Academic Master Plan 2016-2021

2 + 2 + 2: Shorthand for an articulated program or curriculum that begins in the last two years of high school and leads seamlessly into a two-year associate’s degree at a community college followed by two years of study at a four-year college or university, resulting in a bachelor’s degree.

Badges: Visual, digital representations of achievements or competencies that signify educational mastery and are earned by completing learning modules, accomplishing particular tasks and goals, or demonstrating knowledge of content or skills. In an institution of higher education, badges would be part of a larger system of assessment.

Career and Technology Education (CTE): Programs of study based on articulation agreements that allow students to earn Montgomery College credit by successfully completing program courses at MCPS (Montgomery County Public Schools). These programs include Automotive Technology, Business, Construction and Development, Criminal Justice, Education, Engineering, Hospitality Management, Information Technology, Media and Interactive Technologies, and more.

College and Career Readiness and College Completion Act of 2013 (CCRCCA; a.k.a. Senate Bill 740): A Maryland State Act designed to ensure student college and career readiness, expand access to early college enrollment, enhance transferability, and foster timely degree completion. Elements of CCRCCA that are particularly relevant to community colleges include focusing high school students on dual enrollment opportunities, making 60 credits of community college courses transferrable to public four-year state institutions, making 30 credits of public four-year state institution courses transferrable to community colleges, developing incentives for students to obtain an associate’s degree before enrolling in a public four-year state institution, filing a degree plan upon community college entry, and setting credit limits for associate’s and bachelor’s degrees.

Completion: Graduation from a community college with a certificate or degree and/or transfer from a community college to a public four-year institution of higher education.

Credential: Something that formally confers credit or confidence, such as a degree, certificate, or badge. The Department of Labor defines a “stackable credential” as “part of a sequence of credentials that can be accumulated over time to build up an individual’s qualifications and help them to move along a career pathway or up a career ladder to different and potentially higher-paying jobs.”

Disruptive innovations/technologies: Innovations or practices that displace established technologies and methodologies and drastically change the way individuals or institutions operate. Examples include e-mails displacing letter-writing; PC’s displacing typewriters; cell phones displacing home lines; smart phones displacing cell phones, cameras, and calculators; and cloud computing displacing institutional in-house service hosting.

Dual enrollment: Student enrollment in two academic institutions (such as a high school and community college) that have developed a coordinated program of study.

Environmental scan: A survey of relevant data to identify an organization’s external opportunities and threats as well as internal strengths and weaknesses. In the process, the organization considers where it is now and where it plans to be in the next five or ten years.

Guided pathways: Structured, coherent education programs that include courses and support services leading students directly to their goals. Contrasted with the cafeteria-style self-service model that expects students to choose among disconnected courses and support services. Guided pathways are explained fully in Redesigning America’s Community Colleges by Thomas R. Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): An open-access web-based course allowing free and unlimited participation. MOOC course materials might include lectures, readings, and user forums to promote interactions among students, professors, and assistants. Coursera, Udacity, and edX are among the top MOOC providers.

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU): A formal agreement used to establish partnerships between at least two parties who share common interests. Examples include Montgomery College’s MOUs with Xian University in China to conduct seminars and colloquia between humanities faculty at both institutions; with KeyGene, a biotechnology firm, to develop internships and employment opportunities for College students; and with the Georgia Institute of Technology to establish College course requirements for students transferring to the Institute’s engineering programs.

Micro-intervention: Brief, focused, and potentially high-impact exchanges between students and College personnel. Grounded in social work theory and practice, micro-interventions originally referred to strategies that produce positive changes for individuals.

Middle college: A collaboration between a high school and community college that allows high school students to take both high school and college courses, applying college credits toward a community college degree while they earn their high school diplomas. Through Montgomery College’s Middle College Program, students at selected Montgomery County Public Schools may earn their associate degrees and high school diplomas at the same time.

Millennials: The Pew Research Center defines “millennials” as the generation born between 1981 and 1997. Pew reports that as of May 2015 this generation surpasses Generation X as the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, with 53.5 million workers.

Open-enrollment institution: An educational institution that grants admission to applicants who have a high school diploma or a GED certificate. Some open-enrollment institutions, such as Montgomery College, may also allow students without a high school credential to enroll in certain programs or under specific conditions.

Portfolio: A collection of academic documents and co-curricular activity records that tracks learning progress and academic achievement, enables students to reflect on their goals and accomplishments, and creates an archive of academic and career-related products. Portfolios are often digital and updated using web-based applications.

Proficiency credit: Credit for knowledge or skills acquired through participation in non-academic experiences, such as employment or community service. Ordinarily credit is granted only when the outcomes of these experiences are documented, course-related, and assessed as “college-level.”

Program/program: A Program (with a capital “P”) is a structured set of courses, workshops, or activities that results in a credential from Montgomery College. A program (with a small “p”) is an organized sequence of learning activities along a pathway and may include credit and non-credit classes, service learning, extracurricular activities, and other opportunities for engagement and growth.

Push-in tutoring: Academic support activities that involve a tutor working with individuals or small groups in a classroom. Contrast with “pull-out” tutoring that takes place outside of the classroom.

Skills gap: A gap between employer needs for workers with particular skills and the availability of workers who have those skills.

Student Success Score Card: At Montgomery College, a set of indicators that tracks student achievement and, according to the MC website, “provides actionable information to help the College assess and improve its programs focused on achievement and success for every student.” Indicators are grouped into “arrival” (focused on new students), “progression” (focused on returning students), and “completion” (focused on graduating and transferring students). See the Score Card at montgomerycollege.edu/scorecard.

USG: Universities at Shady Grove: A partnership of nine University System of Maryland institutions offering upper level undergraduate and graduate programs at one location in Rockville, Maryland.
Learn more at shadygrove.umd.edu/.