FIPSE GRANT    

 Grant

 Personnel

 News

 21st C Skills

 Curriculum

 Photo Album

 Useful Links

This is the second newsletter providing information on the FIPSE grant awarded to MCC for three years.  As a reminder, the purpose of the grant is to add value to our A.A. degree by infusing 21st century workforce skills into our general education curriculum, to disseminate active learning strategies for schools that wish to do the same, and to document our students’ achievement of those skills.

A brief chronology of the first three semesters follows:

The spring semester, 2001, was the first semester of the grant, and we are proud and happy to report that we not only accomplished an orientation to the goals and structure of the grant, but also, we began the work of the grant and the evaluation of the grant too.  In the fall semester, 2001, we continued our work on curriculum development, and we began our faculty development program.  At the end of the semester, we provided an orientation for the year two team.

The first year Curriculum and Learning Design Team (CLDT) consisting of Angela Rapkin (English, Venice Campus), Jane Jones (Humanities, Venice Campus), Susan Brown (English, Bradenton Campus), Isara Tyson (English, Bradenton Campus) and Mary Katherine Wainwright (English, Bradenton Campus) started our grant program with a focus on ENC 1101 and HUM 2230. Having confidence and enthusiasm, we began both the research and the teaching, and in four short months, made a great deal of progress. In addition, we have learned a great deal and enjoyed our work tremendously. To learn what the specific skills needed are, we interviewed members of our business and professional community. To provide a realistic model for our students to learn from, we sent them into the workforce to conduct their own interviews. In addition, we brought significant people from the world of work into our classes to work with our students.  In addition, we brought nearly 200 Written Communication students to our Career Centers to work with our outstanding personnel, and we brought many of them to special programs conducted by the Career Centers. Our students have produced resumes, cover letters, research papers, and other documents demonstrating their learning. They have used educational technology to do so. In Humanities, the students worked in teams to produce PowerPoint presentations demonstrating an increased understanding of the impact of different groups (British, Italian, African American, etc.) on the development of Florida's art and culture.

Faculty on the second year CLDT team include Nancy Johnson (Mathematics, Bradenton Campus) and John Walters (Mathematics, Venice Campus), Felix Rizk and Jane Pfeilsticker (Science, both campuses) and Luci Frith (Humanities and Speech, Bradenton Campus).

The second year team has worked for one semester identifying field representatives and resource people in the business community and conducting interviews with them.  This has assisted them in identifying the specific skills needed in their academic disciplines for success in the 21^st century world of work.  In addition, they have created learning modules to incorporate the FIPSE skills into their specific courses, and these now appear on their web pages.

A mentor program is in place.  It was given a high evaluation by the faculty and by the project director.

The Faculty Development Program has included sessions on using active learning strategies, teaching critical thinking across the curriculum, creating learner-centered environments, writing performance objectives, doing assessment, enhancing student listening skills, and incorporating writing for business skills into the freshman composition class.