Shafinaaz Kamrul
One of the main issues discussed in the Pierce College Academic Senate meeting Nov.20 was the fact that the school needs to work harder to improve the basic skills of all students attending this college.
Improving basic skills would help students achieve the academic and life goals they have in mind when they attend college.
Among the speakers at the meeting were President Robert Garber, and Nabil Abu-Ghazaleh, vice president of academic affairs.
Garber attended the annual meeting of the Community College League of California the previous weekend where they discussed a report by the Public Policy Institute of California, which came out a few years ago.
The article pointed a series of criticisms about the success rate of the students in the California community colleges and that the graduates or the number of transfers had a less than perfect rate.
“The basic theme is that the number of students transferring and graduating is relatively small compared to the number of students entering our colleges with these goals in mind,” said Garber.
“It’s a challenge to serve the varied needs of so many students coming to the colleges with a variety of skill levels and different factors in their lives that impact the educational outcomes,” he added.
The report said only 25% of the students who came in saying that they would transfer actually did transfer.
There are many reasons that contribute to this. The low admission fees attract a lot of students to study in the community colleges.
This article was particularly significant because in the process of discussing this they talked about the Basic Skills Initiative.
Up to 90% of the students who enter the college come here to take English and Math classes, and to take general education classes in order to be eligible to transfer to a four year college yet the skills they enter the college with are not sufficient to reach their goals.
“The state has come up with a plan in this initiative to address the student basic skills,” said Garber. “They are not prescribing what we should do but they are in the process of researching a lot of different options of how we can be more responsible and more successful in working with these students so that they would be able to complete the degrees or be able to transfer.”
Joy McCaslin, vice president of student services said, “Basic skills is really the main part of the strategic plan for student success.”
One college was given the job of reviewing the literature given to the students and to review the practices that help adopt better student’s basic learning skills.
They are to then come up with a manual and a menu for each college to use.
Each college would also be given a self-assessing instrument so that they can take a look at what they do now in regards to basic skills.
In fall 2007, the state would form 10 teams to visit each of the colleges and help look at the self-assessment, manual and menu and help get the faculty get started on what they identify as can be done to improve the students’ basic skills.
The Pierce Student Success Committee is now visiting various other colleges to see what improvements they can make in our program.
“I think we are on the right track because we are starting on our own,” said McCaslin.
Right now, as stated in the report, Pierce is doing well in comparison to other school’s transfer and completion.
“I think we are in pretty good shape right now, but its still a concern because we are not graduating 95% of our students,” stated McCaslin.
“Is there ever a discussion about where the students that we are taking are coming from, and their backgrounds, where they have 12 years of being molded and we have only two years to unmold them?” asked Richard Ahrens, instructor of Business Law.
“There has been discussions about the fact there must be a partnership in doing this with K-12, and they are also under considerable pressure, because if we are not doing well what happens when 50% of your enrolled 9th graders are not reaching the date of their projected graduation?” said Garber in reply.
“At the same time I don’t think that excuses or trying to blame someone else would be a suitable strategy,” he added.
This initiative is being controlled by the state department of finance, who are trying to determine what taxpayers’ money is contributing to.
“They don’t see that successful students are successful taxpayers,” commented Garber.
The next District Academic Senate meeting will be in Pierce’s College Services Conference Room on Dec.14.