Barrier busters | Two year institutions help students achieve their dreams (part 2)
Changing student behaviors to boost student success
Of course, education as case management isn’t always marked by life-and-death drama, but as Luis Gudino’s story shows, it’s often life-altering. As South Texas College (STC) students go, Luis is fairly typical. He took two developmental classes before he could embark on his declared field of study and enter STC’s radiology program.
As he began his third semester, one major obstacle stood in the way: a biology exam. Doing well on the term’s first biology exam would allow him to keep up the 3.0 grade point average he’d worked so hard to sustain. The consequences of falling short were twofold. For Luis, the biggest concern was the most immediate: If he lost his 3.0 GPA, he would also lose the “good student” discount rate on his car insurance. Priority No. 2: Admission to STC’s radiology program also required that he maintain that GPA.
During his first year, Luis took STC’s version of the success course, picking up many of the same learning strategies imparted by Leslie Sherman at Broward, including the difference between college and high school.
Changing student behaviors to boost student success
Of course, education as case management isn’t always marked by life-and-death drama, but as Luis Gudino’s story shows, it’s often life-altering. As South Texas College (STC) students go, Luis is fairly typical. He took two developmental classes before he could embark on his declared field of study and enter STC’s radiology program.
As he began his third semester, one major obstacle stood in the way: a biology exam. Doing well on the term’s first biology exam would allow him to keep up the 3.0 grade point average he’d worked so hard to sustain. The consequences of falling short were twofold. For Luis, the biggest concern was the most immediate: If he lost his 3.0 GPA, he would also lose the “good student” discount rate on his car insurance. Priority No. 2: Admission to STC’s radiology program also required that he maintain that GPA.
During his first year, Luis took STC’s version of the success course, picking up many of the same learning strategies imparted by Leslie Sherman at Broward, including the difference between college and high school.
 | Luis Gudino admits that poor study habits have hampered his progress in South Texas College’s radiology program. Still, he’s determined to succeed -– and STC’s “success course” will help him. |
“You’re more independent, and you have to find your own way through,” he said.
Luis understood what that entailed. Yet, despite the fact that he was not employed, Luis set aside too little time each day for studying, insisting that he could only retain the material for a short time. “I can study an entire week, and it doesn’t do me any good,” he explained. “I have to study the day before and the night before (tests). The day before, I have to cram it all in.”
That pattern backfired last fall when Max Abbassi, the department chair and Luis’ biology professor, demanded that students gradually absorb the nuances of cell and bone structures in advance of the semester’s first exam. A week before the test –- an exam for which, as usual, he had failed to crack a book –- Luis decided he wasn’t willing to risk his GPA, his insurance discount and his admission into the radiology tech program. He dropped the class.
Two years earlier, Luis would have left the class and drifted away unnoticed. Today, STC has a different protocol: Before a student leaves, he or she must first deliver a face-to-face explanation to the instructor.
Luis was one of four test-phobic students Abbassi met prior to the first exam. Appealing to their pride, he urged each one not to give up. The appeal failed, as Luis refused to reverse his decision to drop the course. But the system may yet succeed: Luis plans to enroll again -– this time incorporating the lessons that Abbassi has taught. “I want to be up for the challenge of it,” Luis said. “I want to do better, like the professor said, with my time management.”
Although STC’s safety net caught Luis Gudino, no one can accurately say how many community college students like Andy Smith continue to fall through the cracks. Andy graduated from high school last June filled with high hopes and ambition. Determined to become an FBI agent, he had plotted a path that had him studying criminal justice for two years at Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia, attending two more years at the University of Tennessee, and then enrolling in the FBI Academy.
Less than two months into that plan, Andy walked out of MECC and never returned. He didn’t stay long enough to take even a single college-level exam. The reason was simple: money. A new, higherpaying job with a telecommunications company offered him the promise of keeping up with a cell phone bill, car payments and credit card debt. MECC made no effort to keep Andy enrolled.
Andy’s story is one that no college president wants to hear, particularly one at a college that is initiating programs to retain at-risk students. “We need a support system for that individual,” said MECC President Terrance Suarez. “I think of that as a college failure. Why weren’t we in a position to intervene and counsel that person and try to make sure that he stayed? We could have made some kind of adjustment for him. Perhaps he could have taken one or two classes and stayed in school. … It’s not all our responsibility. But if we could have presented this young man with an alternative, he may not have left.”
