Maryland
Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) are collaborating on humanities curriculum and pedagogy. They received a combined $1.7 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The plan is to implement the Humanities for All initiative, which will provide humanities students with a more dynamic learning experience and improve transfer success for students. Funds will be used to enrich course content, enhance recruitment, retention and transfer, and strengthen faculty connections between CCBC and JHU.
“Thousands of CCBC students will benefit from Mellon’s recognition that the democratization of the humanities in America does indeed begin with the community college,” said CCBC President Sandra Kurtinitis. “The enthusiasm of the faculty involved in developing this program has been inspiring. They all bring a profound commitment to students.”
Michigan
The Michigan Community College Association (MCCA) has received a $750,000 grant from the Kresge Foundation to bolster the work of the Michigan Center for Student Success. The Center, a national model which has duplicated in a number of other states, provides state-level support to Michigan’s 28 community colleges by serving as a hub connecting leadership, administrators, faculty, and staff in their emerging and ongoing efforts to improve student outcomes, emphasizing linkages between practice, research, and policy.
“The Center is an essential resource for community colleges in Michigan that are committed to improving student success,” said Caroline Altman Smith, deputy director for the Education Program at Kresge. “This is particularly vital in Michigan, a state with no centralized system of higher education. This grant will enable the Center to build on its track record of providing valuable services to the colleges and serving as a key contributor to Michigan’s efforts to improve college attainment.”
The Center was founded in 2011 with support from Kresge and has continued to grow with ongoing investments from Kresge and MCCA member colleges.
New Mexico
Santa Fe Community College will use a $200,000 grant to train students for environmental jobs. The grant comes the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training Program. The training program includes instruction in hazardous waste and solid waste management, health and safety, environmental site assessments and sampling, mold remediation and asbestos awareness. Graduates can earn 12 state or federal certifications. Recruitment for the program will focus on rural Native Americans, veterans and underserved youth in the Santa Fe area.
Texas
The National Science Foundation awarded Lone Star College grants to develop and expand the education of technicians for high-technology fields. (Photo: LSC)
Lone Star College (LSC) was recently awarded three grants totaling $461,015 through the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program. One grant project will have the college developing curricula for two mechatronics courses to prepare technicians for the modern digital plant. Another project has LSC-Montgomery and LSC-University Park partnering with the University of New Mexico to pilot the introduction of microsystems into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses.
“This involves the fabrication and utilization of micro-size sensors and other electronic devices that detect or act on their immediate environments,” explained Daniel Kainer, LSC-Montgomery Biotechnology Institute director.
For the third grant project, the two LSC campuses will work with Collin County Community College District to ensure students are prepared with updated information technology skills.
LSC also recently received $780,462 from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). The college will provide customized training for 347 new and incumbent workers employed at Webber, LLC, Webber Barrier Services LLC and Southern Crushed Concrete workers. LSC is establishing a baseline training program for construction employees that will focus on basic technical math and blueprint reading skills for the construction industry.
“This grant will have a $15.8 million impact on the region and will continue to produce a quality workforce pipeline,” said TWC Commissioner Ruth R. Hughs.
Washington
Four Washington community colleges received grants from College Spark Washington to increase support to low-income students. Bellingham Technical College (BTC) will use a $150,000 grant to redesign math programming. BTC plans to create a competency-based, flipped-classroom learning model and provide strong student support. The goal is to effectively shore up specific weaknesses in student math knowledge, and to reduce course costs for students.
Everett Community College will use its $122,858 grant to increase the percentage of students completing their first college-level math course within one year. ECC will replace its current six-course pre-college sequence with a new three-course sequence designed to support the guided pathways model. The college also will better align pre-college math outcomes to those in first college-level math courses, among other plans.
Renton Technical College (RTC) received $49,999. The college plans to create contextualized English courses for the seven new meta-majors that RTC will offer as it transitions to a guided pathways model. And Clark College, which was awarded $150,000, has a goal of reducing the time it takes the 75 percent of students placed into pre-college math to progress to college-level math.
