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| From the issue dated October 27, 2006 |
Living Laboratories
5 community colleges offer lessons that have produced results
Related articles: View all of the articles and commentary from this special supplement on community colleges
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As scrutiny of higher education intensifies, colleges and universities of all sizes are working overtime to better understand their successes and failures. The scrutiny is coming from many quarters — accreditors, legislators, parents, and the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education. Community colleges in particular are feeling the pressure: They now educate about 45 percent of undergraduates nationwide, and are being asked to bolster their local economies while equipping a growing number of academically at-risk students with the tools to succeed in the global economy.
In response, numerous two-year colleges have rolled out new student-support services and community-outreach efforts in recent years. As Deborah M. DiCroce, president of Tidewater Community College, puts it: "The community college, to be a bit metaphorical, is a living laboratory. We don't have to simulate the experience. We are the experience."
On the following pages, steps that five colleges have taken to produce better results for their students and their communities:
At Tidewater Community College: Hiring Special Instructors
At Housatonic Community College: Listening to the Business Community
At Taft College: Helping the Disabled to Succeed
At LaGuardia Community College: Improving the Classroom Experience With Electronic Portfolios
At Illinois Central College: Building a Diverse Faculty
TIDEWATER COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Norfolk, Va.
Hiring Special Instructors for Classes With High Failure Rates
Waell Y. Abed knows what it's like to face overwhelming odds. The 22-year-old Palestinian emigrated from Jerusalem to Norfolk as a teenager, in August 2001. Mr. Abed immediately enrolled at Tidewater Community College where he did poorly on the English-placement exam and was put in the lowest-level course of developmental English.
He still hesitates when talking about that experience, even after graduating from Tidewater in 2003 and earning a bachelor's degree in finance from Old Dominion University in May. Now, as a tutor and part-time instructor at Tidewater, he understands the fear of failure that dogs some students. That is a large part of why Tidewater administrators want him to work with students.
Mr. Abed is one of several dozen "supplemental instructors" at the college — experienced students who attend classes with high failure rates, and then lead small-group study sessions throughout the week. The supplemental instructors are required to have already taken the class. Most are current students at Tidewater, though some are recent graduates like Mr. Abed.
College officials started the program in the spring of 2003, after they realized too few students were passing so-called gatekeeper courses such as developmental math and introductory English. The members of the math faculty first raised the issue with college leaders. "Their comment to me at the time was, we're pretty much at the national average, but that's not good enough," says Sally R. Harrell, who oversees the college's supplemental-instruction program.
The institution already had a robust tutoring program, but many students were not seeking help until too late, and administrators also worried that some students were avoiding tutoring because of the stigma it carried. So they decided to target high-risk classes rather than high-risk students.
Early results indicate the program is working. Students who attend five or more of the group sessions have a 93-percent chance of passing. The supplemental instruction is proving most effective in math: Sixty-five percent of students pass the lowest-level course when a supplemental instructor is assigned, compared with 53 percent in classes with no such instructor. Remedial algebra has a 70 percent success rate with supplemental instructors, and 61 percent without.
"The preliminary results are pretty impressive," says Deborah M. DiCroce, the college's president. "As we expand access, yes, one piece of the job is to bring students in and expose them to higher education, but the other piece is to make sure they are equipped to succeed."
***
HOUSATONIC COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Bridgeport, Conn.
Listening to the Business Community
After only a few weeks on the job, Rab Thornton got the kind of news no college's community liaison wants. "My president and I woke up one morning and read the paper, the letters to the editor, and saw that one of the leading manufacturers in the area said we weren't listening to the business community," says Mr. Thornton, dean of outreach services at Housatonic Community College. "It was a wake-up call."
College officials took stock of what they were offering the business community, and said, "Oops, he's right," Mr. Thornton says.
Since that article appeared less than a decade ago, the college has reworked its curriculum to meet industry demands — most recently rolling out an associate-degree program in industrial technology, in 2005. But perhaps the most fundamental change has been the way college officials view the institution's relationship to the business community.
Housatonic has positioned itself not only as a provider of skilled labor, but as an economic-research center and a visionary institution that can teach the chief executive as well as the machinist. It boasts business tools more commonly found at Fortune 500 companies and institutions like Harvard Business School. Unlike many university research centers, however, the fledgling Housatonic Research Institute is not focusing on start-ups or large companies. Instead, it is courting small, often struggling businesses in the community at a time when colleges nationwide are being asked to take on a bigger role in economic development.
"This is where the country really needs to go," Mr. Thornton says. "We don't train enough people to work in small business, and those are the places that can really have that local impact."
Katherine A. Saint, president of Schwerdtle Stamp, a 126-year-old company that makes industrial stamps, was already working closely with the college when the national recession hit in 2001. In the next two years, as manufacturers' migration overseas intensified, Ms. Saint lost about 20 percent of her business and had to cut her work force from 50 to 25 employees.
"It was a huge shock, and it was a personal shock," she says, because many of the workers were longtime employees.
