National college mentoring program conference

Hagerstown Community College recently hosted nine community colleges from across the country for a two-day conference to share their experiences with a college mentoring program funded by the U.S. Department of Education: Community Colleges CAN (C3), Showcasing and Replicating Community College Programs.
 
Each project team has been focused for a year on one of three specific projects: Career Pathways, P-20 Educational Partnerships, and Innovations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).  The conference was an opportunity to share their projects with the other teams, develop action plans for another year, discuss strategies for collaboration in the future and build networks of practice.
 
“Schools selected to participate in this program are ones that have been doing things well,” said program facilitator Russ Hamm. “The program encourages a collaborative approach where schools are matched to share information and ideas on similar projects, grow their individual programs, and build community.”
 
HCC was chosen for the Innovations in STEM team in fall 2008 and was matched with Salt Lake Community College (UT) as their mentor college.  Fellow mentee colleges on the Innovations in STEM project are Miami-Dade College (FL) and Jamestown Community College (NY).  For HCC, the primary focus of this initiative has been to learn from the InnovaBio internship program at SLCC which is open to both high school and college students working towards careers in biotechnology.  
 
Through this collaboration, faculty and staff in HCC’s biotechnology program have recently established InnovaBio-MD, a unique program modeled after the Salt Lake program.  This contract research organization is located on the HCC campus in two laboratories within the wet labs facility in the Technology Innovation Center and equipped with funds from the National Science Foundation.  Qualified students from Washington County high schools, HCC, and Frostburg University are eligible to apply for positions as research technicians and gain hands-on experience which improves their transition to the biotech workforce or to a four-year college.  Currently two students are participating in the pilot semester with Dr. Ricky Ulrich, the director of HCC’s InnovaBio-MD facility.   
 
Eighteen community colleges were selected to participate in the college mentoring program. Teams of faculty, staff, and administrators have been working collaboratively in six mentoring communities — each with one mentor college, two mentee colleges, and a facilitator with extensive professional experience in the two-year college community. Mentee colleges were selected through a national competition and matched with a mentor college experienced in the implementation of an effective initiative similar to that which the mentee would like to develop.
 
The C3 Showcasing and Replicating Community College Programs initiative, which is administered by JBL Associates, is designed to strengthen the capacity of community colleges to meet students’ academic needs and support their success in college and the workforce.