ECTC nursing students surpass national average for passing licensure exam

ACTC V-Day seminar on tap

Professionals offering financial aid guidance for college

MCTC workshops offer lessons in sign language

Bush seeks bigger Pell Grants and elimination of some programs for low-income students

A whole new crew

ECTC nursing students surpass national average for passing licensure exam

Both programs at the school, one preparing students to become licensed practical nurses and another grooming future registered nurses, were recently recognized for student test scores by the Kentucky Board of Nursing. Each of the 10 practical nursing students who took the licensure exam for the first time during the 2003-04 school year passed. Of the 44 students in the associate's degree in nursing program, 95 percent passed the test.

The statewide pass rate was 90 percent. Nationally, 85 percent of students taking the test for the first time passed.

Now well into the program, Clark said she feels confident her instructors are preparing her to pass the test and start her career.

"So many people have passed it and done the same thing we've done. Surely, we'll be all right," she said during a skills lab where she practiced nasal tracheal suction on a mannequin last week.

The high pass rates reflect the dedication of students and teachers, said associate's degree program coordinator Susan Mudd and practical nursing program coordinator Mary Kulp.

The computer-based test is difficult, they said. Questions are randomly selected from a test bank. If a question is answered correctly, the next question will likely be more difficult. If a question is answered incorrectly, the next question will be easier. Students must answer a certain amount of high-level questions correctly. They could answer anywhere between 75 and 275 questions.

The most dreaded questions are the "multiple-multiple" type that present a situation and ask the student to select all the answers that apply. If they choose one too many or one too few answers, the entire question is wrong.

Mudd said students are taught to think critically — a skill necessary to pass the test. Memorization of facts alone will not work.

"Even with the same illness, every patient and treatment is different," she said. "You can not memorize in nursing. You can memorize pieces, but you can't treat a patient with those pieces alone."

Instructors also give class tests in a format similar to the licensure test.

"They're used to that (format). It's not a shock. That's a little anxiety we can take away," Kulp said.

Mudd and Kulp also attributed the high pass rates to teachers keeping up with nursing trends. In ECTC's programs, instructors in the clinical and classroom settings are either the same person or in close contact with each other.

"They can carry the information they see in the clinical back to the classroom," Mudd said of those who teach in both clinical settings and classrooms.

The pass rate reflects the quality of students as much as the quality of instruction, administrators said.

First, a nursing student selection process considers grade-point averages and ACT or equivalent testing scores. For the associate's degree program, students are also required to complete a pre-admission interview. The students are ranked and, starting at the top of the list, chosen to fill any openings in the program.

"It's a pool, and the pool changes every year. It's not a waiting list," Kulp said.

"It's getting more competitive," Mudd said, noting the top associate's degree program applicants have at least a 3.25 GPA and an ACT score of 24.

Once in the program, students show strong dedication to the classes.

Kulp said some students live in the Central time zone and drive an hour to attend classes at 7 a.m. Eastern time, for example.

"They want it so badly, nothing will stand in their way," she said.

The Daily Independent
February 6, 2005

ACTC V-Day seminar on tap

Safe Harbor will be hosting "V-Day: Until the Violence Stops," from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Ashland Community and Technical College.

V-Day is aimed at raising awareness of issues such as rape, incest, domestic violence and other forms of violence against women and girls.

V-Day was founded in 1998 as an outgrowth of Eve Ensler's award-winning play "The Vagina Monologues." It is now celebrated with events in more than 350 communities throughout the world.

According to organizers, the message behind V-Day is simple - the violence must end.

"There are still a tremendous amount of domestic violence cases in the area," said Erica Brown, spokeswoman for Safe Harbor. "So, it is something that all of us need to be aware of."

She said V-Day allows the shelter to commit to stopping violence on a larger scale, not just as a local grassroots movement.

Morehead State University will also be hosting V-Day activities, according to Nashia Fife, organizer of the events on campus. On Feb. 14, there will be informational displays in Breckinridge Hall, Fife said, as well as an art show and raffle. Additional activities are being planned.

On March 3, 4, and 5, MSU will be presenting "The Vagina Monologues," Fife said, with all proceeds going to local women's organizations. Location and times of the play have not been set.

Fife said she received a copy of "The Vagina Monologues" for Christmas and was moved to become active in the anti-violence campaign.

