Teaching and Learning
A U.S. Navy veteran with 25 years of service, Angela Muhammad is working toward a new career that’s close to her heart: building affordable homes for single parents and the elderly.
“I’ve done missionary work and I’ve seen how we have a deficiency in clean, safe, affordable housing,” said Muhammad, 50, a second-year student in Del Mar College’s Architecture/Drafting Technology program. “I’ve always had an interest in how things are built.”
“There’s a need for this program,” she continued, taking a break in the Architectural Design Studio, where she’s using glue and chipboard to make a small...
Tags:
Congratulations to the 2016 recipients of the League's Innovation of the Year Award!
The League initiated the award over thirty years ago to recognize local community college projects and initiatives that reflect extraordinary achievement and the spirit of innovation and experimentation on which the League was founded. The competition provides an opportunity for League Board and Alliance member colleges to showcase their innovative programs, practices, policies, partnerships, and resources; to celebrate the dedicated educators who are responsible for such exceptional work; and to promote a...
Tags:
San Jacinto College has launched a general studies associate degree pilot program that provides significant cost savings to students who now do not have to buy traditional course materials such as high-cost textbooks.
In lieu of traditional print textbooks that can cost as much as $300 per copy, students who participate in the new program use digital open educational resources (OER) course materials which are free and accessible online. San Jacinto College full-time students previously paid approximately $700 per semester for printed textbooks, which amounts to nearly one-third of the total...
Tags:
Bob Klepac is breaking down the notion that architecture means four walls and a roof. For example, he told a Del Mar College class one morning last summer that one of his former students is designing a meal tray for passenger jets at Boeing. “He’s making over $120,000 a year doing that,” he said.
Klepac, a technical drafting instructor, was a lively observer that day as students in his Technical Animation and Rendering class presented their final projects. The 12-week course introduced them to three-dimensional (3D) computer modeling and the software language of computer-aided design. Their...
Move over kale; the latest trendy vegetable comes from the sea. It’s kelp!
Kelp is a slippery brown seaweed that grows in shallow waters along coastal areas. This unlikely ingredient is on the menu at Norwalk Community College (NCC), where the Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts programs have partnered with marine biologist Charles Yarish, Ph.D., to harvest kelp for research and to promote its nutritional benefits.
Kelp is a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals. It is used in many Asian cuisines and contains the highest natural concentration of calcium of any food source. It’s also high...
Tags:
It’s crunch time on campus at Onondaga Community College (OCC). Spring semester final exams are just over a week away. In Professor Kristen Costello’s Microeconomics (ECO 204) class she’s discussing final project options with students. “You can do either a paper or a presentation,” Costello said. “If you choose a presentation you can do so as an individual or in a group of up to three people.”
Costello is holding class in the lounge of one of the college’s four residence halls. This particular residence hall is the home of Business majors who reside in one of the college’s Living Learning...
It’s a pitch meeting on Music Row in Nashville, the center of the city’s music industry. Young people are presenting a complete package for a new rap artist, Malik Deshaun, known professionally as Vantage. They screen a video, show features of a website, discuss the social media pages they have created for the release, and run through a business plan. Then, it’s off to the listening room to play the tracks. The bass rumbles and the drum beats are sharp. Heads nod in the room in sync with the rhythm. But these aren’t Nashville music pros presenting—they’re students from Volunteer State...
As higher education evolves to accommodate new forms of learning and new workforce needs, skills are being assessed across an ever-widening range of activities within the learning landscape. Campus-based and online degree programs; professional certificates; competency-based education; open online courses; professional development initiatives; cocurricular and extracurricular activities; and programs in service learning, information literacy, and entrepreneurship are just some of the higher education settings in which competencies worth recognizing are demonstrated or observed. Digital badges...
Nearly 30 percent of high school juniors and seniors in Colorado participated in concurrent enrollment, ASCENT (Accelerating Students through Concurrent ENrollmenT), or other dual-enrollment programs during the 2014-2015 academic year.
Arapahoe Community College (ACC) served more students (3,614) than any other two-year institution in the state during that time. ACC’s concurrent enrollment program is designed for high school students looking for a challenging academic experience while simultaneously earning high school and college credit.
