Developmental Ed Reform Success at Onondaga Community College

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Learn about successful developmental education reform in English at Onondaga Community College.

In this episode, I interview Dr. Malkiel Choseed, Professor of English; Dr. Matt DelConte, Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences; and Michael O'Conner, Dean of Business, Arts, and Sciences at Onondaga Community College, NY. They are recipients of the Diana Hacker TYCA Outstanding Programs in English Award for "Integrated Reading and Writing and the Successful Elimination of Developmental Education."

(Scroll down to access the transcript.)

We cover the following key topics:

6:21: The Why.

15:17: Moving from the Why to implementation.

20:46: The changes students experienced in the classroom.

27:03: Engaging the resistors to change.

35:54: Closing the loop on faculty professional development.
 
38:11: Both structural and pedagogical changes are key.

43:59: Outcome data.

48:20: Comparing the work to baking, guitar making, and biking.

Select episode quotes:

"You can have fairly decent success rates in the courses, but have really poor throughput rates and completion rates. Being able to clarify that visually was really important, and it got a lot of people on board." - Mike O'Conner

"One other thing that I really should mention from a student perspective, as well as faculty for that matter, was the use and the transition to labor based grading in a lot of our courses. In here, for a student, you shift the mindset from the what you produce being graded to the process you use to produce that material being graded, the effort that goes into labor, that goes into it." - Mike O'Conner

"As far as the college community and our colleagues in other disciplines were concerned, we introduced things like labor based grading that might explain, an emphasis on students non-cognitive struggles and how we might support those in the classroom. We introduced those in a way that were relevant and I think meaningful to faculty outside of the English department, to the faculty who were teaching courses other than writing, and to see it not as a structural shift that was isolated to our program, but to see it as a different way to engage with students in any classroom, in any discipline, I think was an important way to make this clearly a campus wide effort, and not simply one that that a few of us, in one discipline, were attempting." - Matt DelConte

"Early success was was more noticeable in what the program was saving students. A high percentage of our students saved between 3 and 11 credits, and on the average, about $1,500 of tuition dollars because they weren't required to take developmental education courses." - Matt DelConte

"It's always a double approach. It's always going to be structural and pedagogical. We know both from our own experience, and I think there are some new studies published through CCRC that pedagogical interventions, changing the way people approach their classrooms can make lasting impacts on like success rates. But it also has to be linked with structural changes that are not idiosyncratic, that I are not tied to certain individuals. One without the other is probably not going to be as effective. Let me just give you an example of this. We got rid of placement in English completely. That was one of our big, and it sounds simple, but it was one of our big innovations. So we were not categorizing students anymore." - Malkiel Choseed

"If this were a video format rather than just audio, you would see that we're three middle aged white guys with glasses. I want to point that out because I think it's fair to to say this project started out as a pedagogy-focused project, but it turned into an equity-focused project. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we feel honored and privileged to have been in a position to do this work." - Malkiel Choseed

 

About Michael O'Conner
Michael O’Connor is the Dean of Business, Arts, and Sciences at Onondaga Community College. Before his current role, he was a Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, Integrated Learning Studies, and Communications. As chair, he oversaw the development and implementation of Developmental Reading and Writing reform and elimination at OCC as well as the faculty professional development involved in these changes.

About Dr. Matt DelConte
Matt DelConte, Ph.D. is a professor of English and Chair of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY.  From 2017-2021, he was Project Director of the State University of New York (SUNY) Developmental English Learning Community, an initiative comprised of 27 campuses and designed to implement and develop co-requisite English programs across the SUNY system.  As Project Director, he oversaw the Community of Practice and organized state-wide and regional convenings around co-requisite pedagogy (including events on Trauma Informed Pedagogy, Anti-Racist Assessment, Culturally-Responsive Teaching, and Universal Design for Learning); the project trained over 450 faculty from 33 campuses and was profiled in Achieving the Dream’s 2020 Teaching and Learning Toolkit and Strong Start to Finish’s People in the Reform Series.  Matt received his Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in 2003.

About Dr. Malkiel Choseed
Malkiel Choseed, Ph.D. is a professor of English at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, NY.  He has taught at OCC since 2005, teaching composition at every level it is offered at.  He was the Writing Program Coordinator from 2008 to 2021, overseeing assessment, curricular development, and tutoring.  While in this role, he led the shift from pre-requisite developmental education to co-requisite developmental education, and then to the eventual doing away with placement and dev ed altogether through supporting all students through curriculum and pedagogy.  Between 2020 and 2024, he served as the director of a $3 million federal Title III grant focused on increasing OCC’s capacity to serve underrepresented students.  He is currently serving as one of two campus leads for OCC’s Middle States reaccreditation efforts.  Malkiel received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007.

About Dr. Al Solano
Al is Founder & Coach at the Continuous Learning Institute. A big believer in kindness, he helps institutions of higher education to plan and implement homegrown practices to improve student success and equity by coaching them through a process based on what he calls the "Three Cs": Clarity, Coherence, Consensus. In addition, his bite-sized, practitioner-based articles on student success strategies, institutional planning & implementation, and educational leadership are implemented at institutions across the country. He has worked directly with over 50 colleges and universities and has trained well over 5,000 educators. He has coached colleges for over a decade, worked at two community colleges, and began his education career in K12. He earned a doctorate in education from UCLA, and is a proud community college student who transferred to Cornell University.

[Access the Transcript]

Podcast Homepage