"Violence against women is a problem for everyone. You may not be personally affected by it, but all of us have family and friends who are touched by violence," Fife said.

She said there is a tendency to sweep the problem under the rug, especially in rural areas.

"The Vagina Monologues" will be presented in the Joan C. Edwards Experimental Theatre at Marshall University on Feb. 10, 11, and 12, each night at 8 p.m.

Admission is $7 for students and $12 for everyone else. Proceeds will go to local rape and domestic violence centers.

During the performances, there will be an art show in the lobby and a raffle during intermission. V-Day merchandise will also be sold.

Safe Harbor will be working with the 15 other domestic violence shelters in the state to produce "The Vagina Monologues," at 7 p.m., April 2, at the University of Kentucky's Singletary Center. Tickets are $20.

Kentucky New Era
February 8, 2005

Professionals offering financial aid guidance for college

HOPKINSVILLE -- Financial aid professionals are offering help to students who need money to attend college next year.

Through a series of free seminars, HCC employees are working with students as they weigh their options for paying to continue their educations. The services will be offered as a community service, no matter where attendees plan to attend college.

Melissa Kieffer remembers taking financial aid forms home to her parents, who told her she was on her own in filling them out.

"Even though it's streamlined and easier than ever, it's like doing taxes, questions still come up," said the coordinator of counseling and assessment at HCC. "This is just a service we want to provide people who are a little concerned about it.

"A lot of students in our community are first generation. (Applying for) financial aid can be very scary. A lot of people have a lot of questions. A lot of people need help filling it out."

Vince Shykes, HCC director of financial aid, said the process can look intimidating, but with a little help, it's not.

In particular, he said he wanted to help students feel comfortable filling out forms online, which can be done in 15 minutes and produce much faster responses.

More than 83 percent of all students need financial aid to complete their studies, Kieffer said. In many cases, scholarships also require that financial aid applications be completed first.

"Not everyone is going to get financial aid, but millions of dollars go unclaimed because people just don't apply," Shykes said. "It can make the difference whether they can go to school or not."

"We tell everyone don't assume anything. Let the government tell you if you qualify or not."

Aid is based on income, taxes paid, the number of people in the family and the number of people in college.

Shykes said the sooner prospective students apply for financial aid, the better their chances are of receiving it.

The College Access Program, the state's lottery-funded financial aid, caps at a certain amount so aid is first come, first serve. The maximum CAP grant this year is $1,400.

More Federal Pell Grant money is available and can be applied for at any time. The current maximum is $4,050.

Students don't have to have applied to college yet when they fill out the application.

There's no charge for the services HCC's financial aid staff can provide and students can call, stop in the office or attend workshops for help.

Seminars will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday at Stewart County Adult Education Center, 6 p.m. Feb. 10 at Todd County Central High School, 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at Fort Campbell High School, 6 p.m. Feb. 17 at Hopkinsville High School, 6 p.m. Feb. 22 at Caldwell County High School, and 1 p.m. Feb. 27 at HCC (College Goal Sunday).

Attendees are encouraged to bring copies of completed 2004 Federal Tax submissions and W-2 forms (both parent and student) to apply for aid for next school year.

MCTC workshops offer lessons in sign language

AUGUSTA -- In an age of bilingual families, Augusta resident Jennifer A. Miller has something different to offer. She can count to a billion in sign language.

Miller, her husband Chris and their children Taran and Samantha are all blessed with good hearing.

The wish to communicate with another child drove Miller to learn sign language at a young age.

'A neighbor of my cousin had to sign to communicate, so I learned a little from her,' said Miller.

That relationship sparked a thirst within Miller to learn more about Manuel Sign Language.

Miller said she was self taught by using Sesame Street books her mother had bought for her brother.

'A friend of mine in fourth grade also learned it and we use to sign messages to each other in class,' said Miller.

Miller has turned her love of learning into a career.

While serving as a representative for the Mason County Head Start Policy Council, Miller met representatives of Time To Sign, Inc. at a conference in Louisville. They asked Miller to become an independent consultant for the company.

Through requests from Time To Sign, Inc. Miller has traveled Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee giving workshops on specific areas of sign language.

'We are given intense training on each subject we present,' said Miller.

She is currently holding workshops at Maysville Community and Technical College titled 'Sing and Sign' and 'Manuel Alphabet.'

