The center hosted a town hall meeting Dec. 1 to hear the community's education needs.
Community Impact spoke with LSC-Creekside’s new dean of instruction, Jerica Nickerson, in a Dec. 7 interview. Nickerson joined the Creekside Center in August. Faculty and staff members Amy Rosales, division operations manager; Melissa Brega, lead English For Speakers of Other Languages faculty; Victor Moussoki, business and ESOL department chair; Antonio Lopez, chair of computer science and engineering; and lead accounting faculty Clifton Hill contributed to the interview.
Q: What do you want people in the community to know about LSC-Creekside that they may not already know?
Nickerson: That we offer academic courses, evening and weekend classes. We also have two eight-week courses where students can focus on just two courses at once. ... Also, starting in March, we will offer a dental assistant program.
Brega: We offer English language classes during the day, and starting in spring 2023, we will have night classes as well.
Moussoki: We have small class sizes, which allow us to really care for each individual student. That is something that we don’t have at the main campus.
Lopez: You can take courses to prepare for industry certifications and exams in the information and technology industry, like Cisco CCNA and Cisco DevNet. In addition, we have specialization classes, such as engineering, that transfer to many four-year institutions.
Hill: We offer a course called Accounting Technical Certification that’s geared towards students who already have a degree but may need credits toward a [certified public accountant] exam. We offer those courses both in the classroom and online.
Q: What can students find at LSC-Creekside Center that they cannot access at other campuses or centers?
Nickerson: Smaller classrooms, not physically, but as far as enrollment, you do get the opportunity to engage in a more intimate, supportive environment. Not to say that [other campuses] are not supportive, but because we are smaller in size and enrollment, it truly allows students to build a rapport with instructors and to also collaborate with their peers in class. I like to say that you can’t get lost in the classroom here. On average, you have around 12-15 students in a class.
Rosales: We offer the electrical and Cisco program, which is unique to us. Between Tomball and Montgomery campuses, Creekside is the only one [that] offers those programs.
Q: How is the center filling a need in the community?
Nickerson: We are serving a need by being convenient. Gas is extremely high. Cost of food is extremely high. Many of our students live in a 2- to 3-mile radius of the campus. So, instead of the student having to travel to any of the main campuses, they have the luxury of having the convenience of Creekside Center being right in their backyard.
Moussoki: We offer a Quickbooks course on Saturdays. We are also in the planning stages of creating an Accounting Tax Preparer Certificate I, which came from the community’s interest due to all the small businesses we have in the area.
Q: What is ahead for new programs and amenities at LSC-Creekside in 2023?
Nickerson: Creekside Wolf Pack Academy—that program is going to be cohort based and extremely structured. So, for a student who walks through the door and says. “I want a business administration degree,” they will have their schedule for the next two years. That way, they can plan life around school. I use business administration as an example, but ideally we want to be able to do that for all of our programs here.
