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Teaching College in the High School: Unique Features and Challenges of Site-Based Dual Enrollment
Get PDFAfter a sharp decline associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, 2023 marked two consecutive years of increase in the number of freshman and high-school dual enrollees, with under-18-year-olds driving a disproportionate share of this growth. The rising importance of this latter student group presents new opportunities for colleges as well as underappreciated challenges rooted precisely in the high-school locale of concurrent Dual Enrollment courses. While some known stumbling blocks to effective college-level instruction for high school students are inherent in the age and lower maturity levels of the dominant age cohort, others stem from matters beyond the control of students and instructors, such as different academic policies and environments of the two governing educational institutions or even the federally mandated Internet-filtering across the K-12 system. Based on first-hand observation and supported by surveys of students enrolled in the Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) course entitled PLS 135 (U.S. Government and Politics), including from my own high school, home district (Loudoun County Public Schools), and two neighboring Virginia public-school systems, this paper offers one instructor’s perspective on the benefits and challenges of teaching college-sponsored classes in the high-school building
Front Cover (Spring 2023)
Get PDFMolly, who is a photography major, mostly takes portraits and product photography
Community College Presidents and Campus Safety: Perspectives on Critical Issues
Get PDFCommunity college presidents must understand the phenomenon of campus safety. For this mixed-methods study, community college presidents in one state were surveyed, and three presidents from the same community college system participated in in-depth interviews. Descriptive statistics measured the levels community college presidents’ knowledge and perceptions on campus safety. The in-depth interviews provided a deeper understanding of the connections between community college presidents and campus safety.
Overall, the results show that campus safety is important to community college presidents, who believe that, overall, their institutions are safe. We found that community college presidents believe they should be proactive and reinforce values that promote and prioritize campus safety, follow regulations, and provide sufficient resources to ensure campus safety measures. However, inadequate funding also plays a role in what can be allocated, and community college presidents voiced that they were concerned about promoting safety in the face of declining budgets and resources
Use of a Clinical Skills Training Center to Supplement a Distributive Model of Education in a Veterinary Technology Program
Get PDFA distributive model of education has recently become a popular method for training veterinary technicians in the United States. Although this model has significant benefits, such as decreased cost of program infrastructure, there are significant challenges in managing students and their clinical skill acquisition using private veterinary hospitals. A clinical skills training center was implemented at Tidewater Community College to address a main shortcoming of the distributive model, namely the lack of specialized training models at outside hospitals. Based on survey findings, both students and clinical mentors found the veterinary technology clinical skill training center to be a beneficial addition for student clinical skill acquisition
Supporting English Language Learners in the Era of Direct Enrollment
Get PDFIn the spring of 2021, the Community College System in which the author works was in the middle of a planned three-year pilot of math and English self-placement (“Direct Enrollment”) procedures. Concerns about the significant English language learner (ELL) population at one institution led to the development of a corequisite support course designed to support English language learners as they enrolled in first-semester composition. This course is considered a “gateway” course, with success rates hovering around 60% for traditional students, dropping to under 35% for students age 25 and older. As the planned pilot of Direct Enrollment was underway, faculty and administrators at the College were concerned about how placement and enrollment changes would impact the success of ELLs. In this article, the author outlines the problems faced by two-year institutions with large ELL populations and presents data on success rates in transfer-level English, including the impacts of English Direct Enrollment and the ELL corequisite support course pilot. The author then provides recommendations for how the community college system can support ELLs in accessing the support they need to succeed
How Can a Culturally Responsive Discussion of the Five-Paragraph Essay Help Asian American Students Write Well?
Get PDFThe five-paragraph essay is highly controversial, and yet it has also been a useful format for composition. In this essay we explain why, despite its limits, students need to go along with the format to make what use and get what advantage of it. We then demonstrate that valuing the philosophical, historical, cultural, and educational backgrounds of our students can help navigate away from the restrictive nature of the format and lead to equitable learning for all students. Finally, we introduce a few curriculum designs and instructional practices to expand the epistemological and pedagogical frontiers of the format. In short, we conduct a culturally responsive discussion of issues students with non-Western backgrounds--Asian American students in particular--may encounter when writing the five-paragraph essay. By sharing student learning-focused approaches, we aim to improve Asian American students’ learning experiences
VCCA 2022 Convention Keynote Address: The Mission of the Community College
Get PDFThe community college is an attempt to realize the promise of the Declaration of Independence: the ideal that all are created equal. It is to higher education what universal suffrage is to the ballot, voting rights for all, higher education for all. The mission of the community college is to provide access to education for those to whom it has traditionally been denied