Sarah Armstrong Tucker Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Funding Gap Forces Suspension Of Teacher Scholarship

A competitive scholarship to encourage high schoolers to become teachers isn’t accepting applications due to a lack of funding.

Members of the Joint Standing Committee on Education learned about the suspended Underwood-Smith scholarship program during their interim meeting at Wheeling Park High School Monday.

The Underwood-Smith Teaching Scholars Program is a competitive scholarship for recent high school graduates wanting to become teachers, particularly in an area of critical need like math, science, elementary education or special education.

But Sarah Tucker, chancellor of the Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC), told lawmakers the scholarship is not accepting new applicants.

“The idea was that you would step in each cohort,” she said. “We didn’t need the total fiscal note for all four cohort years in year one, because we only have the freshmen. You funded the freshmen in year one. And year two, you funded the freshmen and the sophomores, and year three, you were going to fund the freshmen, the sophomores and the juniors, but that third year didn’t get funded.”

Tucker said students who have already received the scholarships will not be affected by the funding issues.

“I can get us through the group of students that we have, but I can’t add on any additional students,” she said.

W.Va. Higher Ed Chancellor Asks Legislature To Back Millions In Maintenance Needs

West Virginia’s higher education institutions are in need of some major maintenance repairs, according to West Virginia Higher Education Chancellor Sarah Armstrong Tucker. It’s been almost a decade since they received deferred maintenance funding.

Tucker gave a presentation last weekend about deferred maintenance to the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability – known as LOCEA.

“We have significant deferred maintenance on all of our college campuses [and] community colleges. There are a lot of reasons that has happened, but that deferred maintenance has continued and has grown.”

Tucker explained to lawmakers that the state’s colleges and universities have a lack of capital funding to use, and much of the maintenance they do get is paid for through tuition and fees.

“Our institutions have been hesitant to increase tuition and fees,” Tucker said. “Because a lot of them feel like they’ve sort of maxed out where they are, and they don’t want to have this fall on the backs of students. Our facilities personnel have been really creative and have tried really hard to do the best with what they have, and to make the changes that they need to make – but the funds just aren’t always available.”

Every year, state agencies are required to give a budget presentation to the West Virginia Legislature. Within those presentations, state organizations may request more funding to meet specific needs, and sometimes those requests are required by law.

If the state is experiencing any sort of budget shortfall, the legislature may be unable to provide additional funding to state agencies. This year, however, West Virginia is experiencing a surplus.

“How we fund capital projects in higher ed [is through] dedicated legislative appropriations,” she said. “So every year, when I do my budget presentation, I’m required by state code to come to you and ask you to give us money for capital projects for deferred maintenance. The last time that was funded was in 2013.”

Tucker described for lawmakers how several HVAC systems need to be replaced, windows need repairs, and bathrooms and accessibility entrances are out of compliance.

She is asking the legislature for $22.5 million for community colleges and more than $350 million for the state’s baccalaureate institutions in deferred maintenance costs.

Higher education in West Virginia, unlike K-12, does not have a school building authority to help offset these types of costs.

West Virginia Launches New Online Database To Help Students Find Careers

West Virginia’s K-12 and higher education leaders launched a new resource this week that will assist students by helping them find college and career options that meet their specific interests and needs after high school.

The “Classroom 2 Career Navigator” is an online storage hub found on the West Virginia Department of Education’s website. It’s full of information for school counselors, students, families and the public.

“The Navigator represents our efforts to support students throughout their academic and employment journey to ensure they can readily access resources and information at any time,” said West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch in a news release. “We hope everyone uses the information to learn more about the classroom to career pipeline.”

Education leaders describe the database as “vast” and a “one-stop-shop” for information on college and military opportunities, entrepreneurships, career pathways and on-the-job training available within the state.

Users will be able to sift through the database and generate results based on interests identified by the student — helping them pinpoint what they might like to do after they graduate high school.

“We are working diligently to make the transition to post-secondary an informed and seamless process,” said Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of the West Virginia Community and Technical College System and Higher Education Policy Commission. “The Navigator is one of our many joint efforts to eliminate silos and use our collective resources to support student success.”

The online tool was announced at the October West Virginia Board of Education meeting on Wednesday.

It’s a result of the Students’ Right-to-Know Act (SB 303) that passed during the 2020 West Virginia Legislative session.

