Innovations
Digital badges, or micro-credentials, are portable, verifiable, data rich, digital representations of attained knowledge and skills that provide evidence of specific, tangible skills: cognitive, soft, and technical. Digital badges align training with the needs of the workforce, and provide Madison College the opportunity to award meaningful and recognized credentials that go beyond the traditional boundaries of our degrees. They also empower individuals to take their learning achievements with them, wherever they go, allowing the earner to own their knowledge.
Madison College has been issuing...
Enhancing partnerships in career and technical education (CTE) is essential to community colleges’ efforts to serve students, businesses, and local communities. These partnerships are critical to designing curriculum; teaching up-to-date content and skills; and staying abreast of technological demands, business trends, and employment expectations. In Mississippi, CTE focuses on developing and implementing research-based instructional programs that meet growing workforce needs and promote economic development (Advance CTE, n.d.). In the 2017-2018 academic year, 20,411 degrees and certificates...
Since its founding in 1961, Monroe Community College (MCC), a public institution within the State University of New York (SUNY) system, has earned a reputation as a leader in workforce education in the Upstate New York region. The college’s LadderzUP project, a public-public (PuP) partnership between MCC’s Economic and Workforce Development Center and Monroe County, offers workforce training that links county funding to college educational resources to address persistently difficult to fill positions in industry and provides access to short cycle and accelerated educational programs for...
The Arapahoe Community College (ACC) Sturm Collaboration Campus hosted a panel discussion and facility tour with education, industry, government, and community leaders on January 21, 2020, in Castle Rock, Colorado, to showcase ACC’s dynamic work-based learning programs and postsecondary certificates connecting industry and education. Apprenticeships in the fields of health care, manufacturing, and automotive service technology were highlighted, and several current and former ACC students were on hand to speak about their career-focused educational experience. Attendees included U.S....
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March
2020
The League thanks those who attended the 2020 Innovations Conference as participants, award winners, sponsors, and exhibitors, and hopes you enjoy this highlight video.
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Leadership at Mesa Community College (MCC) and Mesa Public Schools (MPS) worked together to strategize methods to increase persistence and college attendance for high school students, with an emphasis on populations facing the most challenges. The resulting Mesa Community College High School Advisor Program creates a one-stop enrollment experience and is increasing the number of Mesa public high school students enrolling at the college.
Through the partnership, an MCC college advisor is embedded in each of the six MPS high schools to recruit students, provide seamless transition to MCC,...
Community college faculty, staff, and administrators face many challenges as they work to support student success, and the mental health of students ranks high on the list of concerns. In fact, suicide is the second leading cause of death among 10- to 34-year-olds (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019) and the tenth leading cause of death across all age groups in the U.S. (National Institute of Mental Health, 2019). Colleges have a unique opportunity to support student success through targeted efforts to reduce the suicide rate.
House Bill 28 (Anielski, R-Walton Hills, OH), passed...
February
2020
Dr. O'Banion discusses the shift in mission to focus on success as equal to access as one of the most significant developments in the history of the American community college and lists national efforts significant to the Learning-Centered Education Movement and the Student Success Movement.
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Researchers define a first-generation student as the first member of a family to attend college (Chen, 2005; Ishitani, 2006; Redford & Mulvaney Hoyer, 2017). In the U.S., these students are more likely to be African American or Hispanic (Chen, 2005), come from a lower socioeconomic status (Jenkins, Miyazaki, & Janosik, 2009; Redford & Mulvaney Hoyer, 2017), and have a higher rate of attrition at the collegiate level than their counterparts (Chen, 2005; Lohfink & Paulsen, 2005; Nuñez & Cuccaro-Alamin, 1998). Students who are first-generation as well as low-income are at a...
Students in the Radiation Therapy Technology program at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) are training on equipment just like that used at leading teaching hospitals around the world. In fall 2018, the college acquired a Virtual Environment in Radiotherapy Training (VERT) system that enables students to practice direct hands-on skills in a radiation-free virtual setting without risk to the patient. The virtual simulator replicates the controls of a linear accelerator, which delivers targeted doses of radiation to cancer patients, bringing the level of training typically used in...
Students at Mesa Community College receive hands-on learning experiences each semester with two days of simulated emergency medical scenarios. MCC’s Immersive Total Patient Management Experience (ITPME) is a multi-college, cross-disciplinary educational event exposing entry-level EMT, paramedic, nursing, psychology, and theatre/film arts students to potential real-life emergency scenarios and training.
