Faculty propose strategies for dev ed change

By JEREMY STITSWORTH, Staff Reporter |

Amarillo College faculty members are getting ready for the changes coming to developmental education in the fall 2019 semester. 

Developmental education courses are being eliminated. Instead, these remedial classes will be integrated into college-level courses through corequisite classes, tutoring or other methods. Corequisites or other support methods will run concurrently with college-level classes, such as composition and college algebra. This means students will no longer have to complete remediation before starting to earn credits that count toward a degree.

Faculty members have submitted Plan on Achieving Student Success (PASS) proposals to give AC leadership an idea of how they plan to approach the upcoming changes.

Edythe Carter, a math professor and dean of academic success, said that instructors have been collaborating with each other to ensure the material covered in the corequisite class will match up with what is being taught in the college level algebra course. 

“What the developmental math department and the college math department are doing is we are trying to weave our course work together so students can take what they learn in the corequisite class and use it in the college level classes,” Carter said. 

This way students are becoming more successful in the college credit courses, while also being taught the foundations, she said. 

Frank Sobey, associate vice president of student affairs, said the new approach is likely to evolve over time. “It is entirely possible that we will be making changes because at this point, we don’t have any data. Once we receive the data on how the course integration and corequisite classes have impacted students, we may have to rework those classes that may not be performing well,” he said. 

Sobey also said that academic preparation is just one aspect of student success. “We can’t measure motivation; students have many things going on in their lives,” he said. 

“For instance, 11 percent of our students are homeless and that is something that we can’t control. We can help students in many ways, but some factors are out of our control,” Sobey said.