A recent decline in enrollment at Northwest College — and a decrease in the number of students living in NWC’s residence halls — is delaying the college’s plans for renovating Cody Hall.

NWC President Stefani Hicswa told the college’s Board of Trustees last week that efforts to renovate Cody Hall are slowing down “a little bit” to take a look at new information. Earlier this year, the board had approved a $3 million project to fix up the hall, which has been closed due to water damage since the summer of 2017. The dormitory had been set to reopen as soon as soon as August 2019.

However, according to Lisa Watson, NWC’s vice-president of administrative service and finance, recent declines in enrollment mean reduced revenue to service the projected debt associated with renovating Cody Hall. Watson also highighted the fact that NWC is faced with two generations of facilities whose maintenance needs are happening at the same time.

NWC officials were scheduled to go before the Wyoming State Loan and Investment Board earlier this month to request a $3 million loan to renovate Cody Hall — a project which had been approved by the Wyoming State Building Commission in July, Hicswa said.

“Since then, HCM Architects and Scion [and Saunders], which is a subconsultant of MOA, has continued to do a little more work on updating that housing plan. They have given us some preliminary information that caused us to pause a little bit,” Hicswa told the trustees. “We’re going to meet with the facilities committee, go through some of those details — and I’ll let you know if we decide to move forward in a different kind of direction.”

However, NWC Board of Trustees President Nada Larsen admonished the board to not just focus on current enrollment.

“This is long-range stuff, folks,” Larsen said. “The fact that we are down in enrollment this year — or even last year and the year before — is something that is [not automatically permanent]. Unless you really want to plan on us being there — if this is what you see as ‘right size’ for Northwest College — we probably better plan on having additional beds. ... Last year, we were stretched at the seams to house the people that we had coming in with Cody Hall closed.”

Operational plan

The trustees also discussed NWC’s operational plan, which operationalizes Hicswa’s goals for the current fiscal year that the board set forth in a planning retreat back in December.

The goals include connecting to the community through such events as Paint the Town Red, developing and revising policies, compliance, finance planning, facility planning, fundraising and developing an information technology security improvement plan.

“Most of this is ongoing?” Larsen asked the president.

“We’re just getting into the year,” Hicswa said. “We’ve changed our planning cycle so we can budget accordingly, but we really just started working on most of this in August and September. We’re just getting started.”

During the operational plan discussion, NWC Trustee Carolyn Danko brought up the possibility of resurrecting a former academic program.

“With the status of the journalism that’s going on in this country, is there a chance that we might be able to bring back a journalism program ever?” Danko asked.

NWC Trustee John Housel echoed the sentiment.

“Somebody needs to be well-educated in journalism,” Housel said.

Hicswa responded that NWC discontinued its journalism program because of low enrollment. However, she was open to the possibility of doing something similar through expanding the photojournalism aspect of the college’s photography program.

“We can look at photojournalism and expanding the photo program as probably a better way to go than just to resuscitate a program that had such a low enrollment,” Hicswa said. “The photography program has strong enrollment. Perhaps there’s a class we can add or something.”

New fitness center policy

The trustees also voted to update NWC’s fitness center policy for college employees and their family members.

The new policy states four things:

• Individual fitness center memberships will be given to regular staff, faculty, interim staff and visiting faculty.

• Adjunct faculty will receive individual memberships during semesters that they teach at NWC.

• Spouses and dependents of eligible college staff and faculty can purchase fitness center memberships at a reduced rate.

• Temporary employees and volunteers at NWC are not eligible for discounted memberships and must pay full price.