Help Students Get On a Path
- K–12 partnerships focused on career/college program exploration
Materials
What Happens to Students Who Take Community College "Dual Enrollment" Courses in High School? (posted 4/5/2018)
This study uses National Student Clearinghouse data to examine what happens to students who take dual enrollment courses: Where do they go after high school, and what percentage of these students earn a credential within five years? (Community College Research Center)
Interactive Dual Enrollment Graphic (posted 4/5/2018)
The interactive infographic provides state-by-state details about high school dual enrollment students (age 17 or younger) in fall 2010. Click on a state to see the percentage of first-time-in-college community college students who were classified as dual enrollment as well as outcomes for these students. (Community College Research Center)
PRACTITIONER, PRESIDENT, AND PARTNER PERSPECTIVES
Jeff Rafn, President, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
We have a lot of high school relationships that we’ve developed, a lot of dual credit. It used to be, before we did all of this mapping, it was kind of hit or miss. Whatever the school said, “Ah, I’d like to offer this.” Or, “I wanna have this course be dual credit.” We went through a process, probably starting a couple of years ago, where we said, “Well, wait a minute. We want to map pathways from the school into the college.” Frankly, our vision is eventually into the four-year universities where it seemed to make sense. We went about meeting with each one of the high schools and beginning to look at, “Well, let’s map a certain set of courses. It could be in the business area. It could be in engineering. It could be in the health sciences. Let’s get those mapped out, and that’s how we’re going to begin to look at what your students will work through.” They know what they will come out with, and we know where they fit as they come out.
Ashley Van Heest, University Transfer Liaison, Jackson College, Pathways College; Martha Petry, Phi Theta Kappa Advisor, Jackson College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
(1) Our career pathways, our pathways, our meta majors were based off of the career pathways that are in place at Michigan high schools. We tried to use the data that we had from them in terms of those big buckets that students fall into, and how that could mold into the curriculum we currently had. So we came upon our meta majors through information that we had from the high schools. The Michigan College Access Network is working on educating high school counselors about all things that are pathways, and understanding those educational routes that students take after they leave high school and they came into this area.
(2) It is actually a state requirement that students, through their counselors, be given pathway information, and have pathway seminars.
Tina Hart, Vice President of Enrollment and Student Services, Indian River State College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
And at our college we recently formed, or we are in the process of forming, a stronger coalition with our four county school district superintendents and their leadership teams in order to better understand what students are being required to complete at that level, so that we can better understand how our curriculum aligns with what they are experiencing before they get to us. So what we’re doing is talking with our four county leadership teams about getting faculty to faculty together. Faculty in the secondary with faculty at the college level because we think that we could have a stronger connection in understanding how curriculum is being delivered so that when they get to us that our faculty can help this secondary understand what they are hoping the students will come in and be ready to do, knowing they’ve had certain sciences, math courses, history courses, and so on. So I think we — none of us work in isolation. And at the same time looking at where students are going to go after us, we have to keep an eye on what they’re going to need to be able to do when they leave us to go to a university or if they stay with us to go into our baccalaureate programs.
Dale Hayes, Director of Advising Services, Indian River State College, Pathways College; Eileen Storck, Assistant Dean, Enrollment and Student Services, Indian River State College, Pathways College (posted 4/5/2018)
(1) We have a large segment of our student population that are dual enrollment students from the high schools, and we assign every dual enrollment student an advisor and require that they have a guided pathway developed also. They go through the same process as a student who is a fully admitted college student. We build the same pathway based on what they indicate, even if they start in ninth or 10th grade, what they indicate they think they will major in. Often, those decisions change, of course, as they progress through high school, but we create that pathway. We go through the same advising module and make sure that they understand, these are the courses that you’re going to need whether you’re completing your associate’s degree with us at the same time as you graduate from high school, or if you’re gonna come to us after graduation, or if you’re going to transfer to the university.
(2) Our annual counselors’ conclave is where we invite not just high school counselors, but middle school counselors as well and talk about things like guided pathways and have discussions about, “What are you doing for career explorations for your students so that they start thinking about those kind of things and try to make some decisions early on before they get here?” We share our website that has all of our guided pathway templates out there to give them an idea, “This is what it would look like if you chose this career versus that career.” We are totally open and put the information out there as frequently as we can, and at the very least, at that annual conference that we have for our local counselors.
STUDENT VOICES
(posted 10/1/2018)
When I graduated high school in 2012, when I was looking at different colleges, this college was the only college that I took a tour of. They offered a tour of another local college here in the city, but this is the only one that I took, and we met with the career advisors here at this college, and then they asked us which field, cuz this college offers many different programs. They asked us which field we were interested in, and then they split us up into groups and we took different — like one group would take a tour of one program area, and then my group took the tour of another program area, and stuff like that. Took us on tours, asked us if we had any questions, and really showed us around. One of my teachers at my high school, she facilitated the tour, an’ I went with her. And I actually chose this school because of the tour that I took in high school so that’s why I chose this school.