When most people are heading home from work, Jocelyn Shaw is driving to Georgia Perimeter College for class.

The GPC dental hygiene major, who juggles three part-time day jobs, is taking advantage of GPC’s online courses and night classes to complete coursework toward her degree, she says.

Shaw is in the same anatomy and physiology class as Will Thomas, who quit his job as a sales manager in the sports industry to pursue a nursing degree. “This has worked out better for my schedule, plus the traffic is better at this time,” says Thomas.

Helping students achieve their goals by offering courses all day—and into the night—is  part of GPC’s accessibility mission and essential for students such as Thomas and Shaw. During the fall and spring semesters, the college offers more than 100 night courses at its five campuses. The night courses are in addition to a full schedule that begins at 7 a.m. on most campuses. Weekend courses are available on some campuses, too.

“We offer the whole range of classes at night,” says Dr. Carl McAllister, who chairs the life and earth sciences department at Clarkston Campus. “Anatomy and physiology courses are always in high demand, as well as chemistry and the Principles of Chemistry.” Daytime classes in chemistry and biology also are available on Saturdays, he says.

GPC biology professor Mark Graves teaches anatomy and physiology at 7 a.m.—and also at 8:30 p.m. It’s a Starbucks-fueled teaching schedule, he says, but necessary to offer the most classes for nontraditional students.

“Most of my students are transitioning into a new career,” he says. “Eighty percent of my students are thinking about nursing, and most of them have been in the work force, and they are a little more focused in terms of what they now want in a career.”

Students attending the Dunwoody Campus find an added bonus when attending GPC’s evening classes: Traffic is lighter at night than during daytime hours, says Jason Dew, a GPC English professor who also serves as the evening and weekend campus coordinator for Dunwoody. The campus offers more than 60 courses starting at 5:30 p.m. or later.

“A lot of working adults come here at night to take classes; they have jobs, and they are trying to get ahead,” says Dew.

 Traditional students such as Elijah Williams also like evening courses. Williams, a GPC Dunwoody engineering major, decided to take an evening tennis class to fulfill a physical education requirement. “This campus is really nice in the evening; instead of going home, I just stay late after my last afternoon class.”