Mohave Community College (MCC) is a public community college with campuses in Kingman, Lake Havasu City, Bullhead City, and Colorado City, serving Mohave County, Arizona and the surrounding communities. MCC is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission.
A survey of novice community college teachers in Arizona examined what learning experiences are available to help them learn to teach, and how valuable they consider those experiences to be in learning to teach. These activities can be organized into four general categories: reflective activities, classroom application, formal methods of learning teaching strategies, and college-based activities. Of these activities, new teachers value reflective activities the most, followed by classroom application, then formal methods of learning teaching strategies. College-based activities got the lowest ranking. These rankings raise two questions that warrant further professional exchange and research. First, are collegebased professional development activities actually less valuable in promoting student success, or are they simply perceived that way by faculty members? Second, is there an intuitive process that new teachers use to learn to teach that relies more heavily on reflective and applied activities?
In 2008-09, the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering carried out a pilot program with three non-metropolitan community colleges (CCs) to develop a win-win partnership that would produce more engineering and computer science students. This pilot program was followed with the award of a five-year National Science Foundation STEP grant starting in fall 2009. In this program, two additional non-metropolitan CCs were included.This paper will describe the major accomplishments of this program as well as major lessons learned. These accomplishments include that all five CC schools now have engineering programs; one school encouraged students to select a major and as a result, the number of engineering majors has grown substantially; Associate Degrees in Science or Engineering has been added by some schools which more closely follow the first two years of an engineering program and thus facilitates transfer; and an engineering or computer science "curriculum pathway" is being instituted to better advise CC students who wish to earn a Bachelor's degree in these majors. The challenges will also be discussed.