Senate Education Chair Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, spearheaded the effort that year. In an op-ed for the Parkersburg News and Sentinel regarding the bill, she wrote, “it’s time to stop leaving students in the dark about their options for the future. We must start providing them with the facts they need to make a well-informed decision that is best for themselves, for their families and for their futures.”

She describes how millions of Americans are taking on more and more college debt every year. She hopes through the law that students and families will understand “the real-life consequences of their educational decisions.”

Second Year Of Financial Aid Webinars Launches To Help Students, Families

Prospective college students and their families around the state can attend a new series of financial aid webinars aimed at helping them navigate the process of seeking a degree.

More than $100 million is available in financial aid annually in West Virginia, and state officials say the webinars can help students better understand what is available to them.

“We reached so many people last year through our financial aid webinars during the pandemic, so we wanted to keep it going again this year,” said Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of both the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System.

Tucker said during the pandemic, all of the traditionally in-person financial aid events held at high schools were canceled. She said putting them online, however, allowed them to reach more students than before.

“I encourage West Virginians to join us, ask questions, and learn about the numerous programs that make college incredibly affordable and accessible in West Virginia,” Tucker said.

Twenty financial aid webinars will be held from Sept. 13 through April 5.

They’ll cover things like the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the Promise Scholarship, the West Virginia Invests Grant and several others.

View the full calendar of events here.

More information can be found at collegeforwv.com.

State Higher Ed Officials Encourage Student Vaccinations, More Behavioral Health Support

We continue with our summer education radio series, “Closing the COVID Gap.” In our last story, we heard from families in West Virginia who are sticking with virtual or homeschool this fall. Now, we turn our attention to high school seniors and higher education.

Last fall, less than half of West Virginia’s 2020 public high school seniors enrolled in higher education. This marked the lowest college-going rate for recent high school graduates in the state since 2000. Higher education officials say the coronavirus pandemic played some role in that drop.

Additionally, many college students struggled with mental health issues and food insecurity this past year.

Education reporter Liz McCormick spoke via Skype with West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission Chancellor and Community and Technical College System head Sarah Armstrong Tucker about the needs going forward.

Extended: State Higher Ed Officials Encourage Student Vaccinations, More Behavioral Health Support

This transcript from the original broadcast has been lightly edited for clarity.

LIZ MCCORMICK: Thank you so much, Chancellor Tucker, for joining us. Your office has made efforts this summer to allow more time for financial aid applications and allow students more time to access the assessments they need, such as the ACT or the SAT. Are there any other initiatives happening this summer that the WVHEPC or the CTC System of West Virginia is trying to spearhead? What are you and your colleagues thinking about, when it comes to these three areas: academics, financial and emotional needs of our students?

SARAH ARMSTRONG TUCKER: Sure. So, several of the colleges have set up academic bridge programs for high school seniors, because we anticipate that students aren’t going to be prepared to go to college. We know that the colleges are going to have to provide [students] with some additional supports. We’ve also talked with the colleges about just assuming that students who are incoming are going to need a significant amount of support around English and math, and just providing that support up front. We’ve talked about just assuming that every single college freshman is going to need to be in a co-requisite course, because they just haven’t had the time in school that they’ve needed to be successful as a freshman. That probably will continue for the next couple of years. The colleges are preparing to work with those students and make sure that they’re academically ready.

Behavioral health has risen to the top as has food insecurity, but we have a number of behavioral health initiatives happening here at the CTC System office that get pushed out to the institutions. But we’re also working with the West Virginia Legislature to see if there may be some additional funding that we could find, to help support our staff at the college campuses. We know that counseling staff were completely overwhelmed this year, and [schools] ended up having to find telehealth organizations that could work with the colleges and the students to help make sure that each of the student’s needs were being addressed. I don’t anticipate that going away this year, so we are actively working to try to find ways to provide those supports to the colleges.

MCCORMICK: As we are nearing the fall, what are we seeing in terms of programs and supports that will probably be sticking around for the long term?

TUCKER: Well, from a behavioral health perspective, I think, the isolation of COVID-19, and what we all had to go through during COVID-19, made mental health issues much more significant. So, if you were depressed, and you needed to be around people and needed to be able to have access to your therapist, and suddenly that all got shut down, it made it very difficult. I think all of us probably felt some level of stress and difficulty throughout this entire time. I know I certainly did. And so, you know, I don’t think that just disappears with the wave of a magic vaccine wand. That is a longterm hole that we’re going to have to be digging out of.

