Baltimore, Maryland
June 24th to 25th, 2010
About the conference
The Community College of Baltimore County will host its second annual Conference on Acceleration June 24th and 25th, 2010. The conference will feature two days of presentations from institutions across the country on a variety of approaches to acceleration in developmental writing, reading, math, and ESOL programs. To see an advanced program for the conference, click here.
Plenary Speakers
The conference will feature three plenary speakers:
Thomas Bailey. Director of the National Center for Postsecondary Research and the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. The numerous studies by Bailey and his colleagues at CCRC have been largely responsible for the growing realization that developmental education has been unsuccessful for the large majority of students subjected to it, and their studies of successful innovations have reassured the developmental community that we can do better.
Lynn Quitman Troyka. Long-time teacher of basic writing at Queensborough Community College in the of CUNY, system, past president of CCCC, editor of the Journal of Basic Writing, author of the Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers and many other textbooks and articles, Troyka has been a national champion of community colleges and developmental education for years.
Donna McKusick. Dean for Developmental Education and Special Academic Programs at The CCBC. Donna brings over twenty years of experience as a faculty member of developmental reading and writing and as a local and national advocate for at-risk students. She has particpated in local and national research on developmental education, led CCBC to achieving an outstanding reputation for its innovative developmental programs, and co-authored a textbook published by Pearson on integrated reading and writing instruction.
In addition, there will be several featured presentations:
MDC, a non-profit, founded in 1967 by North Carolina governor Terry Sanford, has worked for more than fifty years to to address the root causes of poverty. MDC’s involvement with Achieving the Dream has led to its most recent project, the Developmental Education Initiative, which helps fifteen colleges build on demonstrated results in developmental education innovations at their institutions to expand groundbreaking remedial education programs that experts say are key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income students and students of color. MDC will report on the Developmental Education Initiative and the projects of several of its participating colleges and states.
Thomas Bailey and Mary Visher from the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) will lead a session to discuss interest in participation in a coordinated program of rigorous evaluation of accelerated developmental education programs. The National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) is a partnership of the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, MDRC, (a public policy research organization based in New York City), and the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. NCPR is funded by the US Department of Education and is focused primarily on rigorous study and evaluation of developmental education programs in community colleges.
Davis Jenkins and Nikki Edgecombe from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) will discuss preliminary results from a quantitative evaluation of the ALP program at the Community College of Baltimore County.
Further, fifteen schools will give presentations on how they are implementing acceleration on their campuses:
- Community College of Baltimore County (MD)
- Community College of Denver (CO)
- Chabot Community College (CA)
- Dean College (MA)
- Howard Community College (MD)
- Ivy Tech Community College (IN)
- Middle Tennessee State University
- Middlesex Community College (CT)
- Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MN)
- Montgomery County Community College (PA)
- North Central State College (OH)
- Northern Virginia Community College
- Prince George’s Community College (VA)
- SUNY New Paltz (NY)
- U of Southern Maine
The pre-conference workshop on ALP SOLD OUT!
The Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) is the form of acceleration we have developed at the Community College Baltimore County (CCBC). ALP borrows features from many of the earlier innovations that have been developed elsewhere: mainstreaming, learning communities, studios. A description of ALP can be found by clicking here. Students at CCBC who take ALP are more than twice as likely to succeed in passing their developmental and ENGL 101 sequence as students who follow our traditional developmental sequence, and they do it in half the time. Detailed results of ALP can be found by clicking here.
The preconference workshop on Wednesday, June 23rd, is designed for those considering adopting ALP on their campuses. The workshop will provide participants with an understanding of ALP, data demonstrating its success, and practical suggestions for implementation. Participants will also receive a “start-up manual.” For details on the preconference workshop, click here.
Costs
Registration for the two-day onference is $190 and for the one-day preconference workshop on ALP is $80. One-day registration for June 24th or 25th is $95. Graduate students receive a 25% reduction on all fees.
Rooms at the Tremont Hotel are available at $129 plus tax per night, single or double occupancy. A continental breakfast and buffet lunch are included each day. We will refund 100% of registration fees as long as cancellation notification reaches us at 48 hours before the opening of the conference.
Optional Dinner
One highly successful event at last year’s conference was an informal dinner at Donna’s Cafe, located a few blocks from the hotel, so we have decided to add an optional dinner on Wednesday evening this year for those attending the one-day workshop or arriving Wednesday afternoon for the two-day workshop. We have booked the cafe for the evening, so join us if you can. The cost for the dinner is $35. You can indicate your intention to attend on the registration form. If you registered before we added this event, email us to let us know you’d like to attend.
Hotel
The conference will take place in the Tremont Grand Hotel in downtown Baltimore. The
Tremont is now completely booked, but we have arranged for overflow rooms at the Hotel Monaco, which is only a block and a half away. To reserve a room at the the Monaco, call 1-888-752-2636 and reference the Community College of Baltimore County – Overflow Room Block. The Monaco is honoring the same conference room rate of $129 per night.
Travel Advice
The hotel guests will be staying in is the Tremont Plaza at 222 St. Paul Street. The conference will take place in the Tremont Grand, at 225 North Charles Street. The two hotels are connected back-to-back, so most arrivals should go to the Tremont Plaza entrance on St. Paul; that’s where parking is available. The only reason for arriving at the Tremont Grand entrance on Charles Street is if someone is dropping you off and then leaving.
Arriving by air. Fly in to Baltimore-Washington International (BWI). It’s only about fiftenn minutes by cab from the Tremont Hotel. Dulles and Reagan-National are an hour and a half away. A cab from the airport should cost about $35.
Arriving by train. Baltimore’s Penn Station is only about a ten minute drive from the hotel–an easy cab ride, but a little far to walk.
Arriving by car. Drive to the St, Paul Street entrance to the hotel.
Detailed directions to the St. Paul Street entrance to the Tremont Plaza are available by clicking here.
Call for Papers
The deadline for proposing papers was March 30.
Registration
Our maximum capacity for the conference is two hundred. We do not expect more than that. We will be happy to accept registrations right up to the morning of the conference . . . as long as we don’t reach our maximum capacity.