Dr. Scott Bailey, Assistant Provost of Education Programs at the American College of Education (ACE) joins us to discuss the partnership between ACE and Rio Salado College, specifically in regards to educator preparation students. Dr. Bailey praises the enthusiasm that Rio Salado has for their partnership and how that is reinforced by the collaborative and seamless nature of what ACE offers students completing Rio Salado's teacher preparation post-bacc programs. Through this partnership, students moving on to ACE for a masters degree in education are able to complete the degree in as little as one year and for well under $10k.

The other benefits of ACE's education programs, both at the masters and doctoral levels, is that they are designed and taught by educators for educators. This allows students to have confidence not only in the applicable nature of what they are learning, but also in knowing that their instructors understand the day-to-day challenges of being a teacher. To learn more about ACE and their many degree offerings, please visit ACE.edu.

In this episode we hear from Dr. Melodie Baker of Impact Stats on how community colleges can use data to adapt and continuously improve educator preparation programs. Of particular interest is the teaching of math. With many candidates unable to pass the math portion of licensing exams, even if they've taken developmental math courses, there is clear evidence that focusing on a co-requisite model is more effective in boosting the math skills of teacher candidates and of all students.

Data can also be used to identify equity gaps in academics as well as funding areas and allowing colleges to address these issues. This is critical at the community college level which can have such a positive impact on diversifying and localizing the teacher workforce. You can learn more about Impact Stats and their work at impactstats.org.

Stacy Wilson and Dr. Alex Arreguin, both of whom are English faculty at Mesa Community College in Arizona, created the Literacy Partners Project out of a sense of curiosity for what their English 101 and 102 students were learning in other courses. Specifically, if their students were able to use the concepts they were teaching to complete coursework in history, science, math, and other courses. As they met with instructors from other disciplines they adapted a concept that Dr. Elizabeth Wardle from Miami University of Ohio had implemented.

By developing a series of writing across disciplines frameworks that included utilizing threshold concepts, knowledge transfer, and decoding the disciplines, they were able to not only develop student success initiatives, but also apply these frameworks to program and college departments. On the faculty development side, they used the decoding the disciplines approach to bring together colleagues from different disciplines and departments to work together to help solve the challenges each faced by offering new perspectives.