Adult Ed programs, colleges successful in College Transitions grant application

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine – Aroostook County Adult Education programs and institutions of higher education recently learned that their collaborative application for a two-year, $70,000 College Transitions grant was approved by the Maine Department of Education.
The Aroostook County Consortium of Educators Promoting Transitions or ACCEPT to College initiative is a collaborative endeavor involving five northern Maine Adult and Community Education programs and three post-secondary institutions committed to the equitable distribution of funding for and access to college transitions programming throughout Aroostook County.
The five Adult Education programs in the consortium include: SAD 27 Adult and Community Education headquartered in Fort Kent, the grant writing agency for and fiscal agent of the project; Madawaska/SAD 33 Adult and Community Education, Caribou Adult Education, SAD 1 Adult and Community Education based in Presque Isle, and SAD 29/70 Adult and Community Education program serving the Houlton and Hodgdon regions.
The three higher education partners are the University of Maine at Fort Kent, Northern Maine Community College, and the University of Maine at Presque Isle.
Each of the five Adult and Community Education programs in the consortium also will partner with the Maine Centers for Women, Work, and Community and the Maine Educational Opportunity Center, which will provide the bulk of the career decision-making and career counseling components of the respective projects.
The ACCEPT to College initiative will serve approximately 100 Aroostook County learners per year, providing comprehensive academic skills instruction and essential support services through a regional model of service delivery featuring local access to five transitions projects.
Each project will emphasize the following components: college-ready math instruction, college-ready reading and writing instruction, instruction in the use of technology hardware and a variety of software programs commonly employed by today’s colleges and universities, workshop sessions and individual meetings dedicated to preparing participants for the non-academic aspects of entering and succeeding in college, group and individualized career counseling, and the development of a peer co-hort system aimed at enhancing learner persistence.
The ACCEPT to College grant award provides $40,000 for year one of the county College Transitions initiative, and $30,000 in year two. Funds will be used to pay for instructional costs, assessment materials, and student texts. The ultimate goal of this collaborative endeavor is to provide high quality services at no cost to Aroostook County residents who did not prepare for college as either long-ago or relatively recent high school students, and who now want and/or need to acquire a college degree.
College transitions services are designed to assist learners following a non-traditional path to higher education, not only to be admitted to college, but also to experience success and to remain enrolled once admitted.
College transitions projects prepare learners to attend college without the need to take developmental courses, or to at least minimize the number of developmental courses they need to take, and to complete a degree once enrolled.
Fifty percent of the nation’s entering college students require developmental course-work in reading, writing, and/or math, and research clearly demonstrates that the more developmental courses a student takes the less likely that student is to earn a degree.
By some research estimates, for example, only 34 percent of students who take one developmental course in college will eventually earn degrees, and only 18 percent of students who take two or more developmental courses in college will eventually earn degrees.
In a 2003 survey, on the other hand, 81 percent of participants who successfully completed college transitions programs in Maine reported attending college without the need to take developmental courses, and 71 percent were still enrolled in college after one year.
For more information about the available college transitions options, interested individuals may call the following programs: Fort Kent/SAD 27 Adult and Community Education at 834-3536, Madawaska/SAD 33 Adult and Community Education at 728-6314, Caribou Adult Education at 493-4272, Presque Isle/SAD 1 Adult Education at 764-4776, or Houlton-Hodgdon/SAD 29/70 Adult Education at 521-3154.