“Concurrent enrollment is a great way for students to...
Beginning with the spring 2016 semester, Mesa Community College (MCC) began offering an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Sustainable Agriculture—the first of its kind in Arizona.
The Sustainable Agriculture degree provides students with both the technical and small business skills needed to manage or develop a small farm or agricultural business. The program is focused on small scale and urban agriculture with an emphasis on natural practices and sustainability. Courses include Field Crop Production, Livestock Production, Aquaponics, Integrated Pest Management, and Agricultural...
Tags:
In the fall of 2009, the first cohort of more than 100 ninth-grade students were admitted into Early College High School at Midland College (ECHS@MC). The school focuses primarily on serving first-generation college students, those with a low socioeconomic status, and/or those whose ethnicities are underrepresented at the college level.
Today, Midland College (MC) and the Midland Independent School District (MISD) have recognized three cohorts of graduates from the successful program. Over 85 percent of those students received associate degrees from Midland College at the same time they...
November
2015
Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) is having tremendous success in promoting completion and transfer among talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students through the DCCCD STEM Institute. The Institute focuses on a crucial leakage point in the STEM pipeline—the freshman and sophomore years of college. Much of the movement out of STEM majors occurs in these pivotal first two years. Since its initiation in 2009, the STEM Institute has evolved to include comprehensive extracurricular support for students preparing to complete a bachelor’s degree or...
Tags:
October
2015
Sandburg Educational Network (SEN) is a technology partnership between Carl Sandburg College and the K-12 schools located in Carl Sandburg College District 518. Historically, the partnership consisted primarily of an annual Cyber Camp hosted and facilitated by the college for K-12 teachers. In 2014, the camp’s 13th year, the format was changed to include administrators and feature presenters from the K-12 district. Most of the schools within the district were moving to one-on-one initiatives which became the focus of the event. Attendance nearly doubled, and attendees requested that similar...
Tags:
September
2015
San Jacinto College veteran educator Dr. Karen Hattaway was selected by the League for Innovation in the Community College to author The Cross Papers, Number 18, a scholarly, in-depth monograph that will help to shape teaching strategies in many of the nation’s community colleges.
The format for The Cross Papers was established by K. Patricia Cross, a retired educator and scholar of educational research who wrote the first seven issues. Since the release of the inaugural issue in 1997, The Cross Papers have been designed to provide faculty with a body of useful, proven, practical strategies...
Tags:
July
2015
Every college campus has a feel, an atmosphere, that is all its own. Having spent the last 16 years working in metropolitan community colleges, I have had the opportunity to see all types of students interact with one another in that atmosphere, as well as with faculty and staff from all backgrounds. All students are on campus to learn, and when the learning mission is disrupted, it's important to know two things: why it was interrupted and how the college can stop the interference from reoccurring. One issue facing today's college campuses is how to comply with federal Title IX guidelines....
March
2015
In fall 2012, I applied for a Learning Challenge Grant to develop and present a hands-on workshop that would introduce a counseling, assessment, and retention tool (CART) system to the Electronics Engineering Technology (EET) department faculty and staff at Sinclair Community College (SCC). After this workshop, the goal was to offer it to the Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (SME) division, then to all SCC faculty.
The workshop was requested to:
Develop teamwork within the EET department;
Enhance the overall success rate of students and faculty by implementing a system to increase the...
February
2015
Having spent the last 16 years working in metropolitan community colleges, I have had the opportunity to see all types of students: new-to-college eighteen year olds, fifteen year old non-driving dual credit students, and returning students who would rather not divulge their ages. All bring with them the sum of their life experiences. But one group that brings a set of experiences and skills like no other is returning student veterans. Because of the nature of the service, these men and women are arriving on our college campuses with more technical knowledge than most generations of students...
January
2015
Not long ago, it was rare for an undergraduate student to become involved in scientific research. These days, however, most graduate school-bound undergraduates do laboratory or field work beyond what's required. Undergraduate research gives students a taste of what a career in science would be like and an edge in applying for graduate schools and jobs. But the edge isn't what it used to be, because many graduate schools and employers have come to expect it.
In a move to ensure that Bellevue College students are school- and work-ready, campus leaders are working to develop the Bellevue...
Tags:
