Bunker Hill Community College Accelerates Student Completion Strategies

BOSTON, Jan. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- More than 160 faculty, staff, students and alumni joined Bunker Hill Community College President Mary L. Fifield on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, for an intensive, day-long summit to create student-completion strategies.  At the end of the seven-hour day, the participants had papered the walls with new strategies with the potential for radical improvement in student success.  The summit underscored the public commitment by the College's Board of Trustees and President Fifield to the national College Completion Challenge set out by President Barack Obama with the aim of increasing post-secondary degree completion.  

Entitled "Getting Past Go – The Journey to Completion," the college-wide gathering sought innovative ways to remove obstacles faced by community college students.  Dr. W. Joye Hardiman, a national expert on community colleges, urged the audience to build on College data proving that students will achieve when learning is meaningful to their lives and when they are connected to a network of students, faculty and staff, all committed to their success.  

Throughout the day, students and alumni including military veterans, immigrants and the formerly homeless who became successful students gave testimonials about how the College helped them overcome obstacles.  One student came to the United States speaking no English.  After studying at Bunker Hill Community College, he went to Bentley University and on to a job at the global insurance giant AIG.  At the end of a day of discussions and workshops, the College had more than 50 new strategies to evaluate for implementation.  Promising strategies from the day include making all classes learning communities with student mentoring, tutoring and advising; creating a College social network with a smart-phone application; developing creative assessment programs to supplement testing; and opening a hotline for students to turn to when facing what may appear to be insurmountable obstacles.  

Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 12,000 students on two campuses and at four satellite locations. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in Massachusetts. Six in ten students are people of color and more than half of BHCC's students are women. The College also enrolls more than 700 international students who come from more than 90 countries and speak 75 different languages.

SOURCE Bunker Hill Community College

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