STATEMENT OF PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND PLANS
The Computer Science Achievement Scholarship Project will:
- Recruit a minimum of 20 persons to become full-time students in the Computer Science degree program each to receive scholarships of $3,500 per student, per year.
- Assess the academic skills and weaknesses of all selected program participants and prepare an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) for each student.
- Provide all participants with access to all available computer software and hardware as well as the technical instruction and guidance needed in order to help them succeed academically.
- Provide instruction, learning community experiences, tutoring, mentoring, and other support services to all program participants, resulting in 75% of them achieving a 2.75 grade point average or higher each semester and the retention of 80% of the participants through graduation.
- Provide participants with intensive career advising and job placement services designed to insure that they will enter either the job market or a bachelor's degree program upon graduation.
- Conduct evaluations of the program and its student participants throughout the project period and annual follow-up on 85% of the participants completing the degree program. This will apply to graduates who enter the job market or successfully transfer into a bachelor's degree program.The Project will address its six objectives in the following way:
In order to recruit a minimum of 20 persons to become full-time students in the Computer Science degree program to receive scholarships of $3,500 per student, per year, the following process will be employed. The availability of scholarships will be advertised through recruitment materials, the college catalog, foundation scholarship catalogs, public and private high school computer science teachers and counselors, and a brochure created annually by second-year computer science students, which describes the program.
The Director of Recruitment at Allegany College will include presentations describing the scholarship program's availability and guidelines for application in visits to public and private schools through the region. Students currently enrolled in early placement classes or summer enrichment programs will be contacted by the Computer Science Department with recruitment information encouraging them to commit to the program. In an effort to recruit from the current Allegany College student body, several methods will be implemented each year. Representatives from the computer science faculty will make informational presentations at bi-annual faculty and staff meetings at the college. These presentations will be geared toward soliciting referrals from campus faculty. After students complete the college's placement assessment (COMPASS), referrals will be solicited from the Instructional Assistance Center's testing staff in order to help identify talented students to apply for scholarships. The Financial Aid Office will be asked to provide a list of low-income students, and the Admissions Office will be requested to supply the Principal Investigator (PI) with high school or college GPA's that suggest academic talent.
Efforts will be made to recruit from the 2+2+2 Seamless Curriculum Program for Computer Science and Technology in Allegany County, which was founded in the fall of 1999 by a partnership of the Allegany County Board of Education, Allegany College, and Frostburg State University. This program targets students who are academically talented but at high risk for failure due to financial hardship. These students will be identified and invited to enter the computer science track at the beginning of 11th grade. Special emphasis is placed on minority students and students from families in which neither parent attended college. Those who complete the program receive a completer certificate upon high school graduation and earn thirteen credits toward their associate's degree in computer science. Upon meeting all applicable admissions requirements, they are accepted into the computer science degree program at Allegany College.
The 2+2+2 program is designed to provide Allegany County's high-risk students with the opportunity for Information Technology training early in their academic careers and to prepare them for college work. It makes available to students in the secondary schools a curriculum designed to prepare them for college curricula, which incorporates the National Skills Standards for Information Technology insuring these students will be prepared for college curricula. Faculty at Allegany College and the Allegany County Board of Education have worked with the Maryland State Department of Education to develop this curriculum model based on the skills standards. As a recruitment tool, this program will serve to identify students at a young age who will be likely to achieve success in the computer science associate's degree program when they are provided with scholarship monies which will offset their financial hardships.
The project also will place a high emphasis on the recruitment of underrepresented groups. In order to recruit ethnic and racial minorities, women, and persons with disabilities, program staff will provide presentations at neighborhood centers at housing projects throughout the region, including the Carver Center, which has a computer-training component for disadvantaged young people and their families. Staff will also hold informational sessions at after school programs offered at local YMCA's that are designed to offer enrichment experiences to the economically disadvantaged and to ethnic and racial minorities. Through presentations, the Project will be coordinated with equity efforts through Allegany College's Women's Center, Non-Traditional Student's organization, learning fairs, women's fairs, The Board of Education's equity efforts and Frostburg State University's summer MAP program for young women of color.
Targeted for recruitment into the scholarship project will be non-traditional students who are currently attending Allegany College through the Western Maryland Consortium. These students are displaced workers and /or single parents who are non-traditional students. They have been funded through the Workforce Investment Act for one year of training designed to develop their skills for re-employment. The NSF scholarships will allow these students to continue their degree training. At the present time, more than 20 students are attending Allegany College in the Computer Science or Office Technologies areas. They are all full-time students.