Utilization of familiar children's songs and games is one tool Miller uses to help students retain her lessons.

'It all starts with the alphabet,' said Miller. 'If you remember nothing from my classes, remember the alphabet and you will be able to communicate.'

Miller uses BINGO, Animals, Numbers and 'Itsey Bitsey Spider' help students learn.

'If it's fun you learn without realizing it,' said Miller.

For more materials on workshops and classes write to Jennifer A. Miller, 407 E. Heather Renee French Blvd., Apt. 3, Augusta, 41002 or e-mail jamiller@timetosign.com

Bush seeks bigger Pell Grants and elimination of some programs for low-income students

While college lobbyists applauded the president's plans to increase the maximum Pell Grant, wipe out the program's deficit, and increase loan limits, they were disturbed that the proposal would pay for those changes, in part, by eliminating the Perkins loan program and requiring colleges to return the federal share of the money they use to make new Perkins loans to students from low- and middle-income families (The Chronicle, February 4).

College lobbyists and student advocates were also unhappy that the president proposed budget would end several popular programs that help motivate and prepare low-income students for college. Under the plan, the savings from terminating these programs would be transferred into a block grant that states could use in a variety of ways "to increase the achievement of high-school students," according to the budget documents.

Colleges made $1.263-billion in Perkins loans, averaging $1,875, to 673,000 borrowers in 2004.

The loans are made from a pool made up of federal "capital contributions," institutional matches, and repaid Perkins loans. The recall of the federal share, which amounts to $6-billion, would be phased in over 10 years.

Bush-administration officials said they had taken aim at the Perkins loan program -- which gives colleges money to lend to needy students at a fixed interest rate of 5 percent -- because of its limited reach. They noted that the number of institutions that provided Perkins loans to their students had declined from 3,338 in the 1983-84 academic year to 1,796 in 2003-4.

"With only 3 percent of students enrolled in postsecondary education receiving Perkins loans each year," documents accompanying the president's budget plan state, "the administration believes the federal share of funds held by this small group of institutions would better serve students if invested in Pell Grants, which serve all eligible students regardless of institution."

"We had to determine what is the best use of taxpayers' money," Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Education Department said in an interview following a news briefing by the agency on the president's education proposals.

But college lobbyists said they would oppose the termination of the Perkins program. "Eliminating one critical student-aid program to finance another is not good policy," said Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations for the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.

The president's budget would also eliminate the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships program, which matches each dollar that states commit to need-based aid. In addition, it would leave both Federal Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which augment Pell Grants for needy students, at their 2005 levels.

The programs for low-income students that would be eliminated are Upward Bound and Talent Search, which are part of the federal TRIO programs for disadvantaged students, and Gear Up, which concentrates especially on helping financially needy middle-school students. Backers of the programs said the Bush administration would have a hard time getting its proposal through Congress because all three programs have strong bipartisan support.

Speaking at a gathering of more than 800 supporters of Gear Up in Philadelphia on Monday, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Pennsylvania Democrat who helped conceive the program, called the president's proposal "nonsensical and utterly irresponsible."

"Gear Up is improving the life chances of students from the poorest families around the nation," he said.

Pell Grants

Speaking at the department's news conference on Monday, Margaret Spellings, the education secretary, emphasized that the president's Pell Grant proposal would not only increase the maximum grant by $500 over five years, but also "end, once and for all, the program's shortfall, which has been an impediment to enhancing the award."

During his first term, Mr. Bush asked Congress to increase appropriations for Pell Grants by 47 percent. Still, the maximum grant has remained at $4,050 for the past three years because the appropriations have not been enough to keep up with an unexpected surge in demand for the awards. Although the grant program was not created as an entitlement, it functions like one: Grants are awarded to all eligible students, even if the program runs in the red.

Bush-administration officials and Republican Congressional leaders have been reluctant to call for increases in the maximum award until the program's deficit is covered. But now the administration has found a creative way to overcome that problem. If enacted by Congress, the proposals would significantly change -- at least temporarily -- the way the maximum grant is set.

Now it is up to Congressional appropriators to set the maximum award each year. Under the president's proposal, Pell Grants would operate more like a true entitlement program, such as Medicare or Social Security, with scheduled increases in the top grant -- of $100 a year for five years -- taking effect automatically.

