Community and junior colleges have a rich history of providing access to the baccalaureate degree through various means and models while limiting their own highest award to the associate degree. Two-year colleges are usually easily accessible to community members and thus are conveniently positioned to serve as a focal point for educational partnerships. And as they have evolved from junior colleges to comprehensive institutions, contemporary community colleges have demonstrated their commitment to baccalaureate partnerships through various models. These include articulation models, whereby students are guaranteed that their credits will transfer to a four-year institution; university extension models, in which universities provide extension programs leading to the baccalaureate degree; university center models, including a variety of on-site partnerships designed to help students earn a baccalaureate (conferred by universities); and finally, community college baccalaureate models, whereby the community colleges themselves (not universities) confer the degree (Floyd, 2005). Although most community college presidents indicate a preference for partnership models, as opposed to delivering and conferring baccalaureates independently (Community College Baccalaureate Association, 2003;Floyd, 2005), there is an undeniable trend across the United States and Canada for two-year institutions to make a bid to offer their own baccalaureate degrees in specialized curricular areas.This chapter describes models of community college baccalaureate (CCB) delivery in the United States, focusing on community colleges that 59 6
This chapter describes exemplary community college student services programs and proposes a model designed to help community colleges reconfigure their support services for distance learners while also improving their services to on-campus students.Although "student services [have] always played a major role in the twoyear college" (Helfgot, 1995, p. 45), many students' physical time on campus has become virtually nonexistent as community colleges have expanded their distance learning programs. Hence, two-year colleges are challenged to find new ways to provide high-quality support services to both traditional and distance learners. This chapter discusses ways in which community colleges can strengthen the delivery of online courses to ensure that programs such as admissions, advising, and financial aid, as well as career and academic counseling, and library and registration services, are meeting the needs of distance learners. We rely on relevant research and literature in offering practical advice and ideas for research, policy, and implementation.Successful online support services aid both students and faculty. As higher education expands its distance education offerings, "the diversity of its student population increases, particularly in the area of students' proficiency with technology" (Bruso, 2001, p. 9). This inequity in skill level can create problems for institutions that desire to provide sound support services for students taking online courses. What kind of tutorials, for example, should be developed to help students navigate online curricula? Do online student support services have the potential to be a great equalizer among students, or will they provide quality services only to those with access to the most current technology? These are just two of the myriad questions and issues that must be explored by colleges hoping to effectively support distance learners.
Historically, community colleges have played a role in preparing teachers by strengthening articulation and transfer with university-based teacher colleges, hosting university center programs that provide upper division teacher education courses, and providing alternative teacher certification programming for holders of bachelor's and higher degrees. In the past several years, a growing number of community colleges have expanded their work in teacher education programs by developing and conferring their own baccalaureate degrees. Perhaps because these baccalaureate programs are so new, little has been written from the perspective of the practitioners who have implemented them. Their stories deserve to be told. Drawing on interviews with representatives from 10 community colleges or former community colleges, this article reports the initial findings of an exploratory study of what can be learned from the experiences of community college practitioners who have established bachelor's degree programs in teacher education.
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