Michelle Zollars Receives Award for Innovation

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Zollars is pictured with Peter Adams from the Community College of Baltimore County.

MARTINSVILLE, VA (04/13/2011)(readMedia)-- Michelle Zollars, Associate Professor of Developmental English at Patrick Henry Community College, has received an Award for Innovation from the Conference on Basic Writing for her "Accelerated Learning Program: Getting through the Gate and Beyond."

The Conference on Basic Writing is administered by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Since 1949, the CCCC has been the world's largest professional organization for researching and teaching composition, from writing to new media. With more than 5,000 individual members, CCCC is a constituent group for college-level teachers of writing and related subjects within the National Council of Teachers of English.

The convention is primarily made up of scholarly panels, featured speakers, committee meetings, SIGs (Special Interest Group meetings), and workshops. An additional part of the convention is the Research Network Forum, a venue where researchers gather to present works-in-progress, discuss methodologies, and share possible future projects. The convention is also the time when CCCC presents several yearly awards, including the Award for Innovation, which recognizes writing programs for innovations that improve educational processes for basic writers through creative approaches. The Accelerated Learning Program at PHCC received this year's award.

The conference was held in Atlanta, GA, April 6-9, 2011.

The Accelerated Learning Program at PHCC is geared to increase the number of students who successfully complete developmental courses and enter on-level college courses. Traditionally, students would first complete the developmental course before entering the on-level course. Through Accelerated Learning, students take both developmental and on-level courses at the same time, with demonstrated increased success.

The Accelerated Learning Program is a part of PHCC's Progress Initiative, or developmental education initiative, which employs several tactics to improve student success and completion rates. One of those, cooperative learning, has garnered the college national attention in educational circles for its innovative approach and success rates.

Zollars' proposal was judged on specific criteria, including originality, portability (the extent to which the innovation lends itself to application in other institutions or contexts, and results and benefits.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication is a national professional association of college and university writing instructors in the USA. Formed in 1949 as an organization within the National Council of Teachers of English, CCCC currently has about 7,000 members. CCCC is the largest organization dedicated to writing research, theory, and teaching worldwide.

While at the conference, Zollars also presented on the Global Skills for College Completion project. Her topic, "Digital Multiplicity: The Global Skills for College Completion Project to Create a Replicable Model for Success in Basic Writing" was a presentation about the research and pedgogy of writing faculty in the Global Skills project, which seeks to raise pass rates in Basic Writing to 80 percent.