Northwest Vista College math professor Faranak Bayat teaches on campus in San Antonio in early March.
Photographer: Kaylee Greenlee for Bloomberg Businessweek
A Texas Community College Remaps the Path From School to Career
Community colleges, meant to be a gateway to the American dream, haven’t consistently delivered. A San Antonio system may have figured it out.
On the first day of an introductory course on anatomy and physiology, Susan Cuellar sat at a table in the back of a classroom at Northwest Vista College, on the western edge of San Antonio, puzzling over a challenge. Her professor, Roberto Gonzales, greeted his students, who sat in groups of four, with blocks of wood and a pile of basic 3-inch nails. He instructed them to attempt a complex puzzle involving balancing the nails.
The teams fumbled around as nails clattered to the table. “It’s all about anatomy,” Gonzales hinted. The structure of the nails, he was trying to suggest, could hold them in place.