The president of the Colorado Community College System recognized the college Tuesday for the highest percentage-point increase of students completing remedial courses out of the 13 community colleges in the state. At the end of the 2013-14 school year, 78.1 percent of students completed their remedial courses, an increase of seven percentage points compared with 2010-11. This was also the second-highest percentage of students completing remedial courses within the community college system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results were really striking ,\u201d said Norm Jones, the executive dean of SCCC.<\/p>\n
He attributed the success to a restructuring of remedial courses that cover reading, writing and math. The college combined several courses, which allowed students to start their selected programs of study sooner.<\/p>\n
The college started preparing to restructure the program in spring of 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were the institution of the 13 colleges that said we\u2019re going to take this on first,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n
In fall 2013, the school had 107 students locally enrolled in remedial courses and started providing mentors and one-on-one meetings to help students complete their work.<\/p>\n
Jones said that the changes were research based and it was likely that other colleges in the state would implement similar changes.<\/p>\n