Statesboro High campus. But the number attending classes on the OTC campus also increased, from 14 last year to 36 this year.

For next year, Ogeechee Tech plans to add a fourth certificate program, Mechatronics Specialist, on the Statesboro High campus. For students who want to go further, these courses will fit into an associate degree program under development at Ogeechee Tech.

Discussion is underway to allow this to track, in turn, to Georgia Southern’s new Manufacturing Engineering program.

Portal

Meanwhile, Portal Middle High School is planning bus transportation for some of its students to take the OTC courses available on the Statesboro High campus next year. Other plans would bring some OTC-taught Accel courses, such as freshman math and English, to the Portal and Statesboro High campuses.

Portal’s count of dual-enrolled students rose from 14 last year to 17 this year, according to the report. But PMHS Principal Dr. Karen Doty puts the current number at 21.

Although much smaller than Statesboro’s total, that is 20 percent of Portal’s 100 or so juniors and seniors. With a drive time of 20 to 25 minutes to the college campuses and some students lacking cars, transportation remains a barrier to overcome, Doty said.

“Because we're a small school, we don't have as many course offerings for our students as we would like to have, so by being able to partner up with Ogeechee Tech and East Georgia and Georgia Southern, we're able to open up those doors for them,” she said.

Southeast Bulloch

Southeast Bulloch High School’s dual enrollment count increased from 34 students last year to 53 this year. Most of the growth occurred in Ogeechee Tech enrollments.

Currently there are no college programs on the Southeast Bulloch campus, but Moore said Ogeechee Tech will place a Nurse Aide program there next school year.

Meanwhile, Southeast Bulloch High School Principal Donna Clifton said she is working on a proposal for buses to shuttle students from Brooklet to the college campuses.

With these efforts and Ogeechee Tech’s push to administer the Compass admissions test to as many high school students as want it, these educators expect the number to increase further this fall.

Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.