Mr. Bush's proposal does not provide any additional money to pay for his plan, which would cost about $19-billion. Instead it relies on "reforming" the federal student-loan programs, the budget documents state. In addition to pulling out of the Perkins program, Mr. Bush proposed paying for his Pell Grant plan by reducing some subsidies that the government provides to banks and other types of lenders for making low-interest loans available to students. Included in those proposals is a plan that would make lenders and guarantee agencies, which insure federal student loans, assume a higher share of the risk that students will default on their loans.

"Problems in the structures of the current student-loan programs prevent them from meeting all their policy and program objectives," the budget documents state. "Specifically, the federal government assumes almost all of the risk for the loans, while federal subsidies to intermediaries -- lenders and guarantee agencies -- are set high enough to allow the less-efficient ones to generate a profit. These problems lead to unnecessary costs for taxpayers and prevent the program from achieving the efficiencies the market is designed to improve."

Under the plan, the amount that the government reimburses lenders for loans that go into default would be reduced to 95 cents from 98 cents for every dollar that goes into default. The amount the government reimburses guarantee agencies, which collect on defaulted loans, would be reduced to 92 cents from 95 cents.

Loan-industry officials said they supported the president's plan to increase the maximum Pell Grant but did not believe that reducing the amount lenders and guarantors could earn was the right way to pay for it. "We have to work with the president to see if there are other ways to achieve his goal of strengthening and enhancing the Pell Grant program," said Brett E. Lief, president of the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs, which lobbies on behalf of guarantee agencies.

The president would also pay for his plan by backing a proposal in the House of Representatives that would save money by making a federal program for consolidating student loans less attractive to borrowers. Under that plan, introduced by key Republicans last week as part of legislation to renew the Higher Education Act, borrowers would no longer be unable to lock in a low, fixed interest rate for up to 30 years. Advocates for students and many Democratic lawmakers oppose that change.

Luke Swarthout, a higher-education adviser for the State Public Interest Research Groups, said the proposal would "cost students thousands of dollars in increased interest payments."

With opposition from college lobbyists, student advocates, and loan-industry officials, it is unclear whether Mr. Bush will be able to push his Pell Grant proposal through Congress. To get it enacted, lawmakers would have to make many of the proposed changes in the legislation to renew, or reauthorize, the Higher Education Act, which governs most of the government's student-aid programs.

Administration officials expressed little concern about their prospects on Monday. They did warn, however, that if Congress did not act quickly on renewing the law, which expires this year, lawmakers will have a difficult time meeting the president's objective to increase the maximum grant by $100 in the 2006 fiscal year, which begins October 1.

"This sets the priority to get reauthorization done this year," Sally Stroup, the Education Department's assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said in an interview following the news briefing. "It needs to be done before September 30."

Other Proposals

The president's spending plan would make some other significant changes in federal student-aid programs. It would:

Put a time limit on how long students could receive Pell Grants to pay for college. Under the plan, students would remain eligible for Pell Grants for eight years, or the equivalent of 16 semesters. Now, the government does not place a lifetime limit on the number of years an individual can receive a Pell Grant to pay for an undergraduate degree.

Allow Pell Grant recipients to use their awards year-round, providing the students with more flexibility. Students can now use their Pell Grant awards only over the nine months of a traditional academic year.

Revise the formula that the government uses to distribute money for two campus-based federal student-aid programs -- College Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants -- to ensure that those programs are serving the neediest students.

Allow borrowers to refinance their federal student loans more than once so that they could take advantage of more favorable interest rates. These borrowers would have to pay a 1-percent origination fee to reconsolidate their loans.

Require students to pay a fee, equal to 1 percent of the amount they have borrowed, to student-loan guarantee agencies.
The president would also create several new programs, including ones that would:

Reward low-income students who take specific college-preparatory courses in high school with an additional $1,000 in Pell Grants for their first year in college. Students eligible to receive those funds would be required take part in State Scholars programs, which now operate in 13 states.

Provide students who are eligible for Pell Grants with an additional $5,000 annually if they agree to study mathematics and science in college. This proposal would cost $100-million, half of which would be paid by the government and half by private sources. The budget documents do not specify who those private sources would be or how the money would be raised.

