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Highlands Today

SFCC Starts Fall Semester Amid Higher Enrollment

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Gabby Gourley, freshman, works on a lab assignment for her computer class in the Student Services building at South Florida Community College on Tuesday in Avon Park.

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By MARC VALERO

Highlands Today

Published: August 27, 2008

AVON PARK - In 2012, Tanayah Johnson sees herself teaching first grade in a Georgia school.

For the time being she is a cashier at the Sebring Captain D's seafood restaurant and a part-time student at South Florida Community College.

Fall classes started Monday at SFCC, but Johnson registered in April to make sure she got the classes and class times she wanted.

The 2007 Sebring High graduate said at college you have to make sure you do your work.

"You just can't party all the time," she said Tuesday. "You have to have your work done first; have your mindset for what you want to be."

Johnson is considering an eventual move to Georgia for two reasons.

"My uncle lives up there - Atlanta, Georgia, and they pay the teachers more," she said.

More students are choosing to attend SFFC as the college's enrollment growth trend continues.

The college will not have an official count until the middle of September, but a first-day comparison to last year indicates an enrollment increase of 7 to 8 percent, SFCC President Norm Stephens said Tuesday. Also, summer enrollment appears to have increased by 10 percent over the 2007 summer term.

Changes students may notice is the college is working to create more opportunities for student activities and to improve student social life on campus.

The upper level of the gymnasium was renovated into a Panther activity center and a game room will be created in the student union.

"We are redoing the amphitheater outside so that students have an outdoor place where they can gather and socialize and study," Stephens said. "It's always been a student-friendly college from my perspective.

"We are just trying ... to do everything we can to make this a place where students want to be and want to stay and want to learn."

SFCC freshman Jeffery Richards' main goal is to study computers at the University of South Florida.

He has been talking with his brother-in-law about a computer-related or information technology job in Atlanta.

After one day in class Richards said "it's looking OK right now, I'm fixing to go into my first math class. I'm kind of shaky about that, but I'll be alright."

Richards said about SFCC, "it's pretty easy to get around, that's what I like about it."

Marc Valero can be reached at 386-5826 or mvalero@highlandstoday.com

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