In a city built around such iconic manufacturers as Remington Arms Company and Moore Tool Company, Ms. Saint's business was not the only one struggling. If the companies simply relied on increasing operating efficiencies, their future prospects were dim.
Back in 1999, the college had helped local businesses form a business consortium known as Metal — the Metal Manufacturers' Education and Training Alliance. So when the recession hit a few years later, the consortium was positioned to take a hard look at the manufacturing industry. What the small- and medium-size-business owners realized was that they needed Fortune 500 resources, like up-to-the-minute data, in order to compete strategically, and they needed Housatonic to provide them.
"There was a shift from work-force development to how can they help us be innovative," Ms. Saint says.
Housatonic first turned to resources the college already had. Mr. Thornton realized that businesses could benefit from use of the Community College Strategic Planner, a database compiled by CCbenefits Inc. that projects regional job growth and demand for certain products and services over 15 years. He showed the tool to Ms. Saint and another local chief executive, and then approached CCbenefits, a for-profit company that has sold the database to about 300 colleges nationwide, about the possibility of making it available to businesses. Officials at CCbenefits agreed.
At the suggestion of another business leader, the college also sought access to OneSource, a huge database that provides information on more than 18 million companies worldwide. OneSource is a powerful tool for companies looking to move into new niche markets, but the $75,000-a-year access fee is prohibitive for most small businesses.
OneSource agreed to let the consortium split a membership 10 ways, with nine businesses and the college pitching in. Businesses that opted not to buy in can access the database at Housatonic for free, and three months ago, the college hired a researcher to help businesses navigate the sometimes-tricky system.
Ms. Saint, who bought into the group membership, uses the database on her laptop but goes to the campus frequently to get help doing research. Through the database, she was able to find a new market for her company — making stamps to mark shipping pallets. That niche is a small but growing part of her company, Ms. Saint says.
She has been able to hire five additional employees in recent months, and in part as a thank-you to the college, she has agreed to serve on the search committee to replace the former president, Janis M. Hadley, who retired in September.
"We weren't talking to CEO's of companies before," says Mr. Thornton. "We now have more people wanting to talk to us."
***
TAFT COLLEGE
Taft, Calif.
Helping the Disabled to Succeed
Jeffrey G. Ross saw his opening when budget cuts forced Taft College to disband its football program in 1995, leaving one of the college's two dorms vacant. For two decades, the college had offered a handful of classes for people with developmental disabilities, and Mr. Ross, the director of support services at Taft, was eager to start a more formal program. He hatched a plan that year to house students with developmental disabilities like cerebral palsy and autism in the extra dorm and enroll them in a two-year program in life skills needed for self-sufficiency.
A decade later, Taft's Transition to Independent Living program is still the only one of a kind at a public community college, Mr. Ross says, and only a select few four-year institutions have similar programs.
The program's supporters argue that higher education too often ignores the needs of people with developmental disabilities, who constitute about 5.5 percent of Americans 5 years old and older, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"I think part of the problem is that a lot of people in higher education don't want to look outside of the box," says Michal C. Clark, director of the Kern Regional Center of the state's Department of Developmental Services and the father of a girl with Down syndrome. "And there is a certain degree of elitism, and that results in inertia."
Local officials have hailed Taft's program as a model solution to that problem, and several California community colleges, including Fresno City College, are considering replicating parts of it.
Students in Taft's Transition to Independent Living program are held to a strict two-year timeline, and 95 percent graduate. There is a three-year waiting list for the program, which enrolls 32 residential students at any given time. An additional 10 live in the community and participate in the program during the day.
Students must be relatively high functioning to participate, and most enter the program at 21, directly from high school. (In California students with mental disabilities are allowed to stay in public high schools until they turn 22.)
On a typical day, students wake up around 6 a.m. and eat breakfast in the campus cafeteria, along with Taft's 130 or so other residential students. (Taft is unusual among community colleges in having dorms.) Within two hours, most of them report to an on- or off-campus job site, where they work about eight hours a week.
Many then attend a regular college course on the Taft campus. They are required to take a college course each semester in order to be part of the larger student body.
At 11 a.m., the students start their Transition to Independent Living course work, which covers subjects like money and household management, interpersonal skills, and meal planning. Students spend about 30 hours a week in those courses, many of which are hands-on classes because of the residential arrangement.
If an instructor is teaching students to do laundry, for example, they will actually do laundry. And the students are expected to pay for room and board, a total of about $560, each month from income they receive from work or disability benefits. Most have about $1,100 a month in income they are expected to manage, and Mr. Ross says parents are instructed not to send additional money if students blow through their income too quickly. Suffering the consequences of poor decisions is part of the learning experience.
"We don't pretend that they are going to get an associate degree," but the program is rigorous, Mr. Ross says.
So far the program has graduated 133 students, who receive a certificate. After graduation the college helps the students make independent-living arrangements and tracks their future status.
About 95 percent of the graduates live on their own, and 85 percent are employed full or part time. Nationwide only about 25 percent of disabled adults not living in an institution hold jobs, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"I don't know of any other program that is as successful at getting people out on their own," Mr. Clark says.
***
LAGUARDIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Long Island City, N.Y.
Improving the Classroom Experience Through Electronic Portfolios
LaGuardia Community College, part of the City University of New York, bills itself as "the World's Community College." Its 65,000 studentsalmost 60 percent of whom were born outside of the United Statesrepresent 154 countries and speak about 110 different languages. But the wide-ranging perspectives of the student body were not always apparent in their typical course work because it often did not allow for creativity.
Bret Eynon, assistant dean of the Center for Teaching and Learning, says that began to change when the college introduced electronic portfolios in 2002. Electronic portfolios are personalized Web sites where students can collect their course work, reflect on their academic progress, and post their educational goals.
"If we really want to understand diversity, this is a great way to do it — to let students have the tools to be creative," Mr. Eynon says.
LaGuardia, along with Stanford University, Portland State University, and Clemson University, is a founding member of the ePortfolio Research Coalition, according to the college. That effort is just one avenue through which the college hopes to lead the country in improving student learning, especially through the use of technology.
The college, whose student body is overwhelmingly at risk for academic failure, has also created three first-year academies — including a business-and-technology academy, for example — which function like small liberal-arts colleges. They include instruction in remedial concepts and in English as a second language in college-level courses to allow students to earn credits faster. And the college started a program that trains students to assist professors with technology needs in their classrooms.
All of those efforts are designed to increase student-professor interaction and boost student engagement, which, research has shown, is linked to retention and graduation.
The college has expanded its electronic-portfolio program, which is required as part of many basic classes, from fewer than 300 students during the pilot phase in 2002-3 to more than 5,000 students today. As part of the program, students collect their work across various disciplines and are asked to analyze their progress at intervals throughout their community-college career. The college has certain content requirements, but students are given creative license with the portfolio's design and are offered training to create the portfolios.
The online portfolios have increased student engagement as measured by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, which is run by the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin and is considered the national authority on the topic. The portfolio program has also boosted pass rates in courses for which portfolios are required. In the fall of 2005, for example, the collegewide pass rate for portfolio classes was 75 percent, compared with 69 percent for similar nonportfolio classes, according to college data.
"Students' lives are so fragmented. There's this incredible buzz of things that take their mind off their work," says Gail O. Mellow, president of LaGuardia. "This [portfolio] creates new intellectual scaffolds that in the past were created by time and place."
In recent years, the college has won two national awards for its work in improving student learning.
The college is not alone in incorporating electronic portfolios into its curriculum, but Mr. Eynon says its program may be the most comprehensive at any community college. He estimates that about 300 two- and four-year institutions nationwide use online portfolios, though many programs are in early stages of development.
As an early adopter, LaGuardia plans to share its experience with other colleges through the research consortium and other public-policy venues. "We weren't taught as academics how to do this work, just like we weren't taught how to teach," Mr. Eynon says. "We were just taught our disciplines."
***
ILLINOIS CENTRAL COLLEGE
East Peoria, Ill.
Building a Diverse Faculty
When John S. Erwin took the top job at Illinois Central College in 2001, he found a faculty that looked a lot like him: white. Only about 7 percent of the college's full-time and less than 2 percent of its adjunct faculty members were members of minority groups, despite the fact that 13 percent of the college's students and about 25 percent of the city's residents were.
"The faculty was not an accurate reflection of our community," Mr. Erwin says.
The president says he immediately made rectifying that imbalance a top priority, and in the years since, he has encouraged faculty members and administrators to consider the value of diversity when making hires.
In 2004 Mr. Erwin hired Rita Ali as the college's first executive director of diversity. This past academic year, Ms. Ali led staff and faculty members and students in round-table discussions about issues such as race, sexual orientation, and diverse learning styles.
Those discussions, combined with Mr. Erwin's continuing push for a diverse faculty, resulted in a collegewide mandate that each faculty-hiring committee must be ethnically diverse and that its members must go through diversity training. Mr. Erwin was even able to get the policy codified in the faculty union's contract when it came up for renewal last year. He also implemented a policy that as of this academic year, no search will go forward unless the initial pool of candidates is racially diverse.
To meet the requirements, faculty-hiring committees will probably have to include instructors from outside the department looking to fill a position. In the past, Mr. Erwin says, hiring committees were made up only of faculty members in the department looking for a new hire. He acknowledges that the rules will take some control away from faculty members and individual departments, but says the faculty union has gone along because its members value diversity just as much as the college administration does.
"They don't gain by continuing to do what they've always been doing," Mr. Erwin says.
It is too early to tell what effect the rules will have on the makeup of the college's faculty, but administrators say the overall focus on diversity has already made the campus more welcoming for minorities and increased the percentage of nonwhite faculty members.
This semester 8.8 percent of full-time and 5.5 percent of adjunct faculty members were members of minority groups. "We've seen the best improvement on the adjunct side," says Melanie G. Riley, executive director of employee services. "And now we are really focusing on the full-time faculty because that's where we think we can make the most difference for our students."
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Section: Community Colleges
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