Student Success

Today I'm attending a 4-hour retreat on promoting students' success at GCC. I am also finishing up a recommendation for a student graduating from UNT this August who wanted a recommendation for graduate business school. When I went back to spring 2006 when he was in my English 1302 class, I was surprised to find that of the 18 students that started in the class, only 11 finished it with a passing grade. Those numbers really ought to be better, but I remember that the students just weren't showing up for that 8 a.m. class, let alone turning in any of the work. It was as if they just wanted to be enrolled for financial aid purposes, not for the sake of actually getting a college degree. Maybe with the tougher economic climate, people will set higher goals so they can get more because they gave more effort to the plan they had. I hope so. In any event, I'm looking forward to working with our team to see what ideas we can come up with to support the students who really are working to help themselves.