Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 8.37, FLX Morning, it's time for our monthly Scholastically Speaking segment with FLCC. A guest that we've had on the program before, Ryan McCabe, and he has a very cool title, Associate Vice President of Academic Technology and High Impact Practices. Ryan, good morning and welcome back.
Ryan McCabe: Good morning, Ted, thank you for having me.
Paul Szmal: So the college has just received a $2.25 million Federal Education Department grant to help enhance your programs that help first-time students succeed. Was this a competitive application? How did this money come about?
Ryan McCabe: Yeah, it is a competitive application, and we're really grateful that we were selected to receive the money. It is called the Strengthening Institutions grant, and we really think it's going to do wonders for our first-year students and those students who generally struggle the most when they arrive at college.
Paul Szmal: Now we talked just recently on this program about the SUNY ASAP program, and we've done other interviews about other programs that you have. Do you think that was helpful in securing that grant, the success of the programs that you have in place?
Ryan McCabe: I think that just the success of the institution in general was helpful. Most certainly the coaching model we put in place with ASAP played a role because we already have the groundwork and can show some success in the work that we've done. And then just the support that we have in general for students, the programs that we offer, all of those things I think were taken into consideration by the federal government.
Paul Szmal: So this grant is going to allow FLCC to do a really deep dive. One of the things that it funds is a specialist to revise your entry-level courses following what's known as UDL, Universal Design for Learning. So explain what that means and how that would impact your courses.
Ryan McCabe: So Universal Design for Learning really means that a student, regardless of their background, regardless of any disability they may have, when they walk into the classroom, they have the opportunity to be just as successful as any other student. And this can range from, in an online course, it can range from captioning of videos, things like that, for people that are hard of hearing, or even the change of a physical classroom space so that if someone is in a wheelchair or a scooter, they are not stuck in a certain part of the room or unable to get in the door to start with. There's an awful lot that goes into UDL, and so we're really excited to have someone to focus on this because it is a pretty major concern, and we're finding more and more students who have some struggles when they arrive. They come from high school having been on a learning plan, and so when they arrive at FLCC, it is helpful to have kind of this design thinking in mind as we are crafting our courses.
Paul Szmal: So a number of these accommodations will be universal across all your courses. Are these things that maybe some students didn't even know existed and had to find out about them?
Ryan McCabe: Yeah, so the idea here is basically we will level set and create a foundation where no matter which course you enroll in and which modality it is in, you are going to be able to start from that point of success. Instead of requiring students to reach out and say, hey, I'm hard of hearing, so I'm going to need captions in my course, and then us providing those captions, they'll just be there from the very beginning. So it does take a little bit of effort that the students had to put in and takes that away, and for some students, that can be a conversation that they don't really want to have, and it can be a barrier, and so what is really exciting about this is we're going to basically create kind of this ground level that is just the minimum that is required for every course is going to be that any student can walk in the door and be ready to go.
Paul Szmal: Another new position is a full-time first-year experience coordinator. You found over the years that's the key year. That's when most people leave if they're going to, so talk about what this experience coordinator will do and what you've identified as some of the things that might stymie first-year students pursuing their educations.
Ryan McCabe: So for a lot of first-year students, especially if they're first generation, one of the key indicators to student success is that they have a person that they can rely on, whether that is an instructor, a family member, a friend. They have some support and someone that's willing to help them and mentor them and, you know, in some cases, motivate them, and so that tends to be the largest barrier, and then there are a lot of other things that a lot of us don't really think about a lot, and that is, you know, things like food insecurity or transportation issues or things like that, and the college has all kinds of programs that can help students with those things, and this specific role that you referenced is going to allow us to create a holistic first-year experience for all of our students where they come in and they get a really good understanding of the services that the college offers, where they have to go for tutoring, where they can get help with their financial aid, all of those kind of things that can knock a student off track, whether it's academically or not academically, so we're really, really excited about this position and this grant in general, and the hope is that by increasing first-year student success, we will then increase graduation rates.
Paul Szmal: Are the challenges for non-traditional first-year students different than those coming right from high school?
Ryan McCabe: So there is a little bit of a difference, specifically with the gap, generally, in learning. Most adult students haven't spent time in a formal education setting in some time, and that is one of the most significant issues. The other thing that adult students have, generally, are quite a bit of responsibility, and that can be very helpful in the sense that they've developed time management skills and they understand how to build a day and fit in their schoolwork, but it also can be difficult if they have concerns about childcare or they have a family member who gets sick or they also are working 20, 30, 40 hours a week. So there is a bit of a difference, but we are finding that our traditional students more and more are working 20-plus hours and do have some of the same responsibilities of our non-traditional students, of those adult students. And so there is a difference, but it is actually closing a little bit, we've noticed, over the last five or seven years.
Paul Szmal: When athletes take the field or the floor, they're not expected, nobody says, hey, just go out there and win. They have coaches, so you're going to have some academic coaches now to help students through their first year.
Ryan McCabe: Yeah, you mentioned ASAP earlier, and that was our first foray into academic coaching, kind of on a broad level, and this is going to allow us to hire two new academic coaches. And what that means is that for every student who walks in the door, they will have an academic coach. And that is so important to helping students along, to ensuring that they stay on track, to providing them with the support that they need, to making sure they understand the resources that are available, and to just being someone sometimes who can just listen to their concerns and from their perspective, as someone who's been through the educational process, offer support, mentoring, or advice.
Paul Szmal: It occurred to me that when we go through K-12, we have our parents, if there's a problem with the school system or with a teacher, it's usually addressed by the parent. Now kids go into college and they don't have that advocate anymore standing right nearby, so a lot of this program, it sounds to me like it will provide them those advocates they need as go-betweens to make sure their needs get met.
Ryan McCabe: Yeah, exactly, Ted, that's a perfect point, and you're correct. There are a lot of students who do not speak up when they should, because they may be intimidated by the idea of college, they may be intimidated by an instructor, and this helps give them someone who they can talk to, who will hopefully give them some agency so they can speak up when needed, and they can advocate for themselves when needed, because there are times that is going to occur. There are times when a student is going to need some help and may be afraid to ask for it, and these coaches will most certainly help with that and assist our students in finding that help.
Paul Szmal: Are you going to be able to put any of these initiatives into place in this academic year, or are you focusing on next fall?
Ryan McCabe: We are hoping the jobs will be posted relatively soon that are involved in this grant, so the hope is that we would hire people at some point in early 2025, so we would have the coaches hopefully on board for the start of the spring semester, and the UDL role and the first-year experience role, the hope would also be that they would start around that same time, but their impact will not really truly be felt until the next academic year, but the coaches will have an impact immediately starting in spring 2025.
Paul Szmal: This is a 5-year program, $2.25 million from the Federal Department of Education, $450,000 a year to help those first-year students. So we've been talking with Ryan McCabe, Associate Vice President of Academic Technology and High Impact Practices. I'm very impressed yet again. I love hearing about all these programs. Thanks for being with us.
Ryan McCabe: Thanks so much for your time today, Ted.
