In 2018, Dr. Audrey Jaeger and Dr. Monique N. Colclough hatched an idea — what if they could develop professional learning environments easily accessible for all faculty in North Carolina’s community colleges, and what if that development could move the needle on student success?
Dr. Audrey Jaeger, professor of community college education at North Carolina State University and director of the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.
“In 2018, I was watching and noticing that, while we were seeing gains in student success, it wasn’t at a steep, accelerated rate. We were not reducing equity gaps,” said Stout, recalling her Dallas Herring Lecture, an annual event at the Belk Center. “I was also noticing that [very few] interventions or strategies for redesign were systematic and touching the classroom. Very few faculty were engaged in a deep way with the work, using their own data to think about pedagogy and updates that could move course success in a certain way.”
Stout’s speech hit Jaeger and Colclough in their hearts. They realized that the kind of professional development needed to engage faculty would be very difficult to achieve in smaller, rural and less-resourced institutions like some of the 58 community colleges in North Carolina.
“The majority of time spent at or with community colleges is in the classroom, and we know that’s the area we have the opportunity to catalyze change,” said Jaeger.
Jaeger and Colclough began a case study that has blossomed into a full program, run by and for faculty, that’s creating peer communities, meeting regional needs, and moving the needle on student retention, persistence, and graduation rates: The North Carolina Teaching and Learning Hubs.
The Belk Center and ATD recently released a guidebook explaining how and why they created these Hubs and what their results have been. They said they believe their experiences could be a model for other community college systems across the country.
