College appeals to late students

A few weeks back, John Ziebell, chairman of the English department at the College of Southern Nevada, stopped at Starbucks on his way to work.

He saw the front page of the New York Times, which had a story about experiments at some community colleges, many of them back East.

These schools, overcrowded shrines for the jobless and undereducated in a time of recession like all community colleges, were trying to ease the strain on their schedules by adding late-night classes.

Really late-night. Like, midnight classes.

Good idea, Ziebell thought. That should work really well in Las Vegas, a 24-hour town if there ever was one. He pitched it to Darren Divine, the school's interim vice president for academic affairs.

Over the course of the day, two or three more people who had seen the same Times article pitched the same idea to Divine.

It was widely known around the college that, with demand up and budgets down, something drastic had to be done.

And so, beginning next semester, the college is going to offer a half-dozen classes at midnight. There will be English, math, science, history and communications. The basics. For now.

The school, where enrollment grew again this past semester to top 43,000, is stretched to the breaking point. There will be no money for new buildings anytime soon. And enrollment is probably going to keep going up.

"If we're going to continue to meet the demand, we've got to offer more classes," Divine said.

The move should cost very little money, he said. A few dollars to leave the lights on a couple of extra hours, a computer technician scheduled late at night in case of problems. Maybe an extra security guard. That's about it.

All midnight classes will run twice a week, from midnight to 1:20 a.m., in the same building on the West Charleston campus.

Divine thinks it will be a huge hit. He said no professors are going to be forced to teach the midnight classes.

It's all voluntary.

"We'll see," he said. "If it's a success and students like it and instructors can stay awake, then absolutely we'll continue to do it."

And what of those instructors? Who in the world would sign up for this?

Well, Patrick Barton would.

Barton teaches Communications 101, public speaking. He's kind of a night owl anyway, he said.

Besides, his fiancée works a late schedule on the Strip, so his being up late will actually benefit his personal life.

He figures there are enough students, or potential students, who work night shifts and so would be interested in taking a course after work rather than before it, say at 2 p.m.

Joel Johnson thinks the same thing. He signed up to teach a basic math class at midnight.

"I don't mind being a guinea pig," he said. "I know the classes are going to fill up. We have unbelievable demand. If they opened up classes at any time, they'd fill up."

According to numbers provided by the college, there were 55,000 unsuccessful attempts by 12,000 students to sign up for a math or science class this fall. Most of those people signed up for a class at another time, but many did not.

The officials said more than 5,000 people who tried to sign up for a class that was full ended up not signing up for any class at all.

The school is scheduled to announce the midnight classes today, while registration for next semester is ongoing. It's anyone's guess what will happen, but Divine believes the midnight classes are not going to go away.

"I think demand will be staggering," he said. "The more I think about it, the more I think, 'Why didn't we do this sooner?'"

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.