Columbia High School senior takes advantage of BC’s dual credit program

Nahomi Garcia isn’t much different than other high school students across the country. She’s looking forward to walking in her high school graduation and then heading off to a college or university to earn a bachelor’s degree.

However, this is where the similarities end.

In Nahomi’s case, she will be starting school this fall at the University of Texas in Austin, but she is expected to already have an associate degree in hand. In fact, she’ll have that associate degree even before she receives her high school diploma.

She’s able to accomplish this through the dual credit program at Brazosport College.

Nahomi discovered this possibility after taking her initial dual credit class, Learning Frameworks. Then, after learning that Columbia High School would pay tuition for two classes at BC each semester — an initiative similarly shared by other high schools in the College’s service area, she began moving full steam ahead toward her goal of an associate degree.

“I wanted to take full advantage of this opportunity,” Nahomi said.

Two years later, Nahomi has completed 61 hours at Brazosport College and is on pace to walk at the College’s upcoming commencement ceremony on May 14 and receive her Associate of Science. At the same time, she has a 4.3 high school GPA and is ranked No. 5 in her class at Columbia High School. She’s scheduled to participate in Columbia’s graduation ceremony on May 27.

Nahomi is also incredibly active in her school and community. She participates in varsity cross country, tennis and soccer and has accumulated more than 240 volunteer hours, including working at the local hospital and election voting sites. She even has a part-time job.

Recently, Nahomi’s efforts were recognized with a $2,500 scholarship by Houston TV news station, KPRC.

Obviously, she has many things to be proud of.

“I’m a first-generation student, so this is going to be a great accomplishment,” she said on her graduations. “I know my parents are tremendously proud of everything I’ve done. Hopefully, my story as a first-generation student can help others build that foundation.”

While Nahomi is close to having a degree from Brazosport College, she’s surprisingly only stepped foot on the BC campus a few times.

Outside of the Learning Frameworks class and part of a psychology course, all of her classes have been taken online. At first, she did this out of necessity because the pandemic shut down the campus. Later, she found online classes to be beneficial to her busy schedule and began taking them by choice.

“In-person classes at BC were really difficult for me to do,” Nahomi said. “I have after-school practices and I’m involved in so many activities. Taking classes online just worked much better with my schedule.

“Professors have responded great to emails and have been very helpful,” she added. “I’ve had a very good experience at Brazosport College. Being online, I’ve been able to do everything in my own time.”

Even better, Nahomi found that the same college services that are available in person, such as the writing and math centers, are also offered online.

“I used the writing center, and Milton DeLeon helped me out so many times,” she said. “It was a huge benefit getting me through history, sociology, English and more. Milton would edit my essays and help me make them more meaningful and direct.”

Now that Nahomi is close to moving on to a university to pursue her bachelor’s degree, she’s thankful for the opportunity to take dual credit classes through Brazosport College. She also feels this is something every college-minded high school student should consider.

“Do it as soon as you can,” she said of enrolling in dual credit classes. “Do it to help yourself, but also do it to help your parents. These classes can save your parents a lot of money. After seeing how much they have helped me, a lot of my friends regret not taking dual credits sooner.”

For more information about Brazosport College’s dual credit program, visit brazosport.edu/dualcredit.