Hank Dunn, director of student services at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, a leader in implementing strategies to keep students engaged and in school, believes Suarez was being too hard on himself and his school. Sometimes, Dunn pointed out, students simply drop out and there’s nothing that can stop them.
“I wish we could say that couldn’t happen here –- but it can,” Dunn said. “If you withdraw or try to withdraw from school, we do have a withdrawal mechanism: Is it financial help? A job? Child care? Transportation issues? Before we let you walk out the door, we do try to help you. But what we’ve found is that 70 percent of the reasons students want to leave we have no control over.”
Creating communities of commuter students
As they step up efforts to keep students like Luis Gudino and Andy Smith enrolled, two-year institutions also are renewing their commitment to engage students who are on track. In some ways, the “community” in community college can be misleading.
Unlike residential, four-year institutions, community colleges don’t typically offer the camaraderie of residence halls, intercollegiate sports, fraternities, sororities and other non-academic amenities that create a more expansive learning environment. Community college students are typically (and necessarily) more involved with real life than with campus life –- and many see this difference as a plus.
“At community colleges, students see education as a privilege,” said Robert Cabello, vice president of student affairs at Broward.
Nichelle Campbell, a 25-year-old single mother and second-year Broward student, echoes Cabello. Prior to becoming a student herself, Nichelle held a clerical position at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. She now views higher education from two different perspectives.
“We have a lot of parents here who think: ‘If I’m paying for this class, then I have to finish this class,’” she said.
More than 80 percent of students in two-year colleges, Nichelle included, have a full- or part-time job, according to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Work and family obligations are the main reasons many community college students head straight to the parking lot after class.
In 2004, CCSSE data showed that only 16 percent of community college students were involved in extracurricular campus activities. The 2005 survey found that 45 percent of two-year students worked with classmates on in-class projects, but only 21 percent interacted outside the classroom.
Colleges are working to increase those rates of peer interaction –- sometimes in unconventional ways. One of those ways is playing out in Ashlee Brand and Bonnie Gunn’s “hybrid” classroom at South Texas College. In a combination bordering on incongruous, STC has melded two courses: English 1301 and Biology 1408. Brand handles the former, Gunn the latter. In their class, the goal is to create an active learning community, one in which students teach each other, and where the passive receipt of information via lecture is the exception, not the rule.
Learning communities are touted by experts such as Vincent Tinto of Syracuse University as a key strategy in today’s colleges.
“When the faculty collaborates, the students really pick it up,” said Brand, a college English instructor who began her own academic journey at a community college in upstate New York. “I was just like these students,” Brand recalled, except that her first exposure to a learning community came much later.
“Why wait until grad school to give this type of opportunity?” she asked.
Why indeed –- as the students in the Brand-Gunn classroom proved one recent bright Texas morning. Jayney Garcia and Alexandra Hinojosa sat on one side of a table, opposite Sergio Silva and another student. The lines were clearly delineated.
Sergio and his partner with their skill in the sciences matched with Jayney’s and Alexandra’s appreciation for the written word.
“The interaction is the best thing about learning communities,” said Sergio. “If you just focus on the science, then you close your eyes to the other perspectives. You put the two minds together, and you
come up with more ideas.”
After graduating from high school, Alexandra tried to learn biology the conventional way –- lecture, lab and study –- at a four-year university near her home. It didn’t work. Three years after she dropped out of that institution, Alexandra enrolled at STC to take advantage of the lower cost, smaller class sizes and better access to faculty.
The English/biology learning community turned out to be a bonus not only for Alexandra, but for the class as a whole: Brand said the cumulative grades in both English and biology have increased between 20 percent and 30 percent compared to when she and Gunn taught the classes separately.
“This is great because, if we don’t understand something, we can always ask another student,” said Alexandra. More often than not, the student being asked is Sergio, a young man considered exceptional by both classmates and instructors.
“He’s the brains here,” said Alexandra. “I think maybe he can teach some of this better than the teachers can.”
Sergio couldn’t speak a word of English in 2001, when he left his family in Mexico to move into his grandparents’ home an hour west of McAllen. On his first day of school in his new country, his classmates rose for the pledge of allegiance. Without a clue as to what they were doing or saying, Sergio followed suit. “I knew something was going on, so I figured I’d better stand up,” he said.
