A note from Kim Hartwell, the Development Officer with our Palomar College Foundation:
It is my pleasure to update you on the success of the Textbook Assistance Program here at Palomar College.
For those who may not know, the Textbook Assistance Program started in 2009 at Palomar College to address the ongoing and critical problem of students not being able to afford their required textbook for their class.
Oftentimes students would try to get by without a textbook; and more often than not, end up failing the class. What started as a small $100 assistance program has grown into a widely popular, necessary, well-known and well-run student support program.
Since 2009, the Foundation (and several of our donors), have contributed over $750,000 to this program. This equates to the purchase of over 9,000 books given as direct textbook assistance to 6,500 Palomar students.
Additionally, a portion of the $750,000 has gone towards funding the Library reserves at both the San Marcos and Escondido campuses. Library statistics show that the books purchased for the reserves since 2009 have been checked out by students close to 100,000 times!
(Below is a recent email from Tamara Weintraub, Library Chair, on the circulations just for this past year).
“On behalf of the Library, I wish to thank the Foundation for their ongoing support of our students with funding that allows the Library to purchase textbooks that we may lend to them. During the 2015/16 Academic Year,
we were able to purchase a total of 158 new textbooks for students to use at both the San Marcos Campus and Escondido Center Libraries, which brought our entire Foundation reserves collection of textbooks to 774 (including those purchased previously and still in use).
During the 2015/16 Academic Year, these books were checked out a total of 12,603 times! This number reflects a remarkable and ongoing need for these books by our students, and demonstrates the tremendous benefit of the Textbook Assistance Program. I’ve attached a list of the books that were checked out 100+ times during the year. We truly appreciate the Foundation’s tremendous support in making this possible.”
I just thought I’d share the impressive results of this very important program. Should you have any questions at all, please feel free to contact me.
And of course, if you ever encounter a student who is in need of financial assistance with a textbook, please send him/her our way!
