Project Connect: Smoothing the Transition
From High School to College

Moving from high school to the very different world of college can be difficult for even the most capable and mature students. But a collaborative team of high school and Berkshire Community College (BCC) faculty and staff in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has created a way to ease the transition with Project Connect.

Project Connect is a two-week summer program for traditional-age students entering BCC. Developed under a Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant, this program serves approximately 50 students from county high schools each summer. Students have an opportunity to earn three college credits, improve their math placement, and get a heads up on differences between high school and college.

More Than Summer School

Project Connect is not your typical summer program. High school and BCC faculty and staff teach together, and the curriculum is developed around a different work of nonfiction each year. The text threads components together to provide students with a cohesive learning-community experience. Components include English, Math, Technology, Wellness, Stop Action, and Career as Student.

Students are required to read the text prior to the program. In English the text and supplemental readings are used to introduce students to college-level reading and give them a sense of the reading workload in college. The intent is not to remediate but to help developmental-level students understand their placement and to acquaint all students with college expectations for written assignments and for the sort of work that goes on in any college English class.

In Math, students assess on Accuplacer and are grouped according to ability. They are given content review and an opportunity to reassess on the last day of the program. Math faculty also cover math applications tied to the text. With The Perfect Storm, for example, students learned about basic vector mathematics and how vectors are used to chart navigational courses.

In Technology, students sometimes use special software programs. For example, with October Sky, students used RockSim to simulate rocket flight. Technology also focuses on website evaluation and online research.

Wellness features icebreakers and stress-management opportunities such as yoga. But this component is also tied to the text. For example, with this summer’s text, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Wellness faculty will focus on physical conditioning and the effects of oxygen deprivation on the body.

Two innovative components are Stop Action and Career as Student. Study skills are usually taught in isolation. However, Stop Action, created by Project Connect team members, teaches study strategies in the context of academic lectures on topics from the summer’s text. The lectures are choreographed by faculty lecturers and study-skills instructors. Together they choose the lecture topics and decide which skills to model during the lectures given during the two weeks. A Stop Action lecture begins, and then, at an agreed-upon point, the action of the academic lecture is stopped and skills such as note taking are modeled for students. Then the action of the lecture continues. Other strategies that are modeled include visual aids, memorization techniques, and reading and marking a text. Stop Action lectures have focused on topics such as The Great Depression and dance marathons, with Seabiscuit as text. During Stop Action lectures, students are given not only subject matter but, more important, the tools to learn and to remember that material. Experience has demonstrated that if students are shown study skills at the moment they need to use them, they see their immediate value, remember them, and are more apt to apply them than if they were taught these skills in isolation.

The Career as Student component was an outgrowth of one of the most valuable lessons learned from collaboration: how different the high school and college cultures are. The environments, expectations, languages, and pedagogies are very different, and when students enter college, they find it difficult to adjust to these.

For many high school students, the guidance counselor was a lifeline. When they enter college, they do not know how to advocate for themselves and are hesitant to seek out resources. They often fail to realize the importance of being proactive. Many students have misperceptions about college, seeing it as 13^th grade, which leads to their working too many hours. Many lack the habits, skills, or commitment to meet the requirements of college work.

Making an Impact

Career as Student addresses differences between the high school and college cultures and acquaints students with academic and social expectations. Over the two weeks, topics such as college terminology, time management, and setting and reaching educational goals are covered. Instructors use a hands-on interactive approach. For example, to stress the importance of a professor’s syllabus, students are provided with actual course outlines and sent through them on a small-scale scavenger hunt. Activities such as these are followed up by student-driven discussions wherein faculty discover students’ concerns. Videos of BCC students and faculty who teach first-semester courses are also shown. Faculty videos focus on accessibility, expectations regarding workload, academic responsibility, and the problem most of our students face: balancing work and school.

Project Connect has had a remarkable impact on retention and math placement. Fall-to-spring retention rates average 88 percent over six years, compared with 64 precent for control groups. Fall-to-fall retention rates are also significantly higher: 73 percent, compared with 50 percent for control groups.

The math component of the program has been very effective. Some students do not take math in their senior year of high school, and even those who do tend to lose skills quickly. The math component shows that remediation is possible within a short period of time. 0ver six years, nearly 70 percent of program participants have improved their math scores when they retested at the end of the program. Depending on how motivated students are, significant gains are possible, regardless of level. For example, some students move from basic arithmetic to elementary algebra. In summer 2004, 20 percent placed out of developmental math and into college-level math.

