More area high school students will be able to enroll in college courses while they’re still in high school thanks to an almost $500,000 technology grant awarded to Walters State Community College.

Walters State has received a $493,000 rural development grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. Funds from the grant will be used to enhance the college’s video technology capabilities so that more Walters State dual enrollment courses can be delivered via video streaming to area high schools.

The additional technology will increase access among area high schools to the college’s dual enrollment courses, which provide high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to earn both high school and college credit simultaneously.

“For many years, Walters State has offered dual enrollment courses for area high school students, but the technology funded through this grant will make such courses available in high schools in which we were previously unable to offer them,” said Linda Roberts, dean of distance education at Walters State.

This past semester the college offered 46 sections of dual enrollment representing 12 subject areas, such as English, history, computer science or mathematics.

Most of Walters State’s dual enrollment classes are taught onsite at area high schools or at one of the college’s campus locations. However, a pilot computer science course is being video streamed this semester from the college’s Greeneville/Greene County Center for Higher Education into three Greene County high schools. The USDA grant will fund the infrastructure to expand similar video streaming courses to other high schools located in Walters State’s ten-county service area.

The college plans to utilize current instructors but expand the number of locations in which their classes are offered.

“The new equipment will be extremely beneficial for smaller high schools who in the past have not had enough enrollment for us to send an instructor to their school,” Roberts said.

Through video streaming, the college can offer a course that is physically taught at, for example, Walters State’s Morristown campus, in numerous high schools regardless of the number of students enrolled.

In other words, the additional technology will increase access to college courses in high schools that previously would have required the physical presence of an instructor, which was cost prohibitive at schools in which only a small number of students were interested in taking a course.

“The grant provides for funding to purchase centralized video management devices that we will use to connect with multiple external schools,” said Bill Morefield, director of communications services at Walters State.

Morefield said that the grant will fund the installation of “Educast” rooms at the college’s Morristown, Sevierville and Greeneville sites.

“Educast rooms give us the ability to record classroom lectures and make them available via podcast which students can watch at their convenience from a computer,” Morefield said.

The grant will also fund $137,000 in video streaming technology equipment for the Jefferson County School system.

Walters State has been has been recognized nationally for enhancing access to education through technology.

For the past three years, the college has been ranked one of the top-ten most technologically advanced community colleges in the country. Most recently, Walters State tied for the No. 4 spot among mid-sized colleges (between 3,000 and 7,500 students) on the national Digital Community Colleges Survey conducted by the Center for Digital Education and "Converge" magazine.