By his second year he’d mastered the language. (“When I found out he’d just learned to speak English two years before he started college, I almost fell over,” recalled Brand.) A year later, Sergio graduated 13th in his class of 325 students. Had he known about Advanced Placement courses, Sergio believes he would have ranked even higher.
With all of these achievements came a growing awareness of the value of a college education. Supported by a grandfather laboring in the farms for $5.20 an hour, Sergio saw community college as his only option after high school –- and a very welcome one. It puzzles Sergio that some people look down their noses at a two-year institution.
“I don’t look at STC as an obstacle; I look at it as a steppingstone to a four-year school,” said Sergio, who has his eye on either the University of Texas at Austin or Texas A&M in College Station.
Wherever he transfers after receiving his associate’s degree in 2007, Sergio plans to continue pursuing a degree in computer science. Brand and Gunn have bigger plans. “Sergio has the brain of a researcher,” said Brand. “We’re trying to show him all the options in his life.” Sergio finds the teachers’ inducements amusing. “They’re trying to brainwash me,” he joked.
The relationship between instructors such as Ashlee Brand and Bonnie Gunn and students like Sergio Silva is not unusal. Spend enough time on a community college campus –- anywhere –- and it is often difficult to determine who does more to inspire whom. In many ways, reciprocity is the soul of the two-year system –- and that spirit extends beyond student-teacher relationships. More and more colleges are building links to local businesses, manufacturers, civic groups and governmental leaders.
Forging and strengthening college-community links
Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia is a place where community ties have always been strong. “The traditional university has a statewide responsibility, but we have a defined service region,” said MECC President Terrance Suarez. In many ways that region –- and the direction of the college itself –- are defined by one word: coal. Area employment has long been tied to the mines tucked into the breathtaking Appalachian hills that gave Mountain Empire its name, though service industry and technology jobs are becoming more prevalent.
After working hours, there isn’t much to do in Lee, Scott, Wise and Dickenson counties, the rural outposts that MECC serves. In fact, most folks are likely to view Big Stone Gap as the kind of place that inspires dreams of escape. The nearest shopping mall is 45 minutes away, and, according to Andy Smith, local conversations often focus on the frequent, fatal car wrecks on the region’s mountain roads.
Few people understand the area’s coal-fired history better than Wendell Fowler, a professor of mining, maintenance and manufacturing at MECC. A former miner who earned master’s and doctoral degrees while recovering from a crippling mine injury, Fowler is the faculty point man between MECC and the mining companies. “A lot of places would’ve fired a guy like me when the mines went down,” said Fowler, referring to the 1990s, when demand for coal dropped and mining jobs in southwest Virginia dwindled. Instead, MECC provided a sabbatical so Fowler could switch his area of expertise to construction. Three years ago, when the mining companies slowly started to return, Fowler reinvented himself and the mining program. There was little choice.
The days when the coal companies would pluck “red hats” (laborers) off the streets of Big Stone Gap and send them into the mines with minimal training are over.
Today’s coal miners use their brains, not just their backs, said Valerie Lee, a recruiter for the Cumberland River Coal Co. Lee, who staffed a booth at a recent MECC job fair, emphasized that high-tech equipment requires miners to be technology-savvy and well-trained. “If that piece of equipment goes down,” she said, pointing to the computerized image of a multiton earthmover, “they need to hook up a laptop, diagnose the problem and fix it. And you learn that in college.”
No one knows that better than Fowler, whose teaching, now more than ever, parallels an industry that has retooled itself around the latest technology. Today’s miner must have skills in math, computers, circuitry, motor control and programmable object control (robotics). “We still mine coal underground, but it’s not with a pick and axe,” Fowler explained. “It’s all automated now.”
So, too, is Fowler’s classroom, a lab filled with students punching ominous-looking red buttons that control various high-tech gadgets and tools of the mining trade –- all donated by the coal industry.
Before students get to the gadgetry, though, Fowler turns their concentration to an even more important aspect of modern mining –- and perhaps of any industry. “The first thing we teach is problem-solving,” he said.
‘We empower people. That’s what we do here.’
The father of two, miner Jeff Day spends as many as six days a week rebuilding underground machinery and the little spare time that he has in MECC’s non-credit mining apprentice program. It is something he has to do for himself and his family.
