November 2008 Articles
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Moving Forward, a Time To Pull Together by Glenn Hansen
Serving Students Who Served by Bob Hazard
The Right Start Program by Mary Anderson
Chemistry Professor Finds COD Students Willing and Able by Richard Jarman
Accolades—Call for Kudos! by Konkel & Hagman
Moving Forward, a Time To Pull Together by Glenn Hansen
As we enter November we are faced with many challenges and changes. It is tempting to say, "what's next," but I hesitate to do that.
On the positive side of change, we have elected new leadership for the Association who will lead us forward with a consistent message and strengthen our unity in the face of the challenges ahead. Congratulations to Nancy Stanko, Tom Robertson, Tom Tipton, all the new Senators, and IEA Regional Council Representatives. Thank you for your dedication and willingness to lead.
We may have more issues confronting us at once than ever before. Since many of these issues have put COD in the public eye, how we respond is very important. The COD presidential search is nearing a conclusion; it appears that a selection has been made. But the message is unclear, and it has been communicated to the press in an inconsistent fashion.
A reorganization has been announced and implemented. Some of the changes are just being revealed. We are just now hearing about changes to the Honors and International Studies programs. In contrast to past practice, there was no faculty input on these program changes.
Another major issue is the Reading Competency Requirement, which will confront us all in the first half of November. The implementation of changes to the RCR is still being debated. It is an issue that directly affects our students and student success. The RCR was originally put in place to improve student success, not to create a barrier to enrollment. We need to make sure it is applied in a consistent fashion to support our students and identify those who would benefit from some additional help. Several weeks have been lost that could have been used to find a good solution; hopefully we are back on track with meetings between the Instruction Committee and Administrators.
On top of these challenges is the presentation of a brand new Board Policy Manual. The Board of Trustees have rewritten and renumbered all the Board Policies. These important documents, along with the Board Procedures for each policy, govern how the College operates. We have many committees and individuals reviewing these Policies, looking for changes that will impact our contract and how we teach at COD. We are not alone. Classified Staff, Administrators, Student Leadership Council, IEA, and the public are looking at this manual. We will all have a written response for the Trustees before the deadline of November 13. Ironically, this major unilateral rewrite of the manual has strengthened the collaboration among the constituencies. So, good things often come out of challenges. Ahead will be the rewriting of the Policy Procedures; these are much more specific and detail how the Policies are enacted. The review of the Procedures will be even more important and a bigger task. We will need everyone's input.
Thank you to everyone for your help and your continued efforts to address these challenges. Our strength comes from our unity in working toward our common goal: to ensure the long-term health of COD as a great community college, a great community asset. We've had high turnouts at faculty meetings this past month and attendance at Senate meetings. We will continue to hold faculty meetings for updates and use the discussion board as a place to share ideas.
Serving Students Who Served: Organizing for Student Veterans by Bob Hazard
When people find out that I'm not a vet, that I don't support the war in Iraq, and that I'm not
a Republican, they ask, why are you so interested in veterans' issues? That's an
easy question to answer. It's because I know what it feels like to be, and feel, like an outsider
in a college classroom. I'm a college dropout who returned after fifteen years of working in the
trades. I'd had very different life experiences than my classmates. Having spent years swinging a
hammer, making up drill pipe on an oil rig, or tying barges together on a river separated me from
my fellow students. When I came back to school, I was a 35- year-old man sitting in classrooms with
students who were literally young enough to be my children. But the alienation I sometimes felt
from my classmates is nothing compared to what our veteran students feel today.
Three years ago, my first year here at COD, I decided to get involved with a student organization. As I looked over the list of student clubs, I was struck by the fact that there wasn't a veterans club here on campus, so I decided to try to start one. I spent a couple of weeks sitting at a table in the SRC in my spare time, gathering names of student veterans. While there seemed to be some interest in having a club, I couldn't get anyone to step forward and begin the process until that spring. Then three students who had signed up, Steven Link, Jason Arambaru and Sandy Kim, approached me. Sandy, Steven, and Jason are why we have a club. It took most of the summer to get everyone into the same room to complete the paperwork, but last fall the CODVA was founded.
Last year we held two successful events. Our Veterans Day read-in was supported by veterans, classified staff, and faculty members who participated and brought their classes. Franz Burnier put in the hard work to organize this event last year, and he's taken it on again. This year's Read-In will be November 11, so if you'd like to participate, please contact Franz. Our second event, which we opened to the community, was a veteran's benefits fair. We plan to repeat this event as well this spring.