The computer science faculty provides a five-session curriculum for the Allegany County Board of Education's Summer Enrichment Program for both gifted and talented students. In addition, summer programs for high-risk students and summer school course completer programs are offered at the Allegany College campus. All of these recruitment efforts will include the presentation of specific marketing materials for students and their parents. Often, presentations will also be done in part by the second year computer science students who will be serving as mentors.
In order to encourage students with special needs to consider the computer science scholarship opportunities, it will be widely publicized that all state-of-the-art adaptive technologies will be available to that group of students. Special effort will be made to assure that all students considering attending Allegany College through Vocational Rehab will be made aware of the Project's opportunities.
In order to assess the academic skills and weakness of all selected program participants and prepare an Individual Education Plan (IEP), the following process will be implemented.
When the scholarship recipient is notified of acceptance into the program, they will be presented with the name of one of the three computer science faculty who will be working with them as their scholarship program advisor and the date and time of their initial appointment with their advisor. At the initial meeting, the participant and advisor will begin the development of that student's Individual Education Plan.
In cooperation with the testing services of the Instructional Assistance Center at Allegany College and the offices of Financial Aid and Career and Job Placement Services, each newly admitted recipient will have an academic, financial, and personal needs assessment completed within two weeks of scholarship award notification. The following assessments will be administered, as appropriate, to participants:
- Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator
- Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI)
- New Jersey Test of Reasoning Skills in reading/math/English
- Placement Testing in reading/math/English
- Learning styles assessments including the Hemisphere Mode Indicator
- Self-Directed Search
Armed with this diagnostic information, the scholarship advisor will conduct an assessment to begin the development of the Individual Education Plan. Also, as a part of the initial assessments, the recipients will be informed of campus resources applicable and available to assist them. A resource handbook, developed by the Instructional Assistance Center, will be provided to each recipient and specific prescriptive plans along with appointments with appropriate learning resource staff will be established and documented in the student's program folder as the first phase of their Individual Education Plan. While the IEP will be different for each scholarship recipient, all will have several things in common. Each plan will provide the student and advisor with a list of specific prescriptive plans and expectations based on both the students academic strengths and any identified weakness. It may be taken into account that while scholarship recipients are academically gifted, they are also financially disadvantaged. As a result, many will probably possess certain areas of weakness and obstacles that will need to be addressed and overcome. Each student will know as a result of the development of their IEP what activities and services they will be expected to utilize.
Each recipient will have access to all available computer hardware and software along with all technical expertise, instruction and guidance needed in order to succeed academically. Upon acceptance into the program, they will each receive a packet of information which will outline all available software and hardware on campus as well as the names and numbers of faculty and staff members available to provide technical guidance. As part of the curriculum of the Student Success course (which is outlined under the plan to address objective 4), all scholarship recipients will be required to participate in laboratory activities and out of class projects designed to further familiarize them with the available technologies and to supplement their classroom learning, using the latest office applications, programming languages and database software, which are available in multiple Pentium labs housed in the Computer Science Department. Also available is an open student lab staffed by qualified lab assistants for the purpose of assisting students with their out of class work and assignments. While these labs are closed on weekends, the College Library is open and has computers available for student use throughout the weekend.
The program will provide a comprehensive package of classroom, learning community, tutoring, mentoring, and other support services:
A. Classroom:
Upon acceptance into the program, each participant will be required to enroll in a one-credit Student Success Course. This course, which has been offered as an elective at Allegany College since 1994, will be required as a special section for the enrolled scholarship recipients only. Each student will benefit from the curriculum that includes:
- Life Skills such as time management, goal setting, stress management and wellness.
- Specific study techniques based on personal learning styles which will include test taking, math and science study techniques, reading for comprehension and memory enhancement.
- Effective techniques, including developmental coursework, designed to help the student overcome diagnosed or suspected learning disabilities.
- A comprehensive introduction and guide to campus-wide resources available for research composition and learning enhancement activities.
B. Learning Community:
In addition, throughout their degree program, students will be participating in a learning community experience. The learning community setting has demonstrated several benefits to students:
- It provides valuable connection with other students in the career program.
- It provides connection with courses in other curricula and demonstrates how they tie in with the student's course of study.
- It provides a positive learning environment with focus on student participation and the learning process.