Provide $125-million to create a new grant program to help community colleges improve their services to students. According to the budget documents, the money would be used to provide incentives to community colleges to create dual-enrollment programs, which allow high-school students to earn college credit, and to states to make it easier for students to transfer credits earned at community colleges to four-year institutions.

Community College Week
January 31, 2005

A whole new crew

Community colleges are navigating increasingly dynamic and vital roles in educating the teachers of tomorrow.

Community colleges long have taken pride in their institutional focuses on excellent teaching. Many see a natural fit between that culture of instruction and the galloping growth of programs to educate future K-12 teachers.

“Teaching is the hallmark of a community college,” said Dr. Anna Solley, the acting president of Arizona’s Phoenix College and previously the vice chancellor for academic affairs at the Maricopa Community Colleges, a 10-campus system in and around Phoenix with many teacher-education offerings. “That’s what we do best. We take great pride in the quality of instruction we deliver. It makes sense then, in turn, that we would also want to train pre-K through 12th-grade teachers.”

The types of programs community colleges offer run the gamut, from a traditional two-year degree linked to articulation agreements with nearby universities where students complete their bachelor’s degrees, to subject-area certification for those who already have a bachelor’s degree in another field, to a handful of schools nationwide where community-college students can actually receive a bachelor’s degree in education without a university link.

A combination of geographic and subject-area shortages, the coming retirement wave among baby boomers, and the No Child Left Behind Act and state-level accountability initiatives have helped drive this growth, educators say. Those factors — and community colleges’ ability to reach underserved markets — have helped reduce or eliminate universities’ erstwhile resistance to accrediting two-year institutions for such offerings, they say.

The Name of the Game
Dr. Cary Israel, president of Collin County Community College in Nevada, Texas, which offers an associate of arts in teaching degree as well as post-baccalaureate subject-area certification, agreed with Solley about community colleges and teaching.

“We are primarily teaching institutions. Why shouldn’t we be recognized as having wonderful teacher-education programs?” Israel said.

A mushrooming number of community colleges have been asking that question and exploring their potential teacher-education roles. The number of teacher-education programs of one kind or another has grown more than 200 percent in the past four years, said Dr. Cheri St. Arnauld, the executive director of the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs, a 400-plus member organization created three years ago that holds an annual conference and awards scholarships.

“There is that surge across the country,” said St. Arnauld, who also serves as the national director of teacher-education programs for the Maricopa system, where NACCTEP is based. “Most of what we’re doing is working on a national survey, gathering information from our membership to find out how many students are in teacher-ed programs and what kind of programs, so that we can share that information and advocate for the community-college role in teacher preparation.”

Nationally, about 20 percent of teachers begin their education at community colleges, said Dr. Mildred J. Hudson, chief executive officer of Recruiting New Teachers, a research organization based in Belmont, Mass., that studied the issue and released a report several years ago called “Tapping Potential: Community Colleges and America’s Teacher Recruitment Challenge.”

“Our findings showed that community colleges are a rich resource for finding teachers of color,” Hudson said. “It’s a place where first-generation Americans often start their higher education. They tend to go to school at nearby colleges and when they teach, they tend to stay in their communities. This is really important, because 50 percent of teachers leave the profession within the first three to five years.”

Walls Crumbling Down
So pressing has the teacher shortage been that it’s helped warm four-year schools up to the idea of community colleges becoming more involved with teacher education.

St. Arnauld said she’s seen evidence of that evolution during the past few years.

“The need was so great that community colleges and universities have really moved beyond some of that initial dialogue and are beginning to work together,” she said. “We have some joint partnership efforts happening right now that are strengthening those relationships.”

“The movement is very beneficial to teacher education,” said Schuhmann, dean of the college of education at Kean University in Union, N.J. “It calls for collaboration rather than seeing it from the point of view of the four-year colleges as a threat or as competition.”

When Collin County launched its program in 2000 after receiving approval from the state board for educator certification, one estimate held that the state of Texas needed 45,000 more teachers to meet its needs.

“We were the first in Texas and one of the first in the nation” to offer post-baccalaureate subject-area certification, Israel said. “There was some resistance, as you can imagine, from universities.”

At first Collin County only did subject-area certification in technology, but that has expanded dramatically, he said.

