Williston High School, the Regional Education Association and Williston State Community College have all joined together to offer dual credit opportunities for local and area high school students.

"Dual credit is not new," Williston State College Foundation Executive Director Terry Olson said. "I think what (Williston High School Principal) Chris (Kittleson) and (Williston State Director for Distance Education) Wanda (Meyer) were trying to find was a way to make dual credit more affordable. I think that was the premise and after that it kind of took off."

What dual credit does is give students a chance to earn college credit in a high school environment at half the cost of regular tuition.

"From our (WHS and REA) end, it's a great challenge to get the kids to take dual credit," Kittleson said. "We had close to 13 kids that were taking dual credit classes at Williston and I've got a school complex of 730. We thought if we could make it more affordable, then the kids will more than likely be able to go ahead and take some dual credit classes."

Course offerings include classes in English, math and foreign language. Here is how the dual credit system would work. Dual credit classes taught at WHS would translate into the following credits at WSC: Dual Credit English (1/2 credit at WHS would become English Comp I and worth 3 credits at WSC), Functions and Trigonometry (1 credit at WHS would become College Algebra and worth 3 credits and Trigonometry worth 2 credits at WSC), Probability and Statistics (1/2 credit at WHS would become Elementary Stats worth 3 credits at WSC), Spanish III, IV (1 credit at WHS would become Spanish 1-4 worth 16 credits at WSC) and German III, IV (1 credit at WHS would become German 1-4 worth 16 credits at WSC). In Spanish and German, students would register during the junior year for Spanish 1-2 credit or German 1-2 credit depending on recommendation of competency from the instructor.

Other dual credit classes taught at WSC are Meteorology, Cisco /IT Essentials, Physical Geology, Intro to Sociology, Applied Welding, Diesel Mechanics, Calculus (I, II and III), Intro to Psychology (prerequisite required) and Fundamentals of Speaking. All are worth 1/2 credit.

"My seniors have a tendency to want to take their senior year off," Kittleson said. "They'll take English, they'll take Government and they'll take some cush classes to kind of just float through. So, by the time they get ready to go to college, they've had basically a year where they haven't honed their skills for a period of time."

Meyer concurred.

"They (students) come into college classes and they don't remember their math or their English as well," Meyer said. "The dual credit kids are good students and they're pretty sharp. This will be a chance to get more of the students into that category. This will keep their skills up and succeed at a much higher rate."

Another positive is the fact that the colleges accept these classes for credit.

"These classes will transfer any place," Meyer said. "They (the students) are not taking anything that is not going to transfer."

Kittleson said his aim is to allow students at WHS to take, "Challenging classes worthy of college credit."

Olson said the WSC Foundation unanimously supported the program.

"The Foundation came into play after the presentation from Wanda to our board," he said. "We needed to find a way to reduce the cost for these potential dual credit students. That's where we came in. We've dedicated quite a few dollars to this program and that's going to increase the numbers, increase the enrollment, increase our credit numbers offered. Our function as a community college is we're suppose to help the area community schools and this is going to be a great way to do that."

Olson said in the past that WSC has had funding for students from Williams and McKenzie counties, but they really wanted to be able to do the same for students from Divide County, Burke County and Mountrail County.

"This gives us greater connection to our area schools and we're providing something I think they really want to see," Olson said.

Besides WHS, the following area schools are in the REA: Alexander, Bowbells, Burke Central, Divide County, Grenora, Ray, New Town, Parshall, Powers Lake, Trenton, New Public School District 8, Kenmare, Mandaree, Tioga, Stanley and Watford City.