But in addition, and I have believed this for a while, we haven’t thrown enough resources at behavioral health for a long time. And [the pandemic] just really highlighted how important that was. And so we’re going to have to be able to identify some resources to help our college campuses do a better job of supporting our students. And let me be clear, it’s not that they don’t want to, it’s just a matter of shifting resources and priorities to make that happen.

As far as academics are concerned, I think we learned that we can do things in a virtual environment in a way that we didn’t know we could do before. So I don’t anticipate online learning going away as the end of the pandemic, but I don’t think that it is the be-all-end-all that we once thought it could be. I think we’ve learned that being together is important. Having an instructor interacting with students and having students be able to interact with one another is important. And so I don’t think we’re going to see a mass shift to online learning. But I do think incorporating more hybrid formats into the everyday college experience is very likely to continue.

MCCORMICK: Chancellor, what would be some advice that you might share with those high school 2020 graduates who may still be trying to figure out where to land after such a shake-up in their academic experience?

TUCKER: I would tell them it’s never too late to go back to college, and that they really need to be thinking about pursuing some sort of post-secondary career. You know, we know that the jobs that are out there are going to require some form of post-secondary training, whether that’s a community college or a baccalaureate degree or above. If they want to get the job that they want to have for the rest of their lives and be able to support themselves and live the lifestyle that they want to live, they’ve got to re-engage with higher education and go back to school. We have so many resources for them to be able to do that. We have more than $100 million that comes through my office, on an annual basis, that goes straight out to students to help support them in going to college. And so please, reach out to us, or reach out to your local institutions and find out what’s available. Because there are so many options in the state of West Virginia, and there’s so many good ones.

MCCORMICK: As we get ready to enter this new school year, do you know yet how things are going to look at West Virginia college campuses this fall? At both our four-years and our two-years? Do you have a sense of whether COVID-19 vaccinations will be required of students? And will masks be part of the equation at all anymore?

TUCKER: I think that as long as the vaccinations are still under an emergency use status, none of the public higher education institutions in the state of West Virginia will require vaccines. And, you know, once that emergency use status changes, then we’ll probably have a different conversation. But it hasn’t changed. And so for now, no, no one is going to require the use of the vaccine. But everyone will be encouraged, if they haven’t been vaccinated, to wear masks. I’m not sure if a [mask requirement] is going to happen at any institution. We encourage everyone to get vaccinated. The data out there just supports how important getting vaccinated is, and as you’re seeing the death toll for the Delta variant go up, you’re talking about unvaccinated people. And so we will encourage all of our faculty, all of our staff, all of our students to get vaccinated, and as the semester begins, we’ll certainly find opportunities for any student or faculty or staff member who wants to get vaccinated to do so.

This episode of “Closing the COVID Gap” originally aired on West Virginia Morning on July 14, 2021.

With Fall Semester A Success, State Universities Begin Vaccinations, Hope For A Safer Spring Term

Coronavirus cases among college students, faculty and staff in West Virginia remained low this fall. By the end of the semester, both public and private schools averaged a cumulative positivity rate of just 2 percent at all four-year institutions after holding a 1 percent cumulative positivity rate for several months.

To put that into perspective, West Virginia University saw a little more than 1,000 students and just 95 faculty and staff members test positive for the virus since July. At Marshall University, just 413 people on campus, both student and employee, have tested positive for the virus since the school began tracking.

Additionally, amid the entire higher education system, there were only four hospitalizations, according to Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of both the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission and the Community and Technical College System.

Tucker said students were the ones who really stepped up to keep campuses safe.

“I was very pleasantly surprised by how many students, without prompting from the institutions, came to move-in days with masks on, [and they] didn’t have to be asked to put a mask on,” Tucker said. “They’ve just consistently been a big part of our puzzle to keep things safe. They’ve done a really good job.”

Tucker said students and staff did well keeping things sanitized, engaging in social distancing and enforcing quarantines as soon as outbreaks started.

Classes at higher education institutions are set to resume on Tuesday, Jan. 19, but not before campuswide testing occurs at all schools. Some campus populations are also starting to get vaccinated.

Gov. Jim Justice announced in his Dec. 30, 2020 virtual press briefing that all students, faculty and staff at every higher education institution would be tested for the coronavirus before returning to campus in the spring.

“We’re going to test everyone coming back to our colleges and universities just like we did at the beginning of the year in the fall,” Justice said.

He also announced that surveillance testing would continue when students and staff return to campus. During the fall, 10 percent of the student and staff campus populations were randomly tested for the coronavirus each week. The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, or HEPC, reported that surveillance testing yielded a total of 381 positive cases of the virus among students and employees throughout the semester.