The Maricopa system, which offers associate’s degrees at “many” of its campuses and post-graduate certification at two colleges, has seen a similar change in its relationships, Solley said.
“We have a very cordial and professional working relationship with our university partners,” she said. “I would have said probably four years ago that everybody was trying to figure out where their place was.”

St. Petersburg College, one of three community colleges in Florida and several in the nation that offer a full bachelor’s degree, has similarly respectful relationships, said Dr. Thomas Furlong, senior vice president for baccalaureate programs.

“There was a feeling among universities in the beginning that it would be really difficult for a community college to get accreditation as a four-year because of the difficulty recruiting faculty and library resources,” he said. “But some can go out and recruit the type of faculty that are needed.”

Because they’re so affordable and ubiquitous, community colleges also have an easier time recruiting students who are lower-income, older than those who are of traditional college age, and place-bound by family and work responsibilities. This helps universities see them less as competitors, college officials say, and it bolsters community colleges’ pride in their roles.

“Community colleges make it possible for people who might not have felt they could afford to go to college to pursue a career in education because of the tuition differential,” said Dr. Karen Wells, vice president for academic affairs at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio. “Also, community colleges tend to be the first place of choice for minority populations. There is a great need to diversify the teacher population, and it’s through the community colleges that that is most likely to happen.”

That was Miami Dade College’s thinking in starting its bachelor’s degree program two years ago, said Dr. Leslie Ann Roberts, MDC’s dean of academic affairs.

“It wasn’t crafted to avoid threatening four-year institutions,” she said. “It was crafted to capture a market that’s been underserved. By default it wouldn’t hurt four-year schools because they hadn’t been attracting that market anyway: working adults with families and job responsibilities. They haven’t been able to access a typical university schedule.”

And other students just don’t have the resources.

“What drives my passion is the students that start here who are the first in their family to go to college,” said Sue Parsons, director of the teacher-education program at Cerritos College in Norwalk, Calif. “I can’t speak enough about the students and their drive. They’re single parents. They’re going back to the community to teach from which they came. To me, that’s what it’s all about.”

Finding Their Place
Colleges have experimented with a variety of models in finding their way to their new roles. The federal government and some states have supported “pathways” programs through which high-school students take college-prep courses in education that lead to associate’s degree programs at community colleges, which can then lead to a bachelor’s degree program at a university, St. Arnauld said.

Maricopa works closely with a state-sponsored program called the College Career Transitions Initiative, “for high-school students who want to become teachers,” Solley said. “We also have at two of our colleges a teacher-preparation charter school,” which is in its second year and enrolls 60 students.

Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, Minn., has an active partnership with the North Branch School District through which students in the college’s education programs gain experience at the school district. Launched in the 1998-1999 school year to address shortages at North Branch, the program is now benefiting the entire region, said Deidra Peaslee, dean of educational services for Anoka-Ramsey’s Cambridge campus.

Anoka-Ramsey may invite St. Cloud State University to open a portal branch on its campus so students can finish up locally, she said.

“We’re looking at ways we can bring the education to them, rather than them having to drive 1½ hours,” she said.
Marga Mikulecky, project manager and policy analyst for the Center for Community College Policy at the Education Commission of the States, said she sees growing interest in community colleges offering four-year degrees, whether they do so directly or through a university-based center on their campuses.

Schuhmann said such co-located centers are a good thing. “That’s happening as the teacher shortage hits us, and as populations who are bound geographically because they are nontraditional college students, or because they cannot really move to the other site; the four-year colleges have developed these satellites to help out,” she said. “Other people have distance-learning courses in which they can do the same thing.”

Lorain County Community College has such an on-campus facility, which partners with eight universities to offer 32 bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, Wells said. Ashland, Cleveland State and Bowling Green State universities all offer degree programs on Lorain’s campus “that are related in some way to teacher education,” she said.

Although the most common model is to link with universities in “two-plus-two” programs in which students receive their associate’s degree at a community college and then move to a university, students at a handful of community colleges, including three in Florida, are receiving their bachelor’s degrees directly from their community college.
St. Petersburg, the first to do so in August 2002, has graduated 150 students with concentrations in elementary, exceptional child and secondary math and science education, Furlong said. The college plans to add business, technology and industrial arts education in August, he said. Miami Dade began a program one year later, and Chipola Junior College, a rural community college in the Panhandle, looks to be next, he said.