In addition to providing workforce experience training, the event encourages a larger dialogue among educators about the nature of innovative collaboration to create the most comprehensive...
About 12 years ago, I discovered that a handful of students in my fiction writing courses each semester wanted to be screenwriters. I’d always been interested in film myself, so, recognizing an opportunity for students, Delta College, and my own growth, I attended Gotham Writers Workshop to learn scriptwriting. When I offered Introduction to Screenwriting for the first time in the winter of 2008, the course filled in six days. Clearly, I had discovered a topic in which students had an interest.
Between 2008 and 2012, Delta College developed Advanced Screenwriting, Introduction to Digital...
Like most community colleges across the U.S., Kirkwood Community College embodies the widely celebrated educational ideal that it’s never too late to get a college education. This ideal is on display every day at 10 campuses spread out over the college’s seven-county service area in eastern Iowa. In fact, the age range for enrolled, degree-seeking students at the college is from 16 to 74 years old, and that range grows even wider when dual enrollment numbers are considered.
When Kirkwood first opened its doors in 1966, the educational delivery format was the same for every student, no matter...
How can a first-generation Latina, a community college dropout, become a rising scholar in physics at UC Berkeley and a researcher at Switzerland’s CERN Laboratory? How can a first‑generation African American male, a university and community college dropout, become a UC Davis graduate in electrical engineering? How can a first-generation Latino, who commuted daily across the San Diego-Tijuana border to attend college, become a Georgia Tech graduate and a NASA Aerospace Engineer? What transforms the lives of students in the San Diego City College Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (...
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Across the U.S., colleges are structuring and implementing strategies, initiatives, and programs to address equity gaps in academic achievement. There is much work to be done, as inequities continue to exist in policies and practices. The good news is that under the right conditions, with the right team members and supportive leadership, it is possible to build a community of equity-minded faculty to work toward more inclusive classrooms.
Cultural change takes time, and change is a learning process. Change “requires institutional actors to unlearn normative perspectives that students alone...
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Community College of Allegheny County: State-of-the-Art Film Technician Center Opens on South Campus
The Community College of Allegheny County’s South Campus held a ribbon cutting ceremony in April 2019 to celebrate the opening of its new Film Center. Local dignitaries, administrators, faculty, staff, and students were in attendance to share in the festivities and view the space, which has been transformed to house the campus’s highly successful Film Technician program.
Launched at South Campus in the spring of 2017, CCAC’s Film Technician program is designed to address the shortage of qualified film crew members in the Pittsburgh region. The program focuses on the technical aspects of the...
According to Inc. magazine (Curtain, 2017), the number one skill that high paying employers want in employees is the ability to solve complex problems. At Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina, we are striving to help students develop problem-solving skills with the support of staff and faculty across the college through Student Applied Benchmarking (SAB). Students in this program design solutions to problems with the help of college employees. The culmination of this collaborative effort is the SAB Showcase, an event that provides students with the opportunity to...
Chandler-Gilbert Community College’s (CGCC) Food and Green Waste Recycling Project is a collaborative grant-funded effort that offers cross-disciplinary and experiential student learning through the launch of an innovative solution for food and green waste recycling needs. The project evolved from a passionate idea inspired by student projects showcased during CGCC’s Sustainability Day in 2017 to a campuswide initiative in the span of just one year. In 2019, CGCC won the Maricopa Community Colleges Innovation of the Year Award for this project.
Experiential, Cross-Disciplinary Efforts...
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Those at Moraine Valley Community College (MVCC) in Palos Hills, Illinois, believe that the measure of student success is best determined by the students themselves. With that in mind, the college’s Completion Commitment Committee implemented several initiatives, including a Retention Academy, to help students reach their goals.
Student success can be completion of a degree, but it can also be completing a class or achieving a passing grade. “Of course, when we talk about completion, we want students to earn a degree, but that’s not the only way they are successful,” said Dr. Margaret Lehner...
Made possible through a new partnership between the Maricopa County Community College District and GED Testing Service, Rio Salado College students can now use their GED scores to demonstrate college readiness and college-level skills. The GED College Ready and College Ready + Credit scores are based on recommendations from the American Council on Education (ACE) Credit Program, the same program that backs CLEP and other advanced placement testing college credit recommendations. As is the case with these other programs, students may be eligible to receive college credit for courses aligned...
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