Dear Colleagues,
As we welcome spring, my mind is drawn to transitions and rejuvenation. In this spirit, I welcome my wonderful colleague, Cynthia Zafft, as the new moderator of the Postsecondary Completion group. I have enjoyed my tenure as the Subject Matter Expert of the group for the past couple of years and have learnt a lot from our interactions and discussions. I am looking forward to continuing to collaborate and participate in learning together with you as a member of this community of practice.
Best wishes,
Priyanka Sharma
psharma@worlded.org
Comments
Greetings and welcome again to the Postsecondary Completion group!
After a long, hard winter, it’s nice to think in terms of spring and new growth. I want to thank my colleague and friend, Priyanka, for her dedication to the goals of this group -- helping practitioners, researchers and policy-makers from the adult education, postsecondary education, and workforce development fields explore issues related to helping adult education programs embed the skills adult learners need to complete postsecondary education. It’s a challenging but rewarding task.
It is almost a decade ago that Priyanka and I began work on the National College Transition Network along with our colleagues at World Education in Boston. In the beginning, we heard from individual teachers and programs working in isolation to help their students move on to postsecondary education. These hardy practitioners developed instructional content, program models, college readiness counseling components, agreements with community partners, and much more. Their willingness to share their experiences has made this field blossom, and has kept us more honest about the important challenges that need to be addressed at each step of the way.
I want to invite you to continue this journey here in the Postsecondary Completion group. Where are you now? Take the pulse of your teaching, your program, your state. What is your next step for helping adult learners enter and succeed in postsecondary education? What is your next challenge? I look forward to hearing from you. This group looks forward to hearing from you.
Cynthia Zafft
czafft@worlded.org