“Some people who would be critics of this approach might say, ‘Why not bring another university onto your campus?’” Furlong said. “We’re not really big into that model. There just was such a big (teacher) shortage, and we’ve got this whole alumni network out there that want to come back. We chose to do it ourselves.”

New Jersey’s Camden County College is among those offering subject-based “alternative” certification, in computers, science and mathematics, said Jack Tesda, a history professor and coordinator of special academic projects. “We can attract people in hard-to-fill disciplines,” he said. “Oftentimes we bring in individuals with more experience, who are more mature. Individuals who have entered through the alternative certification program are more likely to be teaching five years later.”

Santa Fe Community College in New Mexico has done so online, reaching students in remote areas. The college started its education program in 2001 and the online version in the fall of 2004, said Lyn deMartin, the coordinator of teacher-education distance learning.

“Students have limited options if they live rurally,” she said. “That’s true undoubtedly in a lot of Western states.” And such arrangements help some who live in Santa Fe but have other priorities, including two current students, one of whom is very sick and another of whom is caring for a terminally ill mother, deMartin said.
“It’s easier for them to work on a class at 3 in the morning than to get here for class,” she said.

Shortfall
Teacher shortages are especially acute in both rural and urban areas, in growing states in the Southwest and Southeast, and in subject areas such as math, science, special education and English as a Second Language, educators say.

“Not all states have teacher shortages, but certainly the rural areas in every state struggle with keeping quality teachers,” St. Arnauld said. “Special education struggles with keeping quality teachers. We do tend to lose teachers in the areas of math and science, and we’re always struggling to recruit more students in those areas. And there is an emphasis in a lot of our programs to have them ESL-endorsed.”

Urban teachers often leave for suburban school districts with better pay and working conditions, Mikulecky said, while rural districts lose younger teachers who want to move back from whence they came — or who leave the area to attend college and never return. She said some rural community colleges such as Great Basin College in Elko, Nev., have tried to recruit nontraditional students from the area to stay there by offering a bachelor’s degree and, in some cases, evolving wholesale into a four-year college.

“There isn’t a four-year institution for 250 miles around,” Mikulecky said of Great Basin. “Generally, if they’re going to do that, they’re going to go to Reno or Las Vegas, and they’re going to stay there.”

Great Basin, recently renamed from Northern Nevada Community College but “essentially still a community college,” has tried to recruit “people who, generally, if they do get their teaching certificate, are going to stay,” she said. “They’re from the area. They’re more place-bound.”

The subject-area shortfalls vary somewhat, with ESL needs particularly disparate depending upon the size of an area’s immigrant population. “Special education continues to be a huge shortage for most school districts,” said Peaslee, echoing administrators nationwide. “There continues to be demand for people who have strong mathematics skills and strong science skills.”

Collin County has focused mainly on math, science and technology and will be adding early childhood, ESL and bilingual education this year, said Brenda Kihl, the director of education programs. “The districts have just been screaming for those types of teachers because they are so hard to find.”

Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Va., sees retiring officers from the area’s sizable military population as possible recruits to teach math and science, particularly those with engineering backgrounds, said college president Dr. Deborah DiCroce. Large public-school systems in the area such as Virginia Beach have been recruiting abroad to fill such slots, she said.

“On one hand, that embraces the value-added of diversity,” she said. “On the other hand, you could say, ‘What is wrong with this picture? Why are they having to do that?’”

Colleges in heavily Hispanic areas and others with high immigrant populations offer training in handling ESL populations, although this does not typically involve learning Spanish or another language. Courts in Florida have required that education students receive ESL training.

“It requires knowing how to work with students who are limited-English proficient,” said Roberts of Miami Dade. “Those who get certified in areas where they engage students in reading and writing need to take at least one course.”

St. Petersburg infuses ESL training into its curriculum broadly rather than putting it out as a separate offering, Furlong said.

“We’re providing the ESL materials they need to handle that large, in our case Cuban, population,” he said. “We’re doing it by putting it right into the courses.”
Both geographic and subject-area shortages will become more acute as baby boomers begin retiring later this decade, college officials predict. Israel said states with growing populations, like California, Texas, Florida and North Carolina, will be in the most dire straits.

“Wait until 2007 or 2008,” Israel said. “There’s going to still be a big issue. We’re just putting a dent in it.”