Workshop Registration

regional workshop dates and locations

Regional partners for these workshops included the CONNECT Partnership, the Colleges of Worcester Consortium, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the Five Colleges Partnership, and the Berkshire Compact for Higher Education.

During the day-long workshops, teams met to create or refine a high school-college alignment action plan. The staff from EPIC reviewed the action plans and are providing technical support to the teams during the spring and summer of 2008. Support is in the form of planning assistance for continued partnering, materials support for alignment and college readiness protocols, syllabus analysis, technical support for senior seminars and linked high school-college courses. Funded by an Advanced Placement Incentive Program grant from the United States Department of Education, both the April sessions and the technical support are provided to participants at no charge.

regional college readiness workshop registration

High schools were encouraged to send a team to the workshop in their region of the state. Ideal teams included three to four members, such as the district curriculum coordinator, a high school principal, high school English and/or mathematics department chairs, or high school guidance director. The Board of Higher Education recruited college and university faculty from each region to participate.

Advance registration was open until February 26, 2008 only to teams from high schools in which 40% or more of the students are low-income. After this date, an invitation to the Regional College Readiness Workshops was extended to all high school principals in the state. The final deadline for registration was March 14, 2008.

Regional workshops were held from 9 AM to 3 PM at the following locations and dates.

April regional college readiness workshops agenda

1. Overview of the structure and goals of the workshop and role of EPIC
2. Summary of key issues in high school-college alignment
3. Introduction of menu of options and review of each option as a means to improve high school-college alignment
4. Initial group work to share ideas and consider strategies to improve alignment
5. Lunch
6. Report back to all participants on results from initial group work
7. Groups reconvene to consider more specific goals, strategies, and planning process. Groups complete an action plan that identifies the specific project approach they wish to pursue
8. Closure: Each group reports what it has accomplished and what its next steps will be.