PJC receives grant to expand student success

Paris Junior College has received a $125,000 grant from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to expand a program boosting success for developmental students. The grant was co-authored by Carey Gable, Program Coordinator of English and Developmental Writing, and Dr. Jennifer Collar, Division Director of Communications and Fine Arts, and they are co-directors of the project.

 

PJC is already well known at the state and national level for innovative work pairing developmental courses with first-year English or math courses. These co-requisite courses allow students who are less prepared academically to quickly catch up to their peers. 

 

The co-requisite course structure is called College Connect in high schools, and Clarksville High School was the first to partner with PJC in the program. The grant will allow the College to expand supplemental instruction on campus as well as with College Connect in high schools.

 

Gable and Collar have participated for years in the Pathways Institute held by the Texas Success Center to encourage and share knowledge for ways to increase student success and degree completion. At last November’s Pathways Institute, Gable presented results of the College Connect partnership with Clarksville High School, and Collar was recognized with a Cynthia Ferrell Pathway Star of Excellence Award, which recognizes a change agent who has had a positive impact on removing barriers to student success and elevating the student experience at the college. 

 

“The root of Pathways is student success, and this supplemental instructor initiative is about improving student success,” said Collar. “We’ve done great work with the co-requisite and had great success using supplemental instruction and we’re excited to expand it.”

 

PJC initially partnered with Adult Basic Education teachers on a limited basis in co-requisite courses at PJC, and this individualized attention aided students. Their participation can now be expanded. 

 

“The grant pays for us to track everything and to pay for more supplemental instructors,” Gable said. “Where we’ve had one teacher with 20 students, we now had two. We’ve also partnered with the Writing Center and writing tutors. So, we may have as many as five teachers and tutors to help with a class. We’re meeting them exactly where they are and giving them exactly what they need to be successful.”

 

Gable sees great improvement but has more ambitious goals.

 

“I want us to have the leading developmental writing co-requisite program in the State of Texas,” Gable said. “The state completion average is 47 percent and we’re closing in on 77 percent. I want us to get further, to redevelop the entire thing. The way you do that is to increase one-on-one interaction with students who are behind.”

 

Supplemental instructors are taught a four-step teaching process by Gable so they may help students figure out what crucial knowledge they missed out on and get the students to ask how to fill those gaps. Then the instructors help them do just that. When students leave the class, they take with them a list of 10 steps for turning in a good paper in their next class. 

 

“It’s not just English 1301, it’s now in 1302,” Gable said. “We started tracking our developmental writing students in English 1302 and they’re catching up to our students who were automatically college ready. So, a student can come in at the lowest level and be caught up by the time they graduate.”

 

The next stage is bringing supplemental instructors to developmental math. Tracking math results began with the second 8-week terms this spring. 

 

“We also want to expand using supplemental instructors with our College Connect program in our high schools,” said Collar. “It means additional support for the schools.”

 

Any schools in PJC’s five-county service area interested in participating in College Connect may contact Collar at jcollar@parisjc.edu or Gable at cgable@parisjc.edu.