Hello again from Indianapolis! With temperatures dipping below zero, we’re all happy we had a full program that prevented any need to venture outside.
Yesterday, the DEI colleges, technical assistance providers, and partners met to discuss the initiative’s progress and future. As we reported yesterday, the day included a panel on effective implementation and scaling up with Maria Straus of Houston Community College and Lisa Dresdner of Norwalk Community College. But there was so much more.
The day began with Byron McClenney of the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas questioning the group to find out how many had taken some key steps he believes are important to improve the retention of students in dev ed (or to help them bypass it altogether). He asked questions like: How many colleges have eliminated late registration? Are doing individual assessments for every new student? Are doing in-depth diagnostic testing for each student? Are taking special steps for students who just miss the dev ed cutoff? Offer student orientations? Require student success courses? Are tracking retention of dev ed students after they start regular coursework? At most, half of the hands in the room went up to each question. “If you didn’t raise your hand, be thinking about that conversation you’ve been having at home,” McClenney said. “Are we doing all that we need to do, especially for those students who don’t have a history of success in school—which is most of our students?”
The rest of the morning was spent discussing professional development design, with a panel featuring Carolyn Byrd of Patrick Henry Community College and Nick Bekas of Valencia Community College. Bekas talked about the importance of having a strong faculty development program in place—and not taking grants without having plans to institutionalize the work. Byrd emphasized the importance of engaging all stakeholders, looking at the data—but always working closely with the faculty because “they’ve got to be the ones to lead this charge.” She went into detail about Patrick Henry’s cooperative learning model—which was a faculty idea. Faculty were sent to training to implement it, and were trained to train more faculty. The hardest part: training all the adjunct faculty. But now, some adjuncts are being trained as trainers. Bekas cited the way Valencia developed its supplemental learning program by starting with a pilot on one campus, proving its effectiveness, then recruiting more faculty to participate, with faculty then taking the lead on recruiting students to help. There are now 300 sections serving around 8,000 students in the program, he said.
Other key insights: Have faculty development covered in the accreditation process; use technology and faculty blogs to keep track of what’s going on; provide incentives to faculty and adjuncts who participate (at Valencia they use some student activity money); have faculty who go to conferences report back on what they’ve learned; integrate the programs into budget planning; math faculty are sometimes the hardest to bring on board, but they’ll usually come around; cooperative learning has the additional benefit of teaching social skills, which is important to employers; and never have a program that’s dependent on one person (who might leave).
Check back in a bit for a recap of the afternoon.
Richard Hart is MDC's Communications Director.
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