The Demopolis Higher Education Center at the Demopolis Sports-Plex hosted registration on Thursday for summer semester classes to be held at the University of West Alabama and the DHEC.

Employees from the University of West Alabama’s registrar’s office, financial aid office and information systems office were on hand to help students find the classes they wanted. Students could also pre-register for Fall 2010 classes.

“I registered for American History II and pre-calculus algebra,” said Matt Noland of Linden, entering his fifth semester. “I came here because I didn’t want to go to Livingston to register. It was really convenient.”

The summer classes are also convenient for students of other universities who come home for the summer and want to continue their classwork.

“I’ll be home working this summer,” said Auburn freshman Anna Stuedeman. “I signed up for Micro Economics, World Literature and Western Civ II. This is a way for me to build up my class hours without having to stay on campus over the summer.”

DHEC director Angelia Mance said that the education center made surveys to get an idea of what kinds of classes the students would want to take.

“You want to be financially responsible and not offer things you’re going to cancel, but at the same time, you have to try and fulfill the students’ needs as best you can,” she said. “We also want to be responsive. If we see, for example, that there are 10 to 12 people who need a certain math class that we’re not offering, we’ll do everything we can to find personnel who can accommodate that.”

A number of students took advantage of the early registration for the semester, which begins June 1.

“One of the things that I have been happy with is that there is a real responsiveness from UWA,” Mance said of the center’s first year under the management of the Livingston university. “Even though we are smaller right now and growth is slow, you see that we are able to get a full team of folks over here to help register students. That is something we’ve never had on this campus before.

“The fact that we are geographically class and we have the admissions representatives here all the time and other campus employees over here — plus the fact that they have such an interest in Demopolis — means that we have a lot more resources to offer the community and our students.”

Registration for Summer 2010 classes will be open into May. For more information, call the Demopolis Higher Education Center at (334) 287-0174.