Higher education expands in Taylor

Higher education expands in Taylor

Written by Beth Wade Friday, 13 June 2008

Partners of the East Williamson County Higher Education Center expect to begin construction on the new center’s first building in August and open the doors to students in fall 2009.

The 24,000 sq. ft. building will be located at the intersection of Loop Hwy. 79 and FM 973. It will house a library, bookstore, administrative offices and classrooms as well as career and technology, automotive maintenance, RV maintenance and electronics programs, EWCHEC Executive Director Chuck McCarter said.

Although there is not a EWCHEC campus yet, students are already able to attend higher education and certification classes in Taylor at Temple College at Taylor.

“The interesting thing about what we are doing is that we are not waiting until we have a building to implement the programs,” McCarter said. “We are actually doing the programs now. Legacy [Early College High School] is operating out of the Temple College at Taylor, Texas State Technical College Waco is doing an automotive dual-credit program through the school districts, both Hutto and Taylor, and we have a welding program that is going on.”

What is EWCHEC?

EWCHEC is a collaboration of several college and school district partners, including Temple College at Taylor, TSTC Waco, the Texas Bioscience Institute, Hutto ISD and Taylor ISD. The higher education center is the third of its kind in the state. The other two are located in Round Rock and The Woodlands.

Legacy is a program EWCHEC began this school year that allows high school students to begin taking college classes as early as their freshmen year.

In November, the Temple College board selected Taylor as the site for the higher education center. The city has pledged to provide utilities to the 70-acre site that the TCAT Foundation purchased, McCarter said.

“We were fortunate in that we had Temple College at Taylor here already. That started in 1997, so we had 10 years of operating experience with Temple College here,” said John Nelson, former Taylor Economic Development Corporation executive director. “EWCHEC is really just an outgrowth of TCAT. We had that experience, and that really gave us an advantage when we tried to formulate EWCHEC and tried to get it to locate here.”

Funding the center

The TCAT Foundation will borrow money from a community in South Austin that will issue a bond package. The City of Taylor, TEDC, TCAT, TISD and TSTC Waco have partnered to pay back the financing for the first phase of construction that totals $500,000 a year for the next 20 years.

TCAT will increase its building usage fee from $17 to $25 per credit hour to help pay off the debt.

“This is very creative financing by a dedicated community to say, ‘We’re going to do this. We are too far down the road, and it is too valuable. We are going to do this.’ It is a darn good idea,” McCarter said.

During the next legislative session, EWCHEC will seek funding again to build the campus’s second phase.

“We are looking at how to fund and build phase two, even though we haven’t built phase one yet,” McCarter said. “We are developing a strategy now, with which we are hoping to approach the 81st legislature. The community has stepped up and built this first phase. We are not standing with our hats in our hands asking for something, but we do need their help to build phase two.”

McCarter said the second phase could be a 40,000 sq. ft. building with capabilities for career and technology courses along with general academic classes.

EWCHEC’s history

Marc Nigliazzo, president of Temple College, sent McCarter to Taylor to help establish an institution similar to the Texas Bioscience Institute in Temple in 2005.

“He said if there is any future growth for Temple College, it was going to be in Eastern Williamson County,” McCarter said. “Actually, we started talking about doing an advanced technology center first.”

The concept of a single institute morphed into a way to provide a variety of higher education opportunities under one roof to the residents of Eastern Williamson County.

“The idea of a multi-institutional teaching center is that you can go to one campus as early as the ninth grade and go all the way through your baccalaureate, master’s and maybe even a Ph.D.,” McCarter said. “With gas as expensive as it is, with financial aid pools shrinking because of the economy turn down, this provides an affordable opportunity for kids to go to college or a university that is local.”

In spring 2007, House Bill 2074 was passed, officially creating EWCHEC.

Source: Texas Parks and Wildlife, www.tpwd.state.tx.us

Primary academic partners

In addition to Temple College at Taylor, Texas State Technical College Waco, Texas Bioscience Institute, Hutto ISD, and Taylor ISD, EWCHEC is seeking a four-year university partner, executive director Chuck McCarter said. Officials have contacted Concordia University Texas, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Tarleton State University and Texas Tech University to gauge their interest.