Kylie Gautreaux
April 26, 2017
Irma Mayet
April 27, 2017
This weekend at Nicholls State University, runners and seafood lovers will be pinching heads and sucking tails to help local students.
The Bayou Industrial Group, a collection of South Louisiana companies and businesspeople, is hosting its annual Crawfish Crawl on Saturday near Guidry Stadium at Nicholls. The event will feature a fun run followed by a 5K race, all while an array of teams compete to see who can boil the best crawfish. While runners will get some free mud-bugs as part of their registration, those not breaking a sweat on the course can still swing by and purchase some of the abundant crawfish available.
The run and the seafood are usually enough reasons to get
people to show up to an event, but the main attraction is the cause. The BIG donates all of the money it raises at the Crawfish Crawl to local students attending Nicholls and Fletcher Technical Community College. Andre Cortez, who is chairing BIG’s Crawfish Crawl committee this year, said some scholarships follow students for four years while others are one-time payments. Cortez said last year’s boil-off raised $11,000 spread across 12 scholarships.
Cortez said last year’s event had 14 teams, with teams signing up near that figure this year. She is still looking for additional teams and credited BIG’s ability to grow the Crawfish Crawl each year, with the event’s move from Peltier Park to Nicholls a testament to that growth.
“We physically outgrew Peltier Park, so we’re having it at Nicholls. We’re just trying to get teams involved and raise more money to give to scholarships,” Cortez said.
That growth could be necessary, as more students are looking for additional help this year. According to Cortez, this year BIG has already received around 80 applications for scholarships, considerably higher than the 52 it received last year, a rise Cortez credits to the Crawfish Crawl getting more exposure.
The rise in applications comes at a time when students across Louisiana are looking for additional money to pay for higher education in lieu of the state’s declining contributions. Before this past year, qualifying students applying for college could count on the state’s Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) to cover tuition to any state college or university. However, with the state facing multiple budget shortfalls over the past year and the legislature having limited options to cut spending, legislators have taken a budget scalpel to TOPS. Last year, legislators voted to “de-couple” TOPS payments from university tuition, meaning money to students would no longer be required to cover an institution’s tuition costs.
Facing another large budget gap heading into 2017, legislators also voted to cut TOPS funding by almost a third for this year. Students were told before this school year started they would receive nearly a full TOPS scholarship in the fall at 93 percent funding, but their spring payments would be at only 48 percent of the original level for 2016-17. A Nicholls student would receive about $3,300 in 2016-17 instead of the $4,900 he or she would get with a fully-funded TOPS. According to Nicholls’ website, a Louisiana resident taking 12 hours at the university would have to pay about $3,800 in tuition and fees for just the upcoming fall semester, well above this year’s TOPS award for the entire year before accounting for possible room and board and meal plan costs. A Fletcher student receiving around $3,200 this year with a fully-funded tops is only receiving almost $2,200 instead due to the cuts.
Representatives from both Nicholls and Fletcher have said the scholarship money for BIG has been a great help to local students looking to continue their education in the Bayou Region. Fletcher Community Relations Director Nicol Blanchard said last year BIG gave four scholarships totaling $2,000 to students going to the technical college. Brandy St. Pierre, assistant director of financial aid and scholarships at Nicholls, said NSU has eight students currently receiving a BIG scholarship this semester, with the number usually hovering around six or seven. St. Pierre said BIG scholarships at Nicholls have totaled $22,000 over the last three years.
Nicholls Director of Admissions Becky Durocher said the scholarships have been “life-changing” for some students and invaluable to a local university like Nicholls. She said some students see a gap in college affordability even after accounting for federal financial aid and other scholarships. For first-time college attendees, that gap can be a daunting number, which a BIG scholarship can alleviate.
“For some students in families where no one has attended college, when they see the gap sometimes it’s challenging for them. Some of them may not be in college period without that scholarship,” Durocher said.
Even with the state reining in its financial aid to Louisiana students, Nicholls has continued to increase numbers on campus. The university has made year-to-year enrollment gains for three straight semesters. She said Nicholls has increased its student orientations and campus open houses to bring more prospective students on campus while also improving its recruiting communications efforts. She also credited Nicholls president Dr. Bruce Murphy for adamantly keeping tuition stable, as giving Nicholls an affordability advantage is critical at such times. According to Durocher, NSU’s figures like prospects, applicants, admitted students and those attending new student orientation point to that progress continuing this fall semester.
“We’re ahead of the game and we want to stay there, so we want to continue converting these students into enrolled students in the fall,” Durocher said.
Durocher said St. Pierre and the others at the financial aid office were diligent in helping students find any form of money available to stay enrolled as their TOPS financial aid was slashed this spring semester. Durocher said while Nicholls staff has confidence in the legislature working to keep the promise it made to Louisiana students by fully funding TOPS, Nicholls’ phones continue to ring with parent concerns about financial aid. Durocher said a fully-funded TOPS would give students confidence in a quality, debt-free college experience in state, keeping Louisiana’s brightest minds local in the long-term.
“It’s never going to be good for us to perceive if there’s trouble in Louisiana or if there’s trouble with the TOPS scholarship,” Durocher said. “We would prefer the students don’t leave the state of Louisiana because we’re afraid they would leave and not come back.”
‘Nicholls Director of Admissions Becky Durocher said the scholarships have been ‘life changing’ for some students and invaluable to a local university like Nicholls.’
Nicholls State University has seen year-to-year enrollment increases for three straight semesters, and Admissions Director Becky Durocher said current figures are pointing toward a fourth straight this fall.
