McDowell Early College sees growth in first six years

MCDOWELL COUNTY, N.C.,None — McDowell Early College (MEC) has seen tremendous growth over the last six years.

The school allows students to earn college credit and even an associate degree during high school.

Lisa Robinson has been the principal at MEC since it started and has seen how the program has grown.

“The initial plan (for MEC) was for 200 students,” she said. “We hoped to take 40 students in each year for five years and have our top number of students by year five. Our first year we took basically every student that applied and we only had 33 students.”

Currently, the school has enrolled 207 students, with many more kids interested in joining MEC.

“This year we have 40 slots available,” said Robinson. “In the past, we’ve usually had twice as many applicants as spots, but this year it’s looking like we’ll have at least three times as many applicants.”

The program, which this year switched to an A-B schedule, gives kids an idea of what to expect from college classes.

“We decided to change to the A-B schedule so that our schedule could be more like a community college’s,” said Robinson.

The A-B schedule allows kids to take eight classes at one time for an entire year. Each class runs 75 minutes and students attend that class two days a week.

Even though kids are taking college courses, educators still want them to know what the high school experience is like. That’s one of the reasons Fridays are set aside as a special day filled with school-wide activities.

Fridays are known at MEC as flexible Fridays where students can meet with an advisory-type group. These groups are called families. Each one is composed of kids from different grades, and they participate in different types of fundraising activities, community projects and other events.

The school also makes it a point to meet with the entire student body and discuss the week’s happenings.

“We also have an all-school meeting on Friday, which is unusual for a school to do, but because we’re so small we can,.” said Robinson. “We meet every Friday as a whole group and during that time we do announcements. Students can also voice any concerns they have and present any presentations they have created for class.”

The last day of the week is also a time where students can attend different club meetings and have a typical high school experience with groups like the Knitting Club or Key Club.

“With such a small school, it’s hard to have a myriad of electives,” she said. “We just don’t have enough staff to equip a large number of electives. Rather than have electives, we have flexible Fridays which can be used for those clubs.”

For now, MEC will continue to have approximately 200 students because of the space currently available.

Even with limited space, Robinson knows that in order to grow the school, she will still have to work to attract students,

Applications are currently being accepted for students interested in attending MEC. Applications can be found on the school’s website and must be postmarked or turned in at MEC by Feb. 28.

After being received, applications will be looked over and then students will be randomly selected to attend MEC.

WSOC