Focusing on the Collaborative Practices Evolving out of the Basic Skills Initiative between student services and academic services, the fall edition contains four articles on the Basic Skills Initiative and its implementation on campuses in the state. In addition, there is an article on the analysis of a mental health survey conducted in community colleges and a green movement in student recruitment at Cal Poly. You’ll also find an endnote on teacher burnout and a staff development section. As always, we appreciate the support of our regular sponsor for this edition, ACT, Inc., who also weighs in on the value of a basic skill diagnostic assessment.

Stephanie Lewis addresses the key assessment and advising needs of developmental educators and outlines how a customized COMPASS program is your resource to students’ success. This is one of many ACT products which can assist counselors and basic skill faculty to better serve the student arriving on campus with basic skill developmental needs.

The California Basic Skills Initiative (BSI) is one of the most embraced and widespread program(s) ever occurring in the California Community Colleges (CCC) system. This article describes the background of the BSI, as well as its strong integration of instruction and student services.

California Community Colleges are faced with a crisis in developmental education. It affects classrooms and teachers in every academic subject, from vocational to transfer level courses.  Faculty members are stating with a resounding voice, “My students are ill-prepared for college”.  The English and Counseling Basic Skills Learning Communities at Napa Valley College (NVC) are addressing this urgent issue. The author details the changes over the past two years where NVC has experienced increased rates in retention, course completion, persistence, and learner satisfaction for students participating in mandatory learning communities.  The author explains how professors working together to integrate their curriculum and provide an atmosphere of affirmation, affiliation, and concrete skill can result in students passing at higher rates of success, and moving closer to their goal of an associate’s degree, certificate completion or transfer to a four year university.

El Camino College (ECC) is excited about its latest innovation in basic skills. This effort entitled, the Basic Skills Counseling Intervention Program (BSCIP), is a pilot collaboration between Counseling, Mathematics, and English faculty. The authors outline how the Counseling faculty sought collaborations with English and Mathematics faculty to launch a coordinated instructional program that would address the academic and social needs of basic skills students while they are taking basic skills courses. The model provides an excellent example of how collaboration between Counseling, Mathematics, and English faculty can generate innovative and effective practices.

The statewide Basic Skills Initiative has brought increased attention to California community colleges and the challenges surrounding meeting the needs of the large number of students who require developmental level support. As a result of the basic skills self-assessment, the College of the Sequoias developed a strong collaboration between academic and student services and among faculty and counselors to work in unison to support students. The Essential Learning Initiative and First Year Experience are examples of two programs designed to enhance partnerships across campus and develop alliances that result in holistic support for students.

The collection and dissemination of accurate and usable data about health services is an ongoing primary goal of the Health Services Association of California Community Colleges (HSACCC), an organization of college student health professionals. In this article, the authors outline the results of the first aggregate data set representing the largest data set of community college students to our knowledge (N=7898). The efforts and results reaffirm the commitment of community college student health services in making an investment to ensure programs are guided by high quality data.

The methods that colleges use to recruit students have changed dramatically, but the goals have not changed. Linking the campus community and building relationships between the campus and its constituency remains the number one goal today. Recruiting methods have evolved, along with changes in how students want those relationships built. The author shows how Cal Poly moved to almost exclusively electronic communications after prospective students said in 1999, “Hey, we’re not going to open your mail.” Students drove us to the “green” admission effort.

In line with our theme, the key Basic Skill Initiative training dates are listed in the 2008-09 staff development section along with the key CSSO meeting dates. The Emergency Operations Plan training dates are also listed, as are dates for key NASPA, CCLC and ACCCA annual conferences. The joint CIO/CSSO Annual Conference is set for April 1-3, 2009, in Sacramento.

In this article, the author aims to discern the impact of burnout within the teaching profession, especially those who are newly credentialed. There is no doubt that there are many stressors placed upon teachers. Some will use these as motivators to do better or to incur change in which they will thrive during these times. Others will be overwhelmed by it and literally get burnout from teaching. The author argues that burnout is a serious issue because it causes a disruption to the education of our greatest resource, students, and distorts the path that leads to purposeful teaching. This may be one of the root causes of the lack of solid basic skills for some students upon graduation. This article has previously posted in www.teacherspath.org