C. Tutoring:
Tutoring services will begin promptly after the student's acceptance into the program. In order to avoid the pitfall, which often occurs because students tend to wait until they are too far behind to recover before searching out tutorial support, initiation of these services will be required of all participants, and will be introduced to the students during the first weeks of their first semester in the program. During both the Student Success Class and the Learning Community activities, tutors and mentors will be introduced to the students and will begin to interact with them as study group leaders. Although tutoring will initially be provided in group settings, students will also be required to take part in individual tutoring when needed. In addition, regularly scheduled tutoring labs will be available, utilizing lab instructors.
The tutors will be recruited and trained through the established guidelines of the Instructional Assistance Center. The services will be provided to the scholarship recipients free of charge. As participants, they will be required to attend appropriate regularly scheduled tutoring sessions. Because some learning weaknesses or disabilities may be discovered during the Student Success classes, some participants may also be required to take advantage of tutoring in other content areas such as math, science and English. These tutoring sessions will also be required in order to provide the students with every advantage available to overcome inadequate preparation in areas other than Computer Science, which may impede their academic success.D. Mentoring:
Peer mentors will be recruited and trained from the second year Computer Science students to assist program participants. While this group of mentors will be chosen to work specifically with the scholarship participants, they will be trained through Allegany College's Leadership Academy. The mentor program will be geared toward successfully resolving adjustment issues which incoming freshmen often encounter and issues that arise which sometimes are seen as roadblocks for continuing students. The program will stress academic mentoring, while also striving to meet the personal, social and cultural needs of the participants. The student mentors will also provide the opportunity for the group's participation in special support groups, coordinated by the faculty advisors and offered for all program participants. These groups will be formed during the initial semester of student success and learning community experiences and will strive to provide a cohesive group structure offering support and community.
E. Other Support Services:
Financial Aid advising services will be available to all participants to ensure that each of them is offered sufficient financial aid needed to attend Allegany College.
- Transfer advising services will be available using the resources of the Instructional Assistance Center. Program participants will be encouraged to explore transfer possibilities and seek transfer advising for the attainment of higher degrees in Computer Science.
- Allegany College Career Advisors will provide career-advising services. Special emphasis will be placed on emerging and non-traditional careers in Information Technologies. The result of career advising efforts during the first semester's experiences will assist program staff and advisors as they work with participants in their selection of specific academic opportunities to enhance their chances of attaining the career or transfer opportunities they want upon graduation.
- Special needs that students may have will be addressed by the staff and appropriate referrals made in order to give physically challenged or learning disabled students every advantage possible to meet their increased challenges to academic success.
Each program participant will have the advantage of extensive Career and Job Placement services, which will be provided through the Office of Career and Job Placement Services. During the student's first semester Student Success Course, the Director of Career and Job Placement Services will begin to work with the participants to develop their career portfolios. These portfolios will be kept with the student's files and will be regularly updated as they continue through the academic program. Participants will be required to attend sessions offered through the Career and Job Placement Offices which will cover these content areas:
- Resume preparation
- Successful interviewing
- Effective
cover letters
- Marketing
yourself to the professional community
- Image and professional dressing
The students' portfolios will be updated regularly and will have evolved into their resume packages by the time they are ready to graduate. In addition, each participant will have completed the preparatory training for interviewing and will have completed mock interviews with members of the professional community.
The program will be evaluated through an annual follow-up for 2 years after graduation. Program outcome data will be used to determine the extent to which the program successfully increases student achievement. The three areas targeted for this project are increased grade point averages, increased retention through graduation, and a higher rate of professional job placement and/or transfer into four-year degree programs.
These stated objectives are ambitious; yet attainable. They are ambitious in that they require a substantial increase above the current retention rate. In order to accomplish the objectives, the project will be required to provide a level of services to students which is higher than that which has been made available in the past. These services will be objective-specific and will be dependent upon each other and the full involvement of several offices and agencies on and off campus. They are attainable, due in part to the ongoing and consistent increase in enrollment in the Computer Science Department and the level of institutional support available through the offices such as the Allegany College Foundation Office, the Instructional Assistance Center, the Office of Institutional Research, and the Institute for Career and Job Placement Services.
While it will be imperative that the program carefully monitor each student in order to make sure they take advantage of services; it will be of great advantage to each of them that many services such as tutoring, academic alert, transfer advising and employment placement skills training are already made available to the student body at Allegany College of Maryland.
Also beneficial will be the involvement and commitment of the Allegany County Board of Education and Frostburg State University through the implementation of the 2+2+2 Seamless Curriculum Program for Computer Science and Technology in Allegany County. Of additional benefit to the project's success is the support and involvement of the local Information Technology Community and the increased interest in Information Technology curricula and employment in the region.