As a new club, we're still looking to carve out our place here at COD. If anyone has any suggestions about events or activities for us, please pass them along. I'd like to form study groups for the club, find a way for more social activities, and maybe connect with the original Veterans Club that was here many years ago, after the Vietnam War.
Our mission is to provide a space for community, to help veterans transition to academic life, to advocate for other veteran students and to raise awareness about veterans in our academic community. While I don't have any hard numbers to back this up, it seems like most of our veteran students are Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans. They've seen and done things that the rest of us cannot even come close to understanding. The club offers them a place where they can relax and let down their guard. We are a non-partisan, non-political club, and we're always looking for new members.
If you have any students who are veterans, I hope you'll tell them about the club and point them my way. I can be reached by email or extension 2402. My office is room 3133 b in the IC. If they'd rather contact student members directly, they can email Paul Redding and Jose Alvarez.
Image of Student veterans Steven Link, Sandy Kim, and Jason Arambaru
The Right Start Program by Mary Anderson
Students interested in the field of manufacturing have a unique opportunity to get started
right, thanks to a grant by the Joyce Foundation and a curriculum jointly
designed by Manufacturing, English, and Math faculty called "Right Start." Students sign up for a
Special Topics course where they are introduced to principles of manufacturing by completing
computer-based modules that teach the skill sets established by the Manufacturing Skill Standards
Council (MSSC). At the same time, the students receive coursework in Developmental Reading, Writing,
and Math designed to make them "college ready" by the end of the Right Start program, enabling them
to continue their college career in a related manufacturing program or to demonstrate their
value-added advantage as they pursue a job. Representatives from local manufacturing companies, as
well as the National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE), acknowledge the edge an applicant has
with an MSSC certificate, but they also emphasize their huge advantage when they can demonstrate
competency in communication skills, critical thinking, and applied mathematics. These skills set the
Right Start students apart from the ordinary!
The first cohort of Right Start students finished their coursework this past spring and summer, and the second cohort will start in Spring 2009. The 10-hour program provides time for instruction and supervised lab hours, with additional workshops in resume writing, career research, and field trips to manufacturing plants. The instructors and project coordinator collaborate throughout the term to create an integrated experience for the students. Such an experience reinforces the integration of academics and careers, a model endorsed by the NCWE. With support from the Joyce Foundation, we've found the right process to "manufacture" student success.
Because this is a grant-funded initiative, we were able to approach instruction in this innovative, integrated fashion. And we are able to modify the course for the second time around based on what worked and what didn't work the first time. For instance, supervised lab hours will allow students access to more sophisticated computer-aided instruction than they could get from their computers at home, as well personalized assistance in reading, writing, and math. We learned that peer tutoring that follows the Supplemental Instruction model needs to be provided from the beginning of the term, so we've built that into the students' week. And we learned the importance of balancing the core information offered in the classroom with hands-on experience gained by touring manufacturing plants. In addition, we've identified some systemic ways to make this initiative even more viable, such as "combining" achievement information in order to assign one grade for the course—a process not impossible without the grant, but one that was certainly fostered by the grant's emphasis on linked coursework.
We also learned when not to improvise too much, as when we discovered the registration complexities of spanning the course over two terms. We are also very aware that recruiting students, especially to a misunderstood career field like Manufacturing, is difficult, and we know a small class is not likely to be supported by the school without grant funding. Recruiting will be even more problematic this spring because tuition waivers will not be available to students as they were the first time around. However, students are learning about this opportunity earlier in the process and may be eligible for financial aid. Timing is everything!
The faculty involved in the pilot project included Mary Anderson, Anthony Lenard, Mark Meyer, Katrina Nagle, and part time faculty member Jonathan Brockman. All of these faculty completed the training to teach the MSSC materials. They also all completed at least one of the four MSSC modules, and two of them (Mark and Katie) are certified proctors for administering the MSSC certification tests. Mary, Tony, and Katie join Project Coordinator Donna Claffy in offering the Right Start program again in Spring semester.
Image of Right Start students attending a job fair hosted by Bison Gear and Engineering
Faculty First-Person: Chemistry Professor Finds COD Students Willing and Able by Richard Jarman
Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of COD faculty essays to help the public in our
district better understand who we are and what we do. We will publish these essays
in the Faculty Advocate, but also work at getting them reprinted in other venues.