Project Connect has become an important program model for institutions across the country interested in developing or enhancing transitional programming and high school-college collaboration. In 2002, BCC received a second FIPSE grant to disseminate the program to six community colleges nationwide. Each will have piloted or repiloted its own Project Connect by summer 2005.

Partners in the Dissemination Project

Greenfield Community College (MA) has built its program around texts by Tracy Kidder, a local author: Home Town in 2004 and Mountains Beyond Mountains in 2005. Like BCC, GCC offers Stop Action and Career as Student and has made its Outdoor Leadership Program an integral part of College Connection. Technology familiarizes students with Blackboard and connects students and faculty through postings and discussion groups. Twenty-three of the initial 24 students completed the three-credit, free program in summer 2004. Initial data is “very positive” according to Lead Faculty Coordinator Peter Rosnick. Rosnick also indicated GCC is excited and energized by the internal collaboration between faculty and student services. GCC has expanded its faculty team and will run two sections of College Connection in summer 2005.

Tacoma Community College (WA) piloted its program in summer 2004, using Farewell to Manzanar as text. TCC thematically linked three courses: a developmental reading course, a developmental English course, and a student success seminar. Speakers included an internee from one of the camps and a representative from the ACLU. The program had positive results and supportive student surveys. For this summer, TCC is looking at better ways to create a learning community.

For Madison Area Technical College (WI), following the BCC model and involving high school teachers in the planning and implementation of its Learning to Learn Camp has had enormous benefits. Lead faculty coordinator Karen Anderson says, “We better understand issues related to the students’ transition from high school to college when we work with our colleagues from the high schools. Having both counselor and teachers as part of camp staff helps us better serve our new crop of students by remembering what it was like to be a high school student.” Anderson also believes the importance of faculty working directly with staff from around the college, full and part time, cannot be overstated. With this project, “Bridges are being built within the college between our student service area – including student life, counseling, recruiting, orientation, to name a few – a faculty, which brings about an incredible appreciation for the gifts and talents that we all bring.” MATC’s program was piloted for 50 students in summer 2004. MATC is working on data collection now, but anecdotal suggests students who went through the program were already integrated into the institution at the start of the fall semester. MATC will repilot this summer and will target 100 entering students. Using a book for the college success program has aligned this initiative with a collegewide program, Reading Together at MATC, and placed an emphasis on reading as an important part of the college experience.

Houston Community College System’s Central College (TX) will use East of New York, West of Kabul as a text “because it contains such timely and yet universal considerations about our world and the students I am serving,” says Lead Faculty Coordinator Gary Wannamaker. “It is also written in a very readable style but tackles, chapter after chapter, some very profound and practical yet controversial issues.” The Central students will also use Emotional Intelligence, giving them the opportunity to “generalize EI materials to settings and questions that they might not otherwise have thought of.” Math content review will also be offered.
Lansing Community College (MI) had planned a program that closely replicated Project Connect. However, when budget constraints forced the team to scale down its plans, LCC came up with a way to piggyback components of Project Connect on their orientation and offer a one-week program. LCC will use Luis Rodriguez’s Hearts and Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times as the text. With Writing, Career as Student, and Stop Action, LCC will introduce traditional-age entering students to the critical competencies they need to be successful: assuming responsibility and the academic skills and attitudes needed for effective learning.

De Anza Community College (CA) will pilot its four-week Project Connect this summer simultaneously with its summer session. De Anza is recruiting underrepresented socioeconomically and educationally disadvantaged students and interviewing candidates along with their parents or guardians to see how these students have stumbled educationally. The program will consist of English (reading and writing), using Farewell to Manzanar and Fences. Technology will be a hybrid computer-skills course taught both online and in a wireless lab to familiarize students with computer skills and wireless-lab techniques. Stop Action techniques will be used in both the English and Computer Skills courses. Students will also participate in a counseling component designed to familiarize them with college life and will be taken on a campus tour of a four-year institution in the area.

A culminating conference to the dissemination grant will be held in the Berkshires from September 29 to October 2, 2005. All partnering institutions will be present to share program adaptations, best practices, and lessons learned. Workshops and training sessions in methodologies such as Stop Action, Career as Student, successful high school-college partnerships, and adapting a proven program model will be offered.

For more information, contact Project Connect at Berkshire Community College, 1350 West Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201, 413-499-4660, ext. 385.