Community College Connection

COMMUNITY COLLEGE CONNECTION

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE

Reprinted from the AATF National Bulletin, Vol.27, No. 2 (November 2001)

Recruiting and retaining students was the primary concern voiced by community college faculty at the open meeting of the Community College Commission at the AATF convention in Denver last July. The Commission on Community Colleges will attempt to address these concerns and offer some suggestions for working within your institution in a series of articles in the National Bulletin.

Recruitment and retention are issues for all teachers of French, but community college faculty often experience high frustration in dealing with them because of the limitations inherent in their institutions.

Although many part-time students may remain within the community college system for several years, the reality is that community colleges are two-year institutions and therefore can only count on having transfer students enroll for two years, and often less time than that. Therefore, even if your college offers a wonderful French program, many students may not hear about it until it is too late to participate fully.

Another problem area is motivating students to study, or continue to study, a foreign language, and in our context we would prefer that language to be French. The community college is inherently dependent on its local high schools (feeder schools) to attract students to the study of French; and dependent on its four -year transfer institutions to require or encourage foreign language study, thereby motivating students to take a foreign language during their community college years.

So how can you, as a community college instructor, address these issues? The following are some ideas that have worked well at my institution.

Identify your feeder high schools and get to know the teachers. Make sure that they are aware of your curriculum and your program, and encourage them to have their students participate in international and intercultural college events, such as National French Week, a film series, or a global festival. It can be helpful to work cooperatively on some of these events. Attend local conferences and language teacher events where you can network with high school and other teachers in your region.

Within your college, try to participate in task forces and committees that deal with planning and curriculum. If possible, provide input and influence into any college policies that could require or encourage foreign language study. Take a leadership role if it is offered. While still an adjunct instructor at my college, I volunteered for and was allowed to serve as an unpaid department chair for two and a half years. My reward came when my program grew into a full-time position.

Visit your counseling department regularly and talk to them about the importance of foreign language study in general and the usefulness of French in particular. Keep a file of articles, studies, and brochures (start with the National Bulletin and the French Review) that back up your claims. The AATF has many helpful publications available; I regularly provide these to my counseling department, committees, and my superiors.

Let your students know what the language expectations will be at their transfer institutions and how studying French will improve their critical thinking skills and their chances of getting a job. I spend a lot of time just "marketing" French in my classes and telling real life stories about former students and the opportunities their language skills have provided. I even start off each beginning class with a "quiz" about how French is used around the world and how it can be relevant in their lives. The answers to my "quiz" are in the AATF brochure "Why Learn French? The Reasons May Surprise You."

Become familiar with your major transfer institutions. Learn about their language requirements and their curricula. Work on articulation agreements so that your students can fulfill their language requirement at the community college or easily transfer their community college language credits. This may require adjusting your curricu-lum and making a few con-cessions. For example, at my school we have larger beginning classes than we would like, but the trade off is that we will generally not cancel the smaller continuing classes, thus guaranteeing our students the option of completing three semesters of a foreign language (the most common language requirement at four-year schools in Missouri) at the community college level.

Obviously, you must be prepared to put in a lot of time and effort to really advertise and promote your French program. But if you do take every opportunity to let people both within and outside of your institution know what you are doing and how committed you are to it, you will slowly but surely see an improvement in the number of students starting and continuing in French.

I welcome your comments on the Community College Connection articles, and would appreciate your feedback and suggestions for future subjects you would like to see discussed. I would especially enjoy hearing about your community college success stories. Please contact Denise McCracken [dmccracken@stchas.edu] regarding these articles.

Denise McCracken
St. Charles Community College
(MO)

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