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FIPSE GRANT |
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What is FIPSE? (No, it's not a soft drink!) The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) is a unit of the Office of Policy Planning and Innovation, and it is contained within the Office of Postsecondary Education, U.S. Department of Education. MCC has been awarded a three year FIPSE grant. What is our FIPSE grant for? We have proposed to identify the skills students will need as they enter the 21st century workforce, to infuse those skills into our general education curriculum, to disseminate active learning modules for schools that wish to do the same, and to document our students' achievement of those skills. How have we gotten started? In January, 2001, we formed a 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) and 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, we have 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 have interviewed members of our business and professional community. To provide a realistic model for our students to learn from, we have sent them into the workforce to conduct their own interviews. In addition, we have brought significant people from the world of work into our classes to work with our students. Early in the semester, we discovered what our own Career Centers could do for us. We brought nearly 200 Written Communication students our Career Centers to work with our outstanding personnel, and we brought many of them to special programs conducted by the Career Centers. In addition, we encouraged (gave extra credit for) students to use the resources in the Career Centers for their personal career exploration. 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. What will we do next? Prof. Jane Jones, our FIPSE web designer and manager, has begun creating our web site. We will be working on it (and our individual sites) during the summer. In the fall, we will continue our work on these courses in our academic departments.
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