Without the mining program, Day said, “I’d be making a lot less money, and I wouldn’t be moving up.”
Last fall, 70 students were enrolled in Fowler’s classes, the vast majority of them –- like Day -– for no credit. Though disappointed that only two of his students are working toward degrees, Fowler isn’t motivated solely by the number of students who emerge with diplomas.
“We empower people,” he said. “That’s what we do here. We get people with low self-esteem, and we prove to them that they can go to college and that they can make something of themselves.”
The proof for many students begins with dual enrollment, programs that allow them to take college-level classes in high school. The problem is that such programs too rarely include the students who might be expected to benefit the most, those in low-income, at-risk populations.
“So far, it’s the middle- and upper-class kids who take advantage of (dual enrollment),” said Thomas Bailey of the Community College Research Center. “They see it as a way to get a head start so they can get through the basic education classes and start taking applied academics earlier.”
That is starting to change at schools such as South Texas College. By offering its dual-enrollment classes in the high schools themselves, STC hopes to attract students who might not be on a college track and therefore are disinclined to take a course at an STC campus. In addition, dual-enrollment math and English students are not assessed tuition or fees.
“We meet them more than halfway,” said Nicholas Gonzalez, director of high school programs and services for STC. Moreover, the college offers dual enrollment to students who have no intention of pursuing a degree. High school students participating in STC’s career tech program get training that can prepare them for employment as emergency medical technicians or in precision manufacturing, computeraided design, automotive and air-conditioning maintenance.
Encouraged by the success and popularity of career tech, STC instituted an academic-track “medical science academy” that gives students the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree in biology while still in high school. STC is considering adding a similar program in engineering.
Living in the real world, working toward a dream
Nichelle Campbell, a second-year student at Broward Community College in Florida, is a walking checklist of the at-risk community college student. The first in her family to attend college, Nichelle has a child and a full-time job. She was raised on the premise that “making a living and paying the bills” is a person’s top priority. As a result, she said, she got through high school “by the skin of my teeth” and went right to work. She didn’t take her first college course until she was 21. Pregnant, she quit school after one semester. Three years later, Nichelle returned, only to learn that she would need two semesters of developmental math before she could earn a single math credit that counted toward her GPA. On paper, Nichelle Campbell is a prime candidate for failure.
Fortunately, she isn’t living her life on paper. She’s living in the real world, and she’s learning at a college that is doing all it can to keep her on the path to success – a path she has defined for herself quite clearly. Now 25, Nichelle will earn her associate’s degree in criminal justice from Broward this year. She and her 4-year-old daughter, Destiny, will then head to Florida State University in Tallahassee or to New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Three years from now, bachelor’s degree in hand, she will be an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol. Nichelle outlines her future with unwavering certainty.
There are tens of thousands of potential Nichelle Campbells out there –- success stories just waiting to be written in every corner of the nation. Community colleges are helping to write these stories in myriad ways: through learning communities, innovations in dual enrollment, community outreach and intrusive strategies that seek to address each student’s unique needs. They are finding new ways to use data to foster student success –- all with a single, overarching goal in mind: to help more students achieve their dreams.
Luis understood what that entailed. Yet, despite the fact that he was not employed, Luis set aside too little time each day for studying, insisting that he could only retain the material for a short time. “I can study an entire week, and it doesn’t do me any good,” he explained. “I have to study the day before and the night before (tests). The day before, I have to cram it all in.”
That pattern backfired last fall when Max Abbassi, the department chair and Luis’ biology professor, demanded that students gradually absorb the nuances of cell and bone structures in advance of the semester’s first exam. A week before the test –- an exam for which, as usual, he had failed to crack a book –- Luis decided he wasn’t willing to risk his GPA, his insurance discount and his admission into the radiology tech program. He dropped the class.
Two years earlier, Luis would have left the class and drifted away unnoticed. Today, STC has a different protocol: Before a student leaves, he or she must first deliver a face-to-face explanation to the instructor.
Luis was one of four test-phobic students Abbassi met prior to the first exam. Appealing to their pride, he urged each one not to give up. The appeal failed, as Luis refused to reverse his decision to drop the course. But the system may yet succeed: Luis plans to enroll again -– this time incorporating the lessons that Abbassi has taught. “I want to be up for the challenge of it,” Luis said. “I want to do better, like the professor said, with my time management.”
