Amarillo College aspires to vastly increase retention and success rates among a growing number of students who arrive under-prepared for college-level coursework and are obliged to take not-for-credit developmental classes in reading, writing and/or math.

Fortunately the U.S. Department of Education fully intends to help.

The Department of Education has awarded AC a Title V grant that will provide $525,000 annually for the next five years—a total award of approximately $2.6 million—to facilitate the College’s plan to overhaul its entire system of developmental education. AC received notification of the award on Tuesday, Sept. 22.

The funding comes courtesy of the Department of Education’s Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions program, available only to those institutions whose academic enrollment is at least 25 percent Hispanic. AC is presently serving 9,913 academic students, 39 percent (3,820) of whom are Hispanic.

However, the windfall will benefit all high-need students at AC, where failure rates among students in developmental courses, regardless of ethnicity and depending on discipline, range from 25 to 60 percent. And failure often more than impedes student aspirations; it routinely prompts abandonment of the quest altogether.

Among the many innovative solutions put forth in AC’s Title V grant application are plans to redesign and then firmly link developmental curricula to career pursuits; establish a centralized advising center; and implement a fast-track test-preparation program that promotes student success. Revamped teaching strategies that promote interaction and collaboration also received mention.

“This grant validates what we are doing because Title V recipients are typically few and selected from hundreds and sometimes thousands of applicants,” said Dr. Deborah Vess, vice president of academic affairs at AC. “It’s a significant honor given to an elite group of institutions that are moving the needle.

“So while we have a long way to go, and the Department of Education understands that, they also acknowledge that we’ve already come a long way and that our plan is viable.”

AC, in fact, has been a model of developmental excellence in recent years. AC’s Math Outreach Center received a Star Award in 2009 from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and a year later it was the recipient of the John Champaign Memorial Award, only one of which is granted annually to an outstanding developmental education program by the National Association for Developmental Education.

Yet the needs of foundational students have become a moving target and, in a mirror image of community colleges across the state and the nation, about 70 percent of students who enroll at AC require at least one developmental course. Such courses historically have been non-credit classes, but AC’s Title V plan will aim to link developmental education to credit-bearing courses where students will receive opportunities to apply the skills they are learning in developmental education courses.

“We keep students in a remedial pipeline too long,” Vess said. “Developmental sequences are too long and have not generally achieved the goal of getting students into credit-bearing contexts. Even when students succeed in developmental education courses, they receive no college credit.

“We will redesign our courses, teach them more creatively, engage our students more, and shorten the sequence,” she said. “And as our developmental students succeed, they will also be completing courses for college credit that will apply toward a real outcome, a certificate or degree.”

Additionally, an infusion career-oriented course content will be integral to course redesign efforts.

“We’ve got to show students how what they learn ties directly to the careers they want to pursue,” Vess said. “This is a concept that has shown promising results elsewhere.

“This grant should impact our retention and completion rates, which addresses our strategic priorities.”

September 23, 2015