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Cure for 'Senioritis'

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 March 2006, 09:00 CST

By Shelley Shelton, ARIZONA DAILY STAR

More high school seniors adding to their schedules with Pima college courses

So much for "senioritis."

The affliction that has haunted so many 12th-graders since time immemorial - reducing their motivation at school, preventing homework from getting done and generally making them slack off in the final months before graduation - is crumbling away in the face of a growing phenomenon known as "dual enrollment."

Dual-enrollment students bulk up their schedules, usually during their senior year, by electing to take community college credit via a class or classes offered on their high school campus. In so doing, the students receive high school credit as well as college credit for the class.

On the Northwest Side, 118 high school students participate in dual-enrollment classes at Ironwood Ridge, Mountain View and Marana high schools, said Anne-Marie McCartan, president of Pima Community College Northwest Campus.

Marana High offers four such courses, she said: writing fundamentals, writing 101, medical terminology and introduction to human anatomy and physiology.

Ironwood Ridge and Mountain View both offer college algebra in the fall and trigonometry in the spring.

It is free for students to enroll in