Although STC’s safety net caught Luis Gudino, no one can accurately say how many community college students like Andy Smith continue to fall through the cracks. Andy graduated from high school last June filled with high hopes and ambition. Determined to become an FBI agent, he had plotted a path that had him studying criminal justice for two years at Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia, attending two more years at the University of Tennessee, and then enrolling in the FBI Academy.
Less than two months into that plan, Andy walked out of MECC and never returned. He didn’t stay long enough to take even a single college-level exam. The reason was simple: money. A new, higherpaying job with a telecommunications company offered him the promise of keeping up with a cell phone bill, car payments and credit card debt. MECC made no effort to keep Andy enrolled.
Andy’s story is one that no college president wants to hear, particularly one at a college that is initiating programs to retain at-risk students. “We need a support system for that individual,” said MECC President Terrance Suarez. “I think of that as a college failure. Why weren’t we in a position to intervene and counsel that person and try to make sure that he stayed? We could have made some kind of adjustment for him. Perhaps he could have taken one or two classes and stayed in school. … It’s not all our responsibility. But if we could have presented this young man with an alternative, he may not have left.”
Hank Dunn, director of student services at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, a leader in implementing strategies to keep students engaged and in school, believes Suarez was being too hard on himself and his school. Sometimes, Dunn pointed out, students simply drop out and there’s nothing that can stop them.
“I wish we could say that couldn’t happen here –- but it can,” Dunn said. “If you withdraw or try to withdraw from school, we do have a withdrawal mechanism: Is it financial help? A job? Child care? Transportation issues? Before we let you walk out the door, we do try to help you. But what we’ve found is that 70 percent of the reasons students want to leave we have no control over.”
Creating communities of commuter students
As they step up efforts to keep students like Luis Gudino and Andy Smith enrolled, two-year institutions also are renewing their commitment to engage students who are on track. In some ways, the “community” in community college can be misleading.
Unlike residential, four-year institutions, community colleges don’t typically offer the camaraderie of residence halls, intercollegiate sports, fraternities, sororities and other non-academic amenities that create a more expansive learning environment. Community college students are typically (and necessarily) more involved with real life than with campus life –- and many see this difference as a plus.
“At community colleges, students see education as a privilege,” said Robert Cabello, vice president of student affairs at Broward.
Nichelle Campbell, a 25-year-old single mother and second-year Broward student, echoes Cabello. Prior to becoming a student herself, Nichelle held a clerical position at the University of Miami in Coral Gables. She now views higher education from two different perspectives.
“We have a lot of parents here who think: ‘If I’m paying for this class, then I have to finish this class,’” she said.
More than 80 percent of students in two-year colleges, Nichelle included, have a full- or part-time job, according to the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Work and family obligations are the main reasons many community college students head straight to the parking lot after class.
In 2004, CCSSE data showed that only 16 percent of community college students were involved in extracurricular campus activities. The 2005 survey found that 45 percent of two-year students worked with classmates on in-class projects, but only 21 percent interacted outside the classroom.
Colleges are working to increase those rates of peer interaction –- sometimes in unconventional ways. One of those ways is playing out in Ashlee Brand and Bonnie Gunn’s “hybrid” classroom at South Texas College. In a combination bordering on incongruous, STC has melded two courses: English 1301 and Biology 1408. Brand handles the former, Gunn the latter. In their class, the goal is to create an active learning community, one in which students teach each other, and where the passive receipt of information via lecture is the exception, not the rule.
Learning communities are touted by experts such as Vincent Tinto of Syracuse University as a key strategy in today’s colleges.
“When the faculty collaborates, the students really pick it up,” said Brand, a college English instructor who began her own academic journey at a community college in upstate New York. “I was just like these students,” Brand recalled, except that her first exposure to a learning community came much later.
“Why wait until grad school to give this type of opportunity?” she asked.
Why indeed –- as the students in the Brand-Gunn classroom proved one recent bright Texas morning. Jayney Garcia and Alexandra Hinojosa sat on one side of a table, opposite Sergio Silva and another student. The lines were clearly delineated.
Sergio and his partner with their skill in the sciences matched with Jayney’s and Alexandra’s appreciation for the written word.
