MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
Mesa Community College (MCC) was the first college, among six in the nation, selected by Apple to launch the iOS app development project and the first to offer associated courses for academic credit. The college views the Everyone Can Code project as more than a collection of courses. This is a foundation for a successful future for a diverse body of students.
MCC faculty embrace the concept that the key to innovation is to provide something that is unusual, to test the norms, to do it in a timely and meaningful manner, and to embrace teaching excellence through diversity and differentiated le...
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a virtual reality (VR) tour must be worth a million. Portage College has seven campus locations throughout northeastern Alberta, a vast rural region in which it is difficult to provide potential students an on-location experience. Since one of the primary ways an individual chooses a college is by visiting it, we decided if students can’t get to us due to distance and travel time, why not bring it to them?
Portage College produced a 360 VR tour video to show potential students our campuses, program labs, and local areas. The Corporate Communications...
Tags: Teaching and Learning
March
2018
How can the Gateway Community and Technical College best support early childhood education (ECE) students who are balancing work, college, and parenthood? This was the question that the ECE program coordinator was attempting to answer when redesigning the program to boost enrollment, retention, and completion in fall 2015. Sarah Smith, ECE Program Coordinator and faculty member utilized the design thinking process that had been recently introduced to the college during its strategic planning development. The process incorporates an empathetic outlook that focuses on the end-users’ needs to dri...
South Louisiana Community College (SLCC), the board of directors for Local Workforce Development Board #40, and area parish presidents are partnering to improve workforce development in the region. The collaboration—a first for a community college in Louisiana—falls under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) enacted in 2014.
Through a competitive selection process, SLCC was chosen to serve as the One-Stop Operator and Career Services provider for Local Workforce Development Area #40, which includes Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, and Verm...
Assessment is an integral component to refining teaching, support services, and operations. It informs the choices we make and helps us make continuous improvements to our programs and processes. At Bergen Community College (Bergen), the Assessment Fellows Program provides a systematic approach for college faculty and professional staff to assume leadership in collegewide assessment as well as a unique opportunity to ensure quality of assessment plans for the institution.
After our accreditor noted that Bergen did not have a clear assessment process in place, the college began placing greater...
SUNY Erie Community College’s (ECC) Information Technology Program was recently honored as the Best Tech Team in Non-Profit/Education by InfoTech WNY as part of the organization’s annual Buffalo Emerging Technology Awards Showcase (BETAS) at Buffalo RiverWorks in May 2017.
“This award is exciting news for a program that’s been thriving for years,” said ECC President Jack Quinn. “Its faculty and staff have done a tremendous job in preparing our students for technology careers across Western New York, so this acknowledgement is deserved, and much appreciated.”
Competing in a category that incl...
Tags: Economic Development, Partnerships
October
2017
GAME (Growth through Action, Measurement and Engagement) is a workshop series developed by Kansas Small Business Development Center (KSBDC) at Johnson County Community College (JCCC), providing owners of growing businesses the opportunity to work on a strategic plan in a continual, focused, tactical way with the assistance of industry experts, business peers, and Small Business Development Center advisors. The GAME program is open to businesses that have been in operation for more than three years with annual sales in excess of $250,000; the average annual revenue of those enrolled is $700,000...
It is a glaring truth. No matter how broad the scientific research or how far academia have reached to date, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have been and remain a man’s world. Although there have been some changes in the last few decades, for the most part, women and minorities still face disparities (Office of Science and Technology Policy and Office of Personnel Management, 2016).
There are many negatives associated with women and minorities’ limited participation in STEM fields, such as repression of creativity, loss of true innovation (Del Giudice, 2014), lower pr...
Tags:
August
2017
Community College of Allegheny County’s Fire Volunteer Education, Service, and Training Scholarship (FireVEST) program is now in its eighth year. More than 330 Allegheny County volunteer firefighters have participated in this recruitment and retention program. These scholarship recipients serve in 136 of the county’s 187 volunteer fire departments. The only program of its kind in the state, FireVEST is a unique partnership between CCAC, the Allegheny County Executive, and the Allegheny County Fire Academy. Individuals enrolled in the program receive a full scholarship to any associate degree o...
Today’s employers know that skilled workers don’t grow on trees. Sometimes, you have to grow your own talent.
With rapid advances in technology, job titles like Smartphone Application Developer and Patient Care Technician simply didn’t exist a decade ago, so qualified candidates are few.
Employers scrambling to find workers with the right stuff often turn to Norwalk Community College (NCC) in Norwalk, Connecticut. That’s because NCC tracks industry trends and readily deploys associate degree and certificate programs to produce workers who can hit the ground running.
Employers serve on the coll...
We live in a digital age, so we may assume that digital is always better. But that isn’t necessarily the case when it comes to audio recording. The new recording studio at Volunteer State Community College is state-of-the-art analog. Another room has home studio equipment. That may seem strange at a college with yet another studio that is fully digital and fully automated. The reason is simple: learning.
“The vision for our process is to have three different recording environments,” said Entertainment Media Production Director, Steve Bishir.
The original studio has a fully-digital, fully-autom...
Marlie Burt was 75 miles away from fellow classmates when she worked on a group project last semester. Burt, who lives in La Harpe, Illinois, and attends classes at Carl Sandburg College’s branch campus in Carthage, collaborated with her classmates via a telepresence robot located on the Main Campus in Galesburg, where the other students in her police administration and management course met.
Burt attended the class by controlling the robot—affectionately named Sheldon, after The Big Bang Theory character—while sitting at a computer station at the branch campus. With Sheldon, distance was no l...
Arapahoe Community College (ACC) has accepted from the Castle Rock Town Council the investment of $3 million in infrastructure reimbursement to construct a Collaboration Campus. The campus will bring together education, business, and the community to create a unique resource for delivering seamless education and workforce training to Castle Rock. Educational partners Colorado State University (CSU) and Douglas County School District (DCSD) will articulate with ACC to create a smooth pathway from high school diploma to associate degree to bachelor’s degree.
ACC will continue its commitment to e...
Pikes Peak Community College’s (PPCC) website was in sad shape. Designed in 2010, it was not mobile first, its navigation confusing, and the feedback from students and others universally negative.
In May 2015, a four-person PPCC marketing team decided to take on a redesign in partnership with the IT department. The first question team members asked themselves as they designed the new website was: Who is our primary audience? But finding an answer to that question was tougher than they expected. PPCC, like other community colleges, has many audiences: faculty, staff, students, prospective stude...
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 sp...
This fall, HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, began offering a fully online two-year associate degree in building construction management that prepares students for the growing demand in construction careers.
HACC is one of the only schools in the nation to offer this program fully online. In addition, it is the only community college in Pennsylvania to provide the opportunity to complete the program online in two years.
“Word is getting out and we have fielded inquiries from Western Pennsylvania and the D.C. metropolitan area. Construction companies in Central Pennsylvania have b...
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 in...
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 Comm...
Tags: Veterans
October
2016
In 1998, Jessica Saenz began attending Midland College. Two years later, she became the first person in her family to graduate with an associate degree. She then transferred to Texas State University (TSU) and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice. Saenz said,
Like most students, my initial career goals after college graduation varied, and were a far cry from joining the military. But then, during my first year at TSU, 9/11 happened, and it changed my attitude. I felt a need to do what I could to protect Americans and our way of life.
In 2003, at the age of 23, Saenz joined the U.S....
Tags: Community Relations, Learning Environments, Partnerships, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Strategies
October
2016
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 Communit...