Palm Beach Community College realigned its curriculum to allow students to seamlessly process through career pathways. Students can start in clock-hour-based instruction and transfer that learning into credit-based associate in science degrees. Along this pathway, students can use exit points to employment with recognized certificates.

The authors discuss the joining of 12 Virginia community colleges from the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia with Radford University to form the Regional Technology Education Consortium (RTEC), a three-year project funded by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education program and designed to develop articulation…

The "Annual Partnership Report" catalogs all partnerships that Wyoming community colleges established and maintained for each fiscal year. Each community college maintains numerous partnerships for the development and provision of academic, occupational-technical, workforce development, and enrichment educational programs. These…

The research methods unit of survey psychology classes introduces important concepts of scientific reasoning and fluency, making it an ideal course in which to deliver enhanced curricula. To increase interest and engagement, the author developed an expanded research methods and statistics module to give students the opportunity to explore…

This paper presents a goal-based scenario approach to teaching introductory database concepts to undergraduates using two different scaffolding methods. One method, termed "worked-out examples," attempts to reduce extraneous cognitive load by requiring students to complete increasingly complex missing parts of worked out examples. The other…

The goals of the MentorLinks: Advancing Technological Education program, supported by the National Science Foundation and administered by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), are to provide technical assistance and networking opportunities for the purpose of improving community college programs that prepare technicians in the…

Much attention has been given to the opposition toward the teaching of evolution at the K-12 level and the movement to include alternative theories, such as Intelligent Design (ID), in the science curriculum. However, very little is known regarding the attitudes of community college students toward the study of evolution and the inclusion of ID in…

Pupils' motivation and interest are identified as important influences on learning. Motivational orientation is a construct that links motivation and epistemology. This study attempted to explore motivational orientation as it relates to science education and two different instructional approaches. A published instrument standardized with a…

An innovative interdisciplinary project at California State University, Long Beach, was designed to increase the attractiveness of the geosciences (physical geography, geology, and archaeology) to underrepresented groups. The goal was to raise awareness of the geosciences by providing summer research opportunities for underrepresented high school…

Lawmakers this year on Capitol Hill will weigh critical issues of importance to the nation's community colleges. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) will be hard at work to ensure the interests of two-year institutions are well represented. This article takes a brief look…

This report is the result of a national conference convened in December 2005 by the American Association of Community Colleges in partnership with the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This event, the Teaching by Choice Leadership Summit on Community College…

This report provides an overview of the efforts of Iowa's community colleges to train workers for the emerging bioscience/biotechnology sector. The report explains the programs available and the future plans of individual community colleges designed to educate students for careers in the biosciences. Also detailed are a variety of creative…

This report is based on the discussions of the February 2008 "Teaching by Choice: Beyond 2 + 2" conference, convened by the American Association of Community Colleges to focus on the growing role of community colleges as providers of teacher education and source of professional development for elementary, middle and secondary teachers of science,…

This study examined the breakfast eating habits of 1,259 college students over an eleven year period to determine if eating breakfast had an impact upon their grade on a General Biology exam. The study determined that there was a significant difference in the performance on the exam with a higher percent of the participants, who had eaten…

Traditional college algebra courses focus almost exclusively on power functions such as y = x[superscript 2] and y = x[superscript 3] rather than the more general y = x[superscript p]. However, it is the more general form that is the basis of the mathematical models that arise throughout the natural sciences in a host of unexpected and highly…