Higher education institutions began vaccinating certain pockets of campus populations last week. Twenty-eight of the state’s 43 public and private higher education institutions have started administering vaccinations. The HEPC reports that the initial allocation of vaccines for the higher education system was 1,000 total doses, to be given last week. Additionally, 1,000 more doses were received by the higher education system on Tuesday, Jan. 5, to be given this week. Second doses will be provided per manufacturer’s recommendations.

The first wave of vaccines at colleges included individuals over 50 years old and working on campus, or those in high-risk positions such as health sciences faculty or campus security.

All 43 of the state’s higher education institutions are eligible to distribute vaccines to their campus employees, but some may not meet the criteria yet to begin distribution. The HEPC said distribution has been based on whether campuses are open, whether they have people who are eligible to be vaccinated and are available, and whether they have at least 10 people who fit the criteria.

To speed up the vaccine distribution statewide, Tucker said there are discussions happening to get nursing students involved, but nothing has been announced at this time.

Beyond testing and vaccine distribution, officials also hope to improve in some key areas this spring, including student mental health.

The fall 2020 semester was tough on a lot of college students. Those starting the college experience for the first time had to do so in a pandemic. For upperclassmen, they had to come back to a very different campus.

“I was a little bit nervous, because of the online learning factor. That scared me a little bit,” said Shepherd University senior Amanda Barber, a communications major and student-journalist.

Barber said online learning was a concern at first for her and many of her peers. She said it was an adjustment, and it wasn’t always easy to stay organized. There was also some fear, she said, about coming back to in-person classes.

“I understand that there were people who were afraid that coming back to Shepherd was going to be kind of a super-spreader event,” Barber said. “Luckily, that didn’t seem to be the case.”

And she’s right, that didn’t happen, as was cited above.

There were four challenges, though, that Chancellor Tucker said became glaringly apparent in the fall: mental health, food insecurity, broadband access issues, and high school seniors not filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

“We are down 1,700 FAFSA applications for high school seniors. We’re down 4,500 PROMISE applications,” Tucker said. “So, we’ll be spending a lot of time on that in the spring.”

Tucker said the dip in applications for FAFSA and the PROMISE scholarship has been due to the lack of in-person events that she and her staff would hold in a typical year.

While those events were scrapped because of the pandemic, Tucker said they’re already starting to hold online events to encourage filling out the applications.

But mental health and student well-being were the highest concerns.

“We’re definitely going to be looking at student mental health this spring and trying to make sure that our institutions have the resources that they need in order to provide, not just students, but their faculty and staff with the mental health care that they need,” Tucker said.

Isolation brought on by virtual instruction, social distancing or students opting to complete the semester fully online contributed to a lot of those concerns. Students also had anxieties about getting infected with the virus.

Barber, the Shepherd student, said she had to figure out ways to stay on top of her mental well-being.

“What I did to combat that was just staying in touch with people, making daily calls to my friends, checking in with them every day, having FaceTimes and things like that,” she said. “Another thing that really helped with my mental health was getting up each day and making my bed. It’s a small thing. But it’s a really great start to the day, and it puts me in a productive mindset as well as getting up and putting on clothes other than sweats or pajamas.”

As for the other two concerns — food insecurity and broadband — Tucker said many food banks reopened halfway through the semester to ensure students who were in need had access to food. She also said universities would also help students who might be quarantining to get food.

Broadband access continues to be a problem in many areas of the state, but Tucker pointed to the Kids Connect Initiative, which created 1,000 WiFi hotspots around the state, as one temporary solution. She said more needs to be done, but wasn’t aware of any new initiatives being discussed at this time with the governor’s office.

Barber, from a student perspective, said she thinks higher education officials did a good job overall in the fall semester. She’s looking forward to finishing her final semester and graduating in the spring. She does have one concern though, and that’s walking at graduation.

“I just hope that this year the higher education officials really work to make graduation special if it is going to be something that has to be less than the norm because of the pandemic,” she said.

Many college and high school graduations were canceled or altered last spring as the coronavirus pandemic was just starting to ramp up in the United States.

Barber said she hopes no graduation ceremony this year has to be virtual.

“I’m just really hopeful that [this] semester, the numbers with COVID-19 will have gone down,” she said. “Hopefully with this vaccine coming out, our higher education officials are going to be quick in requiring us to get those vaccines so that we can really work to make the next semester as normal as possible for our students.”