In the dimly lit conference room of the Solano library, you could walk in and smell the coffee brewing from a small white Keurig machine. Chairs would all be placed, papers are scattered across the tables, and chatter would erupt prior to meeting. For many staff, they know what this means: Another month, another meeting for faculty.
On October 21st, Solano college faculty members met up for their monthly meeting to discuss issues relating to academic and social affairs on campus. They would discuss subjects such as new upcoming projects and dual enrollment for high school students.
The meeting would last for 2 hours, from 3 to 5 o’clock with heavy emphasis on dual enrollment, mainly how to implement the course in a way that would be accommodating for both highschoolers and college students, and how to ensure highschoolers are best equipped to take said courses.
Because of the California Community College project Vision 2030, a program that’s aiming to have high school students take 12 credits worth of college courses by graduation, the senate is required to come up with a plan that will benefit all parties involved.
The goal of Dual Enrollment is mainly to allow students to push themselves into attending college. Josh Scott, the president of the academic senate, explained the overall benefit of this program for highschool students,“If you look at the history of dual enrollment, the real benefit has been for the students who are first generation and their parents didn’t attend college. Maybe they didn’t see themselves as ‘college material’, by having the chance to go to, like, highschool classes and get some of this experience helps people see that.”
Scott followed, “The problem that we’ve had at a state level is that most of the students who have actually taken dual enrollment classes are often already on this track who have parents who are pushing them. I think for all of us, our priority is getting students who do see themselves as right on the edge and be able to pull them in rather than wasting resources on students who might not need that.”
However, the question isn’t just how to encourage students to take said courses. Rather, they’re concerned about how to successfully accommodate the highschoolers as well as college students.
There’s currently three main methods known that the academic senate may use to implement dual enrollment: Sending professors to highschools to teach, training highschool teachers to be able to teach said courses on their respective campuses, or having highschoolers attend the courses on the college campus.
As of now, a task force is being assembled to further ponder the question and which root may be the most accommodating for all students and faculty alike.
However, dual enrollment wasn’t the only subject discussed at the meeting.
There were announcements that there was going to be an opioid awareness and Narcan training program as well as the rising scholars program which is dedicated to helping incarcerated students receive better care and time from professors.
Other subjects brought up during the meeting included fixing the wording in advisory messages for programs, announcing that there’s going to be 11 new faculty that’s being hired over the course of 3 years, and looking at how to spread awareness on academic renewal.
Academic renewal is the ability to petition for up to 30 units worth of bad course grades to be not reflected in your GPA. While the grade will still remain on transcripts, this option can potentially give students a second chance.
Towards the end of the meeting, a presentation was given by Atticus Frey on the subject of ZTC, otherwise known as Zero Textbook Costs. The program is aimed to make different courses have either significantly less expensive textbooks or even free textbooks for courses.
Staff currently are preparing to encourage students to look into these policies and programs, the goal being to help students continue to thrive at Solano.
