Empowering the Community College First-Year Composition Teacher

Empowering the Community College First-Year Composition Teacher
Author: Meryl Siegal
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2021-01-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0472037919

"This volume is an inquiry into community college first-year pedagogy and policy at a time when change has not only been called for but also mandated by state lawmakers who financially control public education. It also acknowledges new policies that are eliminating developmental and remedial writing courses while keeping mind that, for most community college students, first-year composition serves as the last course they will take in the English department toward their associate's degree. This volume also serves as a call to action to change the way community colleges attend to faculty concerns. Only by listening to teachers can the concerns discussed in the volume be addressed; it is the teachers who see how societal changes intersect with campus policies and students' lives on a daily basis."--Adapted from back cover

The Profession of English in the Two-year College

The Profession of English in the Two-year College
Author: Mark Reynolds
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The 1960s: a time of protests and civil rights marches, sit-ins and speak-outs, free-love rallies and anti-establishment Yip-ins. Yet going largely unnoticed was another powerful revolution: the explosive growth of the two-year college. In The Profession of English in the Two-Year College, those on the front lines of this movement record how they successfully taught a new kind of student in a re-imagined postsecondary institution. Those students lived at home, worked to make ends meet, and were the first in their families to attend college. They were Vietnam veterans, adults years distant from high school, fulltime workers, and struggling immigrants. To teach them, faculty invented new curricula, novel instructional methods, and innovative teaching materials - and in doing so also invented a blueprint for successful two-year college English teaching. The Profession of English in the Two-Year College features essays by major figures including Mark Reynolds, Elizabeth Nist, Marilyn Smith Layton, and William Costanzo, concluding with a selective bibliography by Howard Tinberg. Featuring essays about curricular innovation, ESL, the value of professional conferences, and the crucial role that two-year colleges have played in technological innovation, this volume shines a bright light on an institution that has become a mainstay of American higher education.

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges
Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674368282

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

Teaching Composition at the Two-Year College

Teaching Composition at the Two-Year College
Author: Patrick Sullivan
Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-08-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781319022570

By translating theory and scholarship into concrete classroom practice in thoughtful and successful ways, Teaching Composition at the Two-Year College addresses the unique and specific needs of the two-year college teacher-scholar who teaches composition. While providing an overview of the current state of scholarship related to teaching composition at the two-year college, it also emphasizes classroom-based concerns, with particular attention to the question most important to many teachers: "Scholarship and theory is all well and good, but what do I do in the classroom on Monday?" The collection includes classic or important theoretical essays in the field (many of them written by two-year college practitioners) followed by essays written by two-year college teacher-scholars that suggest how composition scholarship and theory might translate to the distinctive setting of the two-year college.

The Costs of Completion

The Costs of Completion
Author: Robin G. Isserles
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1421442086

To improve community college success, we need to consider the lived realities of students. Our nation's community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree—or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion, Robin G. Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The disinvestment of state funding, she explains, has created austerity conditions, leading to an overreliance on contingent labor, excessive investments in advisement technologies, and a push to performance outcomes like retention and graduation rates for measuring student and institutional success. The prevailing theory at the root of the community college completion crisis—academic momentum—suggests that students need to build momentum in their first year by becoming academically integrated, thereby increasing their chances of graduating in a timely fashion. A host of what Isserles terms "innovative disruptions" have been implemented as a way to improve on community college completion, but because disruptions are primarily driven by degree attainment, Isserles argues that they place learning and developing as afterthoughts while ignoring the complex lives that define so many community college students. Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching, advising, and researching largely first-generation community college students as well as an analysis of five years of student enrollment patterns, college experiences, and life narratives, Isserles takes pains to center students and their experiences. She proposes initiatives created in accordance with a care ethic, which strive to not only get students through college—quantifying credit accumulation and the like—but also enable our most precarious students to flourish in a college environment. Ultimately, The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them.

Community College Companion

Community College Companion
Author: Mark Rowh
Publisher: JIST Works
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: College student orientation
ISBN: 9781593577414

Enrollment at community colleges is booming. but as students of all ages pursue this path many don't know how to pick the right program, juggle classes with other responsibilities, or succeed academically. This book guides students through these areas and shows them how to make the most of the community college experience. Students will explore certificate and degree options; connect their needs, plans, and personalities to courses and programs; and gain tips for enhancing their financial aid package and scoring scholarships. Community College Companion also takes students beyond the early stages of their experience to set themselves up for success in college and their future careers. Readers learn how to make the most of online courses; take advantage of campus resources; avoid commuting inefficiencies; play it smart during the transfer process; and develop a career plan.

Establishing an Experimental Community College in the United States

Establishing an Experimental Community College in the United States
Author: Chet Jordan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2021-07-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000429881

This text offers an in-depth case study of the development of an experimental community college established by City University of New York with the aim of increasing two-year completion rates. By detailing academic and administrative reforms undertaken at Guttman Community College since 2007, the text illustrates the implementation of innovative practices in developmental education, advising, and experiential education and offers critical commentary on why reforms failed to bring the expected results. In a series of comprehensive and insightful chapters, Jordan maps the process of implementation and reform at Guttman Community College. In doing so, he explores the shortcomings of the Guttman enterprise, and offers in-depth analysis of the causes and implications of a failure to account for the local context and student population in planning and implementation phases. This unique, historical narrative thus offers important insights into pitfalls and best practices around issues of racial inequity, governance and leadership, curriculum development, student support services, and data-driven decision making. Each chapter concludes with a section focusing specifically on implications for the post-secondary system more broadly to inform effective, appropriate, and inclusive college reform. This book will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers exploring the history and governance of postsecondary education in the United States, as well as academic administrators, faculty, and policymakers. Jordan speaks to the myriad lessons that can be valuable for a higher education landscape that is hungry for innovation and reform.

The American Community College

The American Community College
Author: Arthur M. Cohen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1982
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780875895116

This book is about American community colleges, during the period from 1965-1980, and presents a comprehensive study useful for everyone concerned with higher education. It includes data summaries on students, faculty, curriculum, and many other quantifiable dimensions of the institutions. The data, descriptions, and analyses can be used by administrators--to learn about practices that have proved effective; curriculum planners--who anticipated program revision; faculty members--seeking ideas to modify their classes; and trustees and policy makers--for interesting financial and administrative guidelines.

The Community College Library

The Community College Library
Author: Janet Pinkley
Publisher: Assoc of College & Research Libraries
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2022-04-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9780838939017

Community colleges are a cornerstone of higher education and serve the unique needs of the communities in which they reside. In 2019, community colleges accounted for 41 percent of all undergraduate students in the United States. Community college librarians are engaged in meaningful work designing and delivering library programs and services that meet the needs of their diverse populations and support student learning. The Community College Library series is meant to lift the voices of community college librarians and highlight their creativity, tenacity, and commitment to students. The Community College Library: Assessment explores the research, comprehensive plans, and new approaches to assessment being created by community college librarians around the U.S. Chapters include sample activities and materials and cover topics including assessing student learning while shifting from Standards to Framework; investigating and communicating library instruction's relationship to student retention; and building librarian assessment confidence through communities of research practice. This book demonstrates the innovative and replicable ways community college librarians are measuring, evaluating, and reflecting on the services they provide, and how to use these assessments to demonstrate the value and impact of library services and advocate for resources.

White Awareness

White Awareness
Author: Judy H. Katz
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1978
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780806114668

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