Dr. Adams has become the nation’s preeminent authority on the application of the corequisite model of academic support in the instruction of college-level English through his Accelerated Learning Program (ALP). The model, which is available to the vast majority of students placed into developmental English at his campus, has seen dramatic increases in the completion of gateway English courses among developmental students. Significantly, these increases have occurred in half the time of traditional remediation. The ALP model framework is becoming a cornerstone of several state and system level reforms in states like Colorado, Michigan and Connecticut. ALP has become a national model and is now implemented at institutions across the country.
Archives
Gwenn Eldridge
Gwenn is president of the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE). She also serves as department chair for university transfer at Ivy Tech Community College. Her primary teaching focus is on integrated reading writing and co-requisite course design. She was part of a team that developed Ivy Tech’s integrated reading writing course and offers professional development sessions to faculty members across the state of Indiana. Eldridge earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Indiana University and a master’s in English from Butler University. She also completed coursework toward a doctoral degree in rhetoric and composition at Ball State University. She recently completed the Advance Kellogg Institute on Developmental Education at the National Center for Developmental Education at Appalachian State University.
Loretta Ussery Griffy
Dr. Griffy has worked on a college campus for over 20 years and is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. Currently, she serves the university as the Director for the Center for Teaching and Learning with a primary focus on promoting student success through development, implementation and assessment of initiatives focused on the teaching, learning, and advising environment. She is engaged on campus in developing initiatives that utilize emerging technology to inform student-faculty interaction and focus high impacts. Additionally, she worked as a leader of the team that developed Austin Peay’s coreq model.
Katie Hern
Katie Hern serves as Director of the California Acceleration Project and provides coaching to participating English faculty. She has been teaching students to read, write, and think critically for 20 years. An instructor at Chabot College, Hern has been deeply influenced by the Chabot English department’s philosophy of integrating reading and writing and providing developmental students the same kinds of challenging tasks they will see in college-level courses, in an environment of greater scaffolding and support. Her classroom inquiry into the“Academic Sustainability Gap” sheds light on the issues teachers need to address in an accelerated classroom. Hern’s past roles include serving as Co-Director of the California-wide Faculty Inquiry Network and Dean of Academic Affairs at John F. Kennedy University.
Rob Jeffs
Dr. Rob Jeffs is currently teaching corequisite and technical courses at Ivy Tech Community College’s Muncie Campus.
Rob is the faculty lead for the Applied Technical Pathway guiding the development of content, pedagogy, and training of 38 instructors teaching over 60 sections to over 1,000 students statewide. He co-chaired the college’s Math Task Force, which aligned the math needs of academic programs into a more focused three-lane approach.
Michael McComas
Michael McComas is a former C&O railroad engineer who, at the age of 35, went back to school to become a teacher. Prior to joining the faculty of Mountwest, McComas taught mathematics for eight years in Cabell County Schools and Huntington St. Joseph Catholic High School. Currently he is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and Chair of Liberal Arts within the General Studies Division.
McComas’ work passions are developmental education, student success, using technology to support teaching and learning, and improving online teaching at MCTC. McComas teaches both developmental and college-level mathematics, As Chair of Liberal Arts, he has responsibility for the subject areas of Mathematics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physics, English, and communications. Additionally, he over sees several programs, including Biomedical Technology, Electronics Technology, Engineering Technology, and Machines Technology
Chip McLain
Chip is an Associate Professor and English Department Head at Walters State Community College in Morristown, TN, where he teaches learning support writing, freshman composition, American literature, and folklore. He has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from Tennessee Technological University. His recent academic focus has been developing a successful co-requisite remediation strategy for Walters State’s writing program. A former president of the Tennessee Association for Developmental Education, McLain’s passion is improving the skills of struggling writers to ensure their success in college.
Myra Snell
Myra Snell is the Math Lead for the California Acceleration Project, coaching and creating curricular materials to support faculty teaching pre-Statistics courses. She is a Professor of Mathematics at Los Medanos College, where she has been teaching courses from arithmetic to calculus and statistics for the last 20 years. Snell createdPath2Stats, the first pre-Statistics course in the country to provide a one-semester alternative to the traditional multi-level developmental algebra sequence. Snell’s past roles at Los Medanos include working with faculty across campus to assess outcomes and use the results to improve learning experiences for students. She was a coach for the Faculty Inquiry Network, worked with Carnegie-Mellon’s Open Learning Initiative in Statistics, and served as a consultant to the Carnegie Foundation’s Statway project.
German Vargas
Dr. Vargas has been teaching at the collegiate level for the past 13 years and is still involved in classroom instruction of courses. In 2011, he was a key participant in the CCA grant initiative that funded four institutions in the University System of Georgia (USG) to enhance the success rates in developmental programs by incorporating technology and redesigned models of instruction. In January 2013, Dr. Vargas was appointed by the USG to serve as a member of the statewide Task Force on the Role of Mathematics in College Completion. He was subsequently appointed by the USG as chair of the Ad Hoc Steering Committee.. Dr. Vargas was the 2014-2015 Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee on Mathematical Subjects (ACMS) and is the leader of several initiatives including the transformation at scale to adopt open educational resources in Mathematics courses, as part of the Affordable Learning Georgia efforts.