The St. Petersburg College My Bridge to Success program is one of three statewide winners of the 2012 Chancellor’s Best Practice Award by the Florida Department of Education.
My Bridge to Success, a program in developmental writing, reading and mathematics designed to reduce the amount of remediation time and tuition costs for students, is headed by Martha Campbell and Sharon Griggs, deans of communications and mathematics, respectively. It is funded by a three-year Florida Development Initiative grant that was awarded in spring 2010. SPC was one of five colleges to receive the grant.
“SPC has always been a leader in state initiatives and so when the grant opportunity came along, the college agreed to match the funds we were awarded by the state,” Griggs said. “Faculty volunteered to lead the efforts and our students found the new approach to be just the lifeline they needed. We were the only Florida college to redesign math, English and reading at the same time.”
Unlike traditional developmental courses at the college that are 16-week, 4-credit courses, the My Bridge courses are 8-week, 2-credit courses.
Campbell said the increased success rates speak for themselves. For example, in academic year 2011-12, 1,653 students enrolled in the traditional 16-week, 4-credit hour developmental writing courses completed at a rate of 58 percent. The new 8-week, 2-credit courses had a 69 percent passing rate with 328 students.
“The focus is on only asking students to work on areas where they’re not already meeting the competency standards,” Campbell said. The targeted instruction is offered in computer labs and involves a lot of diagnostic work. If students are proficient in an area, they do not need to work on that skill. This targets the instruction so that it is provided when students need it and only the skills that they need to remediate.”
Campbell and Griggs received the Chancellor’s Best Practices Award during the Association of Florida Colleges 63rd annual convention this week at the Innisbrook Resort.
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