Starting this semester, Diablo Valley College is adding new short-term classes in order to increase enrollment rates.

These six-week classes are scheduled in the late afternoon or early evening, beginning in mid-October and ending before Thanksgiving.

Kim Schenk, senior dean of curriculum and instruction, notes that “these sections are targeted for people who may be working in the day and find it hard to commit to an 18 week course.”

Chrisanne Knox, director of marketing and communications, says that these classes could also meet the needs of “a homeschooled student, a high school student looking for something not offered at their high school, or even one of our current students who may have dropped a class early on and find this as the perfect opportunity to make up those units they dropped.”

Since short-term classes have fewer weeks to cover the same amount of material that full-term classes cover, six-week classes meet about two hours per day for four days a week.

“The six-week format is intense, but it is over quickly, and that works better for some students,” Knox notes.

DVC hopes to add about 600 FTES (full time equivalent students) to the schedule through these short-term classes. In the fall term, about 20 sections of general education and career programs are being offered.

Whether the school will continue to offer these six-week classes depends on the student body’s response.

“If students like the pace, enroll, and are successful then we will have done a good thing and will certainly consider continuing,” Knox said.