Dr. Haleh Azimi and Professor Elsbeth Mantler are the current Co-directors of ALP, and Patrick Kelleher is the Director of Research and Planning at The Community College of Baltimore County. This interactive workshop will focus on the essential elements of the ALP model including, but not limited to: Integrated Reading and Writing, thematic units, non-cognitive issues, and structuring the course. Patrick will also bring in institutional data from CCBC’s 10+ years of ALP to understand how this model has and is impacting students. This session will be helpful for faculty, staff and administrators as it is focusing on both andragogy and data to paint a picture of ALP from many facets of the institution.

Haleh Azimi, Co-Director ALP, CCBC
Elsbeth Mantler, Co-Director, ALP, CCBC
Patrick Kelleher, Director Planning, CCBC

Are you interested in developing a math acceleration model at your institution? Attend this session to learn about a replicable and successful cohort model used at the Community College of Baltimore County. Participants will receive an extensive overview the model; topics of discussion include accelerated course design, faculty training models, marketing, scale-up, and the latest data.

Jesse Keifner, Director of AMP, CCBC
Danielle Truszkowski, Math Faculty, CCBC

Under a new law (AB705), all 114 California community colleges will need to stop using standardized tests and rely primarily on students’ high school grades for placement in English and math. Further, colleges are prohibited from placing students into remedial courses if doing so makes them less likely to complete transferable, college-level courses. What this means in practice is that, by Fall 2019, the vast majority of students will have the right to begin directly in transferable, college-level courses, with concurrent/corequisite support provided to those with weaker high school backgrounds. This interactive workshop led by Katie Hern, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the California Acceleration Project, will present the research driving the changes in California, with space for participants to ask questions, consider implications for their local context, and leave with implementation tools they can use to spark local conversations about transforming placement and remediation.

Katie Hern, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the California Acceleration Project

Data can be intimidating and many people feel overwhelmed by collecting, analyzing, and presenting data about their programs. In this workshop, participants will learn a simple model for storytelling with data, including the types of data they could gather and how to use data to effectively tell their story to a variety of audiences, with an emphasis on data visualization and reporting strategies. This workshop will be highly interactive and participants should bring their laptops to allow them to practice applying data visualization techniques. No advanced skills needed – if you’ve made a graph in Excel you have plenty of experience!

Dawn Coleman, Independent Evaluation Consultant

In this interactive 3-hour workshop, participants will receive an introduction into accelerated pedagogy for the ESL classroom. Additionally, the presenters will provide a window into an accelerated, integrated reading/writing/grammar course, 1 level below transfer English. This will include sharing texts, writing prompts, and description of assignment sequence. Finally, participants will engage in two instructional cycle activities in which they will experience accelerated pedagogy for the ESL classroom as students: one activity will focus on reading comprehension and the other will focus on building analysis for writing.

Jose Cortes, English/ESL Instructor, Solano Community College
California Acceleration Project: CAP ESL Coach
Melissa Reeve, English/ESL Instructor, Solano Community College
California Acceleration Project: CAP ESL Coach

Peter Adams and Susan Gabriel, past directors of the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), will tackle a variety of issues confronting ALP initiatives at schools around the country. Often, problems related to starting up, scaling up, faculty development, integrating reading/writing, equity, and placement can derail co-requisite programs or lessen their effectiveness. This interactive workshop will address these issues and offer solutions for overcoming these roadblocks, using the philosophy of triage: assigning levels of priority and determining the most effective methods for dealing with issues relating to ALP. This workshop will be valuable for both faculty and administrators from schools that are considering ALP to schools that have created an ALP initiative but are struggling with various concerns related to their program.

Peter Adams, Professor Emeritus, CCBC
Susan Gabriel, Retired ALP Director, CCBC

The structure of the Accelerated Math Program at the Community College of Baltimore County allows instructors to integrate engaging (and fun) learning activities. Participants will have the opportunity to experience these activities from the student perspective. In addition, open educational resources are integrated in accelerated math classes to alleviate student expenses. The adoption and integration of open source materials will be discussed.

Jesse Keifner, Director of AMP, CCBC
Danielle Truszkowski, Math Faculty, CCBC

In recent years, 80% of California community college students were classified “unprepared” and required to take remedial courses in English, math, and/or ESL, and College English was comprised of only the highest scoring students and the survivors of remedial sequences. However, under a new law (AB 705), the vast majority of students have the right to begin directly in transferable, college-level English, with or without corequisite support. With these changes, faculty must be ready to uphold rigor while supporting a broader population of students to be successful. In this interactive session, Summer Serpas, Assistant Director of the California Acceleration Project and Professor of English at Irvine Valley College, will share classroom activities and CAP’s design principles for high-challenge, high-support instruction that fuels student success in college composition.

Summer Serpas, Assistant Director of the California Acceleration Project and Professor of English at Irvine Valley College

This workshop focuses on Academic Literacy, the current CCBC model that accelerates developmental reading and writing by employing a thematic approach. Pedagogy focuses on assignments which generate critical thinking based on real academic tasks and expectations. During this workshop, participants will explore the day-to-day execution of this accelerated model through proven course materials and assignments. Presenters will also discuss the training and support necessary for faculty teaching this model as well as innovative strategies for addressing challenges to student success.

Sharon Moran Hayes, Director of ACLT, CCBC
Denise Parker, ACLT Coordinator, CCBC

Although acceleration improves outcomes for all student groups, it does not automatically guarantee equitable outcomes. How do we design a co-requisite course that ensures equitable outcomes in both the co-requisite and the transfer-level course? In this session, we will co-create an equity lens tool through which we will evaluate the curriculum, policies, and assessment practices in our courses. Using this framework, participants will (re)design these elements to ensure equity and eliminate achievement barriers. This interactive session is designed for faculty from colleges that already offer a co-requisite model and for those who are in the process of creating one

Carrie Marks, Professor of English and AB 705 English Coordinator, Sacramento City College
Dawna DeMartini, Professor of English and Equity Coordinator, Sacramento City College
Jesus Limon Guzman, Professor of English and Puente Instructor, Sacramento City College