Emmie Boese
Lantern Staff
Various faculty presented on the latest in developmental education and English and math acceleration programs at the Great Plains Conference.
The conference was held on Thursday, Feb. 21 and Friday, Feb. 22 at the Welcome Center in El Dorado. The conference hosted professionals from college institutions in Kansas, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Texas, Oklahoma and Wyoming. This included 42 faculty from Butler and 72 other professionals from other institutions. The conference discussed topics on acceleration at institutions, on programs like Hawkes math and several others.
Katheryn McCoskey, a professor of English, was pleased with how the conference went this year.
“I think it turned out really well,” McCoskey said. “Really good quality and presentation.”
McCoskey enjoyed keynote speaker Dr. John Hetts, who is from Sacramento, California and is the senior director of Data Science Educational Results Partnership. He discussed topics on the use of high school cumulative GPA for college admissions.
“He shared information about use of high school cumulative GPA as a multiple measure for placement, and that’s something that there’s a lot of research,” McCoskey said. “That’s information that a lot of people hadn’t really heard of, you know speak directly to them about, and I think that was really eye opening to people who came and people who also came for that.”
Barbara Hampton, an English professor from Rend Lake College in Ina, Illinois, is pleased with the conference each year. Hampton teaches the ALP format at her college, an accredited English class at Rend Lake. The ALP program is an accelerated learning program used by institutions for English as a co–requisite. In this program, students are required to take EG 060, Fundamentals of English, and EG 101, Composition 101, simultaneously.
“This is the third time I’ve been here,” Hampton said. “When I come to this conference and I have questions, I find that I have people to talk to… have answers.”
Diana Morton, an English adjunct at Butler, was also pleased with the conference this year.
“It’s my third year of attending it and I teach at Butler, and I teach in the ALP program,” Morton said. “Every time I come to these, I learn something new. I get inspired, and there’s always a take away that makes my classes better.”
McCoskey and other faculty members at Butler heard positive feedback from other institutions this year.
“This is the third year in a row that we’ve had the conference,” McCoskey said. “Every year we’ve heard that this is their favorite conference or one of their favorite conferences and people talk about the content and also just how friendly and generous everybody is in sharing.”