While pondering ways to illuminate for students of the more liberal arts the deeper subtleties of molecular orbitals, I am often shaken from my reverie by animated strands of Spanish discourse, punctuated regularly by cries of "Chica," floating in from one corner of my faculty office suite. On other occasions, small knots of nursing students may be huddled around the center table, engaged in earnest discussion of knotty medical issues. (While I am as interested in the smooth operation of my digestive system as the next man, the mention of "small bowel obstruction" usually has me quietly closing the door on any further exposition of that delicate subject.) Another nearby office clearly evidences its owner's anthropological leanings by mysterious objects and artifacts that unnervingly resemble shrunken heads.
Thus we are a varied lot, the faculty. I am greatly relieved at having demonstrated some talent in chemistry, for if required to make my living teaching Spanish, nursing, or anthropology, I would be scratching out a meager existence indeed. So, in this first of a series of articles that will illustrate some diversity of interests and talents of College of DuPage faculty, I will only answer for myself.
Chemistry features prominently as a prerequisite in several important vocational and higher degrees. If my students are not vying for a spot in the hotly contested nursing program, they are likely checking that physical sciences box in the gen-ed requirements for transfer. While I am happy to stamp those students' tickets to take the train to their next station, I don't miss the opportunity to expose them to the bigger picture. Most don't expect chemistry to have much to say about modern life, whereas in fact it has everything to say about it. Beyond making the connections between molecules and, say, the boiling of an egg, or why ice floats on water, chemistry plays a vital role in all the major issues confronting society. We bring the course to a close with lively debates on different perspectives surrounding global warming, recycling, sustainability, nuclear power, alternative energy, stem cell research and so on. I can receive no finer compliment as to the impact of the course than the comment left by one student: "I will never look at a glass of water the same way again." I like to think I can sweeten the pill (if pill it be) by creative use of different media and technologies. How many pop songs have the word chemistry in the title? Enough to last the term and still have some left over.
Motivated by the desire to attract more people into science careers, I have gone beyond the conventional community college chemistry experience by engaging students in research projects not only during the semester, but also in intensive summer internships. I have been fortunate in hooking up, to borrow from the modern vernacular, with far-sighted faculty from other colleges in the area, notably Harper College and City Colleges of Chicago, in a National Science Foundation grant. This has really taken off in the past few years with regular summer gigs working at Argonne National Laboratory. Doing that while maintaining a full teaching load during the summer semester can be stressful; I recall one summer workshop in California where my only luggage seemed to be a suitcase full of lab reports. Although the numbers are comparatively small, the payback is fantastic; there is nothing better than seeing one's students present their work at national meetings, where they may be the only representatives from community colleges among hundreds of students from four-year universities. I have learned from this experience not to put limits on what can be achieved with minimal training but maximum commitment.
It is also gratifying to be able to have an influence on a student's career long after they have left the immediate vicinity of one's classroom. 2008 has been a wonderful year in that regard. Nahiris Bahamón, known to her Facebook friends as Fred, bagged a treasure trove of prestigious scholarships from Phi Theta Kappa, on her way to triumphal entry into the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I worked with her on getting a research internship at Illinois State University in 2007; and the experience stood her in good stead when making scholarship applications. Lily Santos was able to parlay her research experience at Argonne into further research work at her new position at Loyola University. Amanda Manley has gone further afield, lured by the attractions of goat research at Langston University, Oklahoma. While the connection between goats and chemistry is a little tenuous, it was Amanda's involvement in a research environment that inspired her. In a couple of weeks she will be traveling to Oak Ridge National Laboratory to participate in a national undergraduate research poster competition sponsored by the Department of Energy. Not bad for someone having had just one semester of chemistry under her belt at COD prior to getting involved in research.
When sitting in a circle at COD's teaching retreat in William's Bay, hearing all the innovative things my fellow faculty members are doing, I often feel I could be doing more, so much more. But I take some solace from that scene in Schindler's List where Oskar, castigating himself for not saving more, is gently reminded that, "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire." While education is seldom a matter of life or death, it is certainly about the transformation of lives, and my part as an instrument in that process is what makes it all worthwhile.
Accolades—Call for Kudos! by Mary Konkel & Ida Hagman
In our December issue we'll run a column here dedicated to faculty achievements. Tell us about your
educational achievements and degrees, publications,
program development, awards, athletic achievements, musical/theatrical accomplishments and more. We want to hear about your personal accomplishments as well
as your professional ones. Consider highlighting someone who has worked behind the scenes without
recognition.
Submissions should be forwarded to column editors, Ida Hagman or Mary Konkel by Friday, November 19 for inclusion in the December Faculty Advocate's Accolades column.
