In July, Gateway to College National Network hosted its eighth annual Peer Learning Conference in Portland, Oregon.  The conference built on the previous year's theme of persistence, adding a new focus on identifying what motivates people to achieve and grow.  In all, approximately 300 people, representing every program in the national network, attended the three day conference. 

 

Kevin Carroll

The first day began with welcoming remarks from Dr. Craig Kolins, Interim Campus President at Portland Community College and Laurel Dukehart, President of Gateway to College National Network.  Jim Harper, a Gateway to College National Network board member shared an essay on his own experience with education and the motivation he draws from the annual conference.  However, it was Kevin Carroll, the conference keynote, who stole the show with his personal story of persistence.  Kevin captivated the audience as he described his remarkable transformation from childhood hardship to a successful life as an author and agent for social change, and he inspired and challenged attendees to commit to their learning while at the conference.  

The second day plenary session featured Drs. Margery Ginsberg and Raymond Wlodkowski, co-authors of multiple books on motivation and instruction.  The two spoke about strategies to enhance culturally responsive teaching, providing pragmatic examples they've found to be effective with working adults.  They led a follow-up session later that day, one of numerous professional development opportunities offered during the conference that included a series of job-alike sessions as well as 42 different workshops primarily facilitated by peers from across the network. 

Dr. Wlodkowski and Dr. Ginsberg

Three of those workshops were specifically crafted for the group of 25 student leaders who were selected to represent their peers at the conference.  "The students are a reminder of why we do this work.  A lot of the conference is sharing of best practices.  Sometimes we ruminate about how to best serve students, and a lot of times the best resources are in the same room," said Prentice Davis, Senior Manager of Gateway to College Training & Partner Support.

Student Leaders Participating in a Team-Building Activity

The student leaders shared their insights during a panel discussion on the second day.  Their comfort with each other and the experience of presenting to a packed room was aided in no small part by how quickly they were all able to bond.  "They came to realize over the course of the conference how connected each of them were," added Davis, who early on championed the idea of involving students in the conference.

This theme of connection was evident in the conference evaluations, as many shared similar sentiments about how much they appreciate the opportunity to "feel a part of a bigger community and to reconnect with and recommit to why it is that we do this work."  The conference closed with an essay by Eugenia Hooker, director of the Gateway to College program at Spartanburg Community College.  Her essay spoke to the daily experience of operating a Gateway to College program.  While she confessed that her motivation sometimes flags during tough times, ultimately hers was a story of renewal.  In that, it was an appropriate final note on which to close the conference and send partners back home, feeling inspired by speakers, energized by new learning, and renewed in their sense of purpose for another academic year. 

Course Sequence Research  

Gateway to College National Network recently completed a study of Gateway to College students with the help of Joey Carroll, a student in the Master of Public Policy program at Oregon State University.  Ms. Carroll logged more than 300 hours over her spring and summer terms, analyzing information from our student database and drafting a report entitled, "Pathways to success: An evaluation of developmental education sequence patterns among Gateway to College students."

The report reviews published studies that track developmental education success among typical community college students and compares their successes in completing the developmental education sequence with those of Gateway to College students.  Despite entering college without a high school diploma and having an average GPA of only 1.5, Gateway students are generally doing as well as or outperforming developmental education students nationally according to the results.  What's more, the data suggests that Gateway students who go on to take college-level math and English courses while enrolled in the program are as or better prepared for those classes than the students in the comparison studies.  Considering the challenges faced by many Gateway to College students, their success is a noteworthy achievement.

Pass Rates within Developmental Education and Transfer Level Courses

1. Comparison was made based on multiple studies. For more details, contact Dr. Devora Shamah at dshamah@gatewaytocollege.org

As good research should, Ms. Carroll's efforts have started several important conversations within the organization and are leading us to ask more and better questions that will enhance our understanding of our work.  We look forward to digging deeper into her findings and recommendations over the next few months and learning even more about how to best serve our students.  

As other students were getting ready for graduation and summer break last May, Gateway to College students at all three campuses of Montgomery College conducted a book drive for state prisoners.  The drive collected over 1,000 books for the Maryland Prison Library System, but just as significantly, it raised participating students' awareness of the importance of education for prisoners.

