Volume XXXIV, No. 1 | January 20, 2012 SOFTENING STUDENT STRESS As an in-tune community college instructor, I am familiar with the stresses associated with going to college. In fact, it was not that long ago that I sweated over student loans, essays, and the uncertainty of the job market. But given the [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 29 | December 2, 2011 GIVING SHY SPEAKERS THE STRENGTH TO GET UP AND DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE A Problem I have taught introductory public speaking to 1,979 students at my college since 2003. Most of these students came to class with some performance anxiety but eventually sailed [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 28 | November 18, 2011 Budget-Friendly Outreaching Strategies for Academic Libraries The late 2000’s brought serious financial challenges to academic libraries with budget cuts in education throughout different states. Many libraries have been unable to hire new librarians and created extra work for librarians on duty. A normal workday for [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 27 | November 11, 2011 Leapfrog: Integrating Revision and Research into College Writing To integrate revision and research into English Composition, I experimented with a “leapfrog” approach that involves assigning five papers, two of which asked students to revise a previous paper and to incorporate research into it. Assignment Three [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 26 | November 4, 2011 CATCH ME IF YOU CAN: STUDENT ENGAGEMENT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA So what is all this tweeting, Facebooking, and blogging about? It is about student engagement—active involvement during academic sessions. As faculty and administrators, we can agree that student learning is our goal, and we must [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 26 | November 4, 2011 The 75-Percent Rule I have been in the education profession for 20 years as a middle school math teacher, high school football coach, junior high basketball coach, math team coach, assistant principal at a middle school and elementary school, and adjunct instructor. For the past [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 25 | October 28, 2011 Needy Students Need Textbooks: A Campus Library Responds Textbooks are expensive. New textbooks costing less than $75 are the exceptions; most cost more. For many community college students, these costs are burdens that they struggle to handle as well as they can. For others, they [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 24 | October 21, 2011 A Masterful Experience I recently had the opportunity to attend the state-wide Master Teacher Conference at Northeast Alabama Community College with three of my coworkers. The primary objective of the conference was to motivate, rejuvenate, and teach us to become…well, Master Teachers. This goal seemed [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 23 | October 14, 2011 Student Awareness: Bringing Chemistry Out of the Ivory Tower Each semester faculty members across the country in every field of study begin the term with excitement and anticipation of the prospects of what we know could be a great experience for ourselves as well as [...]

Volume XXXIII, No. 22 | October 7, 2011 Writing To Serve I teach writing, literature, and speech classes at a community college in rural Southeast Arkansas. This assignment was for my English Composition I class. Early on in my own education, I was taught that the primary purposes for writing were to instruct, [...]