“The interaction is the best thing about learning communities,” said Sergio. “If you just focus on the science, then you close your eyes to the other perspectives. You put the two minds together, and you
come up with more ideas.”
After graduating from high school, Alexandra tried to learn biology the conventional way –- lecture, lab and study –- at a four-year university near her home. It didn’t work. Three years after she dropped out of that institution, Alexandra enrolled at STC to take advantage of the lower cost, smaller class sizes and better access to faculty.
The English/biology learning community turned out to be a bonus not only for Alexandra, but for the class as a whole: Brand said the cumulative grades in both English and biology have increased between 20 percent and 30 percent compared to when she and Gunn taught the classes separately.
“This is great because, if we don’t understand something, we can always ask another student,” said Alexandra. More often than not, the student being asked is Sergio, a young man considered exceptional by both classmates and instructors.
“He’s the brains here,” said Alexandra. “I think maybe he can teach some of this better than the teachers can.”
Sergio couldn’t speak a word of English in 2001, when he left his family in Mexico to move into his grandparents’ home an hour west of McAllen. On his first day of school in his new country, his classmates rose for the pledge of allegiance. Without a clue as to what they were doing or saying, Sergio followed suit. “I knew something was going on, so I figured I’d better stand up,” he said.
By his second year he’d mastered the language. (“When I found out he’d just learned to speak English two years before he started college, I almost fell over,” recalled Brand.) A year later, Sergio graduated 13th in his class of 325 students. Had he known about Advanced Placement courses, Sergio believes he would have ranked even higher.
With all of these achievements came a growing awareness of the value of a college education. Supported by a grandfather laboring in the farms for $5.20 an hour, Sergio saw community college as his only option after high school –- and a very welcome one. It puzzles Sergio that some people look down their noses at a two-year institution.
“I don’t look at STC as an obstacle; I look at it as a steppingstone to a four-year school,” said Sergio, who has his eye on either the University of Texas at Austin or Texas A&M in College Station.
Wherever he transfers after receiving his associate’s degree in 2007, Sergio plans to continue pursuing a degree in computer science. Brand and Gunn have bigger plans. “Sergio has the brain of a researcher,” said Brand. “We’re trying to show him all the options in his life.” Sergio finds the teachers’ inducements amusing. “They’re trying to brainwash me,” he joked.
The relationship between instructors such as Ashlee Brand and Bonnie Gunn and students like Sergio Silva is not unusal. Spend enough time on a community college campus –- anywhere –- and it is often difficult to determine who does more to inspire whom. In many ways, reciprocity is the soul of the two-year system –- and that spirit extends beyond student-teacher relationships. More and more colleges are building links to local businesses, manufacturers, civic groups and governmental leaders.
Forging and strengthening college-community links
Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia is a place where community ties have always been strong. “The traditional university has a statewide responsibility, but we have a defined service region,” said MECC President Terrance Suarez. In many ways that region –- and the direction of the college itself –- are defined by one word: coal. Area employment has long been tied to the mines tucked into the breathtaking Appalachian hills that gave Mountain Empire its name, though service industry and technology jobs are becoming more prevalent.
After working hours, there isn’t much to do in Lee, Scott, Wise and Dickenson counties, the rural outposts that MECC serves. In fact, most folks are likely to view Big Stone Gap as the kind of place that inspires dreams of escape. The nearest shopping mall is 45 minutes away, and, according to Andy Smith, local conversations often focus on the frequent, fatal car wrecks on the region’s mountain roads.
Few people understand the area’s coal-fired history better than Wendell Fowler, a professor of mining, maintenance and manufacturing at MECC. A former miner who earned master’s and doctoral degrees while recovering from a crippling mine injury, Fowler is the faculty point man between MECC and the mining companies. “A lot of places would’ve fired a guy like me when the mines went down,” said Fowler, referring to the 1990s, when demand for coal dropped and mining jobs in southwest Virginia dwindled. Instead, MECC provided a sabbatical so Fowler could switch his area of expertise to construction. Three years ago, when the mining companies slowly started to return, Fowler reinvented himself and the mining program. There was little choice.
The days when the coal companies would pluck “red hats” (laborers) off the streets of Big Stone Gap and send them into the mines with minimal training are over.
Today’s coal miners use their brains, not just their backs, said Valerie Lee, a recruiter for the Cumberland River Coal Co. Lee, who staffed a booth at a recent MECC job fair, emphasized that high-tech equipment requires miners to be technology-savvy and well-trained. “If that piece of equipment goes down,” she said, pointing to the computerized image of a multiton earthmover, “they need to hook up a laptop, diagnose the problem and fix it. And you learn that in college.”
No one knows that better than Fowler, whose teaching, now more than ever, parallels an industry that has retooled itself around the latest technology. Today’s miner must have skills in math, computers, circuitry, motor control and programmable object control (robotics). “We still mine coal underground, but it’s not with a pick and axe,” Fowler explained. “It’s all automated now.”
So, too, is Fowler’s classroom, a lab filled with students punching ominous-looking red buttons that control various high-tech gadgets and tools of the mining trade –- all donated by the coal industry.
Before students get to the gadgetry, though, Fowler turns their concentration to an even more important aspect of modern mining –- and perhaps of any industry. “The first thing we teach is problem-solving,” he said.
‘We empower people. That’s what we do here.’
The father of two, miner Jeff Day spends as many as six days a week rebuilding underground machinery and the little spare time that he has in MECC’s non-credit mining apprentice program. It is something he has to do for himself and his family.
Without the mining program, Day said, “I’d be making a lot less money, and I wouldn’t be moving up.”
Last fall, 70 students were enrolled in Fowler’s classes, the vast majority of them –- like Day -– for no credit. Though disappointed that only two of his students are working toward degrees, Fowler isn’t motivated solely by the number of students who emerge with diplomas.
“We empower people,” he said. “That’s what we do here. We get people with low self-esteem, and we prove to them that they can go to college and that they can make something of themselves.”
The proof for many students begins with dual enrollment, programs that allow them to take college-level classes in high school. The problem is that such programs too rarely include the students who might be expected to benefit the most, those in low-income, at-risk populations.
“So far, it’s the middle- and upper-class kids who take advantage of (dual enrollment),” said Thomas Bailey of the Community College Research Center. “They see it as a way to get a head start so they can get through the basic education classes and start taking applied academics earlier.”
That is starting to change at schools such as South Texas College. By offering its dual-enrollment classes in the high schools themselves, STC hopes to attract students who might not be on a college track and therefore are disinclined to take a course at an STC campus. In addition, dual-enrollment math and English students are not assessed tuition or fees.
“We meet them more than halfway,” said Nicholas Gonzalez, director of high school programs and services for STC. Moreover, the college offers dual enrollment to students who have no intention of pursuing a degree. High school students participating in STC’s career tech program get training that can prepare them for employment as emergency medical technicians or in precision manufacturing, computeraided design, automotive and air-conditioning maintenance.
Encouraged by the success and popularity of career tech, STC instituted an academic-track “medical science academy” that gives students the opportunity to earn an associate’s degree in biology while still in high school. STC is considering adding a similar program in engineering.
Living in the real world, working toward a dream
Nichelle Campbell, a second-year student at Broward Community College in Florida, is a walking checklist of the at-risk community college student. The first in her family to attend college, Nichelle has a child and a full-time job. She was raised on the premise that “making a living and paying the bills” is a person’s top priority. As a result, she said, she got through high school “by the skin of my teeth” and went right to work. She didn’t take her first college course until she was 21. Pregnant, she quit school after one semester. Three years later, Nichelle returned, only to learn that she would need two semesters of developmental math before she could earn a single math credit that counted toward her GPA. On paper, Nichelle Campbell is a prime candidate for failure.
Fortunately, she isn’t living her life on paper. She’s living in the real world, and she’s learning at a college that is doing all it can to keep her on the path to success – a path she has defined for herself quite clearly. Now 25, Nichelle will earn her associate’s degree in criminal justice from Broward this year. She and her 4-year-old daughter, Destiny, will then head to Florida State University in Tallahassee or to New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Three years from now, bachelor’s degree in hand, she will be an agent with the U.S. Border Patrol. Nichelle outlines her future with unwavering certainty.
There are tens of thousands of potential Nichelle Campbells out there –- success stories just waiting to be written in every corner of the nation. Community colleges are helping to write these stories in myriad ways: through learning communities, innovations in dual enrollment, community outreach and intrusive strategies that seek to address each student’s unique needs. They are finding new ways to use data to foster student success –- all with a single, overarching goal in mind: to help more students achieve their dreams.