Over 900 inmates access one of Maryland's 22 libraries each day.  "I didn't really know what went on in prison or that they even had libraries," confessed Jai Marie Davis, a Gateway to College student at the Rockville campus who participated in the project. 

As part of their coursework, students researched the connection between literacy and crime and the success of educational programs in the prisons.  The significantly lower rates of recidivism for prisoners engaged in their education while incarcerated impressed Davis.  "As a student who wants to pursue law or political science, it was extremely interesting," she said.

During the next stage of the project, students helped set up collection locations on campus, designed posters, and distributed collection bins.  Nora Arnold is a Gateway to College student who designed a poster for the Takoma Park/Silver Spring campus that helped students know what kinds of books to donate.  "A lot of prisoners will read up to help them get back on their feet after they leave prison," she noted.  "They need things like self-help books, recent law books, information to start a business and GED prep books." 

The students' response to the project made an impression on the faculty.  "You could see them changing their minds," said Yvonne Hu-Cotto, acting program manager of Montgomery College's Gateway program. "By the end of the project, the students realized that just because people are locked up doesn't mean they shouldn't be part of the community."

According to Davis, however, it was Hu-Cotto that did some of the most impressive work for the project by delivering the large donation to the prison.  "The books were heavy," she exclaimed. 

In the middle of her freshman year of high school, Maggie Williams started experiencing debilitating migraines that would often last for days at a time.  They forced her to miss a significant amount of school.  She fell behind in her classes and her grades suffered.   

The migraines returned junior year and she missed even more time.  Her high school counselors encouraged her to drop out and get her GED.  Maggie's mom, however, had recently heard about Gateway to College through a coworker, and Maggie applied for the program. 

Maggie Williams at the GtCNN Office

When Maggie began Gateway to College, she was only a sophomore in academic standing. Most of her friends were starting their senior year.  "I was very determined to get back on track," she remembers.  Maggie took a heavy course load every term, including summer, and completed her high school diploma in just over a year, all the while earning a 4.0 and a substantial number of college credits. 

Maggie enrolled in Willamette University a few short weeks after she finished Gateway to College. "If I hadn't had that interim at Gateway to College, then I don't know that I would have thought that I could have done it.  Gateway to College first made me realize that college was where I was supposed to be because that's where I thrived."

Maggie found the time to take a series of political science courses while enrolled in Gateway that sparked an interest in politics.  At Willamette, she continued to explore the subject.  She ended up earning a bachelor's in politics, and an internship with the governor's office helped her to land a job as an education policy fellow in the office of Portland Mayor Sam Adams after graduation. 

"I was set up to succeed and [high school] still didn't work for me.  When it came down to it they tried to push me out because I was going to mess up their numbers.  That's a problem."  

This fall, Maggie's off to Harvard to pursue her master's in public policy with a concentration on education.  As quickly as she's been accomplishing her goals since Gateway to College, it won't be long before she's in a position to address the problems she once experienced first-hand.   

At this year's Peer Learning Conference, Gateway to College National Network officially launched its social media presence, unveiling its Facebook and Twitter pages.  With a growing network currently made up of 33 colleges in 20 states, there are an abundance of breakthroughs, triumphs, and insights worth sharing broadly. 

The Peer Learning Conference is an annual reminder of the importance of the work we all do, and the new social media sites will be a way to continue the momentum from the conference by providing a common platform for supporters, students, and alumni to connect and engage year round.  To join the conversations and keep track of the latest news from across the network, like and follow the National Network today.  

September 26, 2012: Tracking Your Accepted Students: Grades, Attendance, and Statuses

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT

Details:  You've entered all of your students' applicant information into the GtC Student Database and are ready to start serving students for the first time. But your data system and processes aren't quite ready to track students in their first term. This one-hour webinar will guide you through the specific tasks needed to adequately document your students' progress through GtC, including grade rules, course setup, and entering grades.

To register: Click here to sign up for the webinar on the 26th.

July 22-24, 2013: Peer Learning Conference

Location: St. Louis, Missouri

Details: For more information click here.

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