In its current form, the program matches qualified graduate students with an experienced mentor professor while allowing them to gain teaching experience inside a community college classroom. Program participants are compensated at the regular part-time adjunct professor rate for their service. The program’s success to date is inspiring VCCS leaders to expand the effort to working professionals, marketing to them largely through the system’s website at www.vccs.edu/jobs.

“From the beginning, this has been an effort to ensure the pool of qualified applicants from which we select our teaching faculty members is as dynamic and diverse as the students we teach,” said Glenn DuBois, chancellor of Virginia’s Community Colleges. “So far, we have served about 100 students through the fellowship. I’m excited to think about how much more we could be – and soon will be – doing.”

Similar to Virginia’s population, the student body of Virginia’s Community Colleges is approximately one-third minority. Minority instructors make up about 12% of the faculty at the 23 colleges. According to a Media General News Service story, published in February 2007, “Nationally only about 5 percent of college faculty is black and less than 5 percent is Hispanic. About half of minority faculty members teach at schools that serve mostly black or Hispanic students.”

Many of the students who have worked through the fellowship say the hands-on experience and the chance to learn from seasoned instructors are the highlights.

Woody Givens, a University of Virginia graduate student who taught biology and microbiology at Piedmont Virginia Community College says the fellowship is a “very positive experience. I thoroughly enjoy teaching and this experience allows you to get into a routine and become comfortable leading a class. I learned so much from the Piedmont faculty. I would encourage anyone looking to get their foot in the door to look into this VCCS fellowship.”

Brian Dunn, who is graduating this spring from his master’s program at Virginia Commonwealth University, says the fellowship experience is opening doors for him. “I have been teaching anatomy at both John Tyler Community College and J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and will be through the summer and the fall. This has been really a great opportunity.”

The enthusiasm the fellowship is generating goes both ways, according to Wenda Ribeiro, an instructor at Thomas Nelson Community College and one of the fellowship’s original mentors. “The enthusiasm that these graduate students are bringing into the classroom is amazing. They are students themselves and they really want to teach others. And they do such a great job of relating the classroom material with real-world experience. That’s something that every instructor can lose track of from time to time. I hope this program continues on and on.”

“When we look to hire a full-time faculty member, more than half the time we look to the pool of talent we have in our adjunct instructors. By training and preparing people, we are establishing them on a pathway to become full-time college faculty members and even college leadership. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. And reaching out to minority professionals and minority professional organizations with this program is a good thing for the VCCS to be doing.”

About Virginia’s Community Colleges: Created more than 40 years ago, the VCCS is comprised of 23 community colleges located on 40 campuses across the commonwealth. Together, Virginia’s Community Colleges serve more than a quarter-million credit students each year. For more information, please visit myfuture.vccs.edu.

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