Ensuring Learning

Ensuring Learning: Supporting Faculty to Improve Student Success is the second book in a two-book series. This book highlights the importance of teaching and learning in student success reform and is a deep dive into the fourth pillar, ensuring learning, of Guided Pathways which is a national movement focused on increasing the number of college students who earn a degree or credential. It emphasizes how institutional strategies such as investing in faculty development through Centers for Teaching and Learning and revising reward structures can significantly improve student achievement and completion rates. This book calls for colleges to prioritize teaching and learning and provides college leaders with guidance on how to do so. For example, strategies to develop and enhance Centers for Teaching and Learning and increase professional development programming that provides ongoing, substantial support to faculty are shared. Readers will benefit from numerous practical suggestions on how to help faculty improve teaching and learning practices and ultimately improve student success outcomes.

Ensuring Learning is a faculty focused and practical guide that will benefit all educators seeking to implement Guided Pathways. With student learning and success as the driving forces behind the recommendations, this book should be required reading for those seeking to design educational environments that prioritize completion and quality., Congratulations to Christine Harrington for writing a book that anyone engaging in guided pathways should read. Her book recognizes that real, transformative change will not happen if community colleges do not address the core function of teaching and learning. Recognizing that ensuring student learning shouldn't be an add-on or afterthought of guided pathways reform, Dr. Harrington speaks directly to the important roles faculty should play in improving instructional practices in classrooms across campuses and in their communities. Using her well-informed lens as a faculty member at Middlesex County College and leader of New Jersey's Student Success Center, Dr. Harrington addresses the most important questions that faculty ask about guided pathways to demonstrate how faculty expertise can support reform, leverage untapped talents to lead change, and garner commitment to continuously improving student success., For decades, the majority of education reform efforts have focused on institutional supports that largely reside outside of the classroom. And while these systems of support are important, the student success and completion needle has not moved significantly enough as a result. Ensuring Learning: Supporting Faculty to Improve Student Success is a timely book as the role of faculty is positioned in the academy where it should have been all along…at the center of student learning and success. Christine Harrington presents solid insights into the critical role of faculty in student success, as well as practical tools for practitioners to use at any level., In concert with the overarching premise of Guided Pathways critically examining the way in which community colleges function to increase student success, Dr. Harrington embarks in original work in operationalizing “learning.” The specificity and clarity behind her arguments discern a clear road map for institutional success., Community colleges are monuments to equity, but they don't always live up to their missions. Christine Harrington provides a practical, accessible, step-by-step guide for community colleges to ensure not only that they fulfill their missions through guided pathways, but that they improve student learning as they go. The sheer scale of the efforts can be overwhelming; Harrington does a real service by breaking them into small, actionable steps to keep those efforts from getting sidetracked. It's the sort of book to read with a pen.

Dr. Christine Harrington is an Associate Professor and Co-Coordinator of the Ed.D. in Community College Leadership program at New Jersey City University. Prior to taking on this role, she worked in the community college setting for over 18 years as a faculty member teaching psychology and first-year seminar, director of a Teaching and Learning Center, and as the executive director of the Center for Student Success at the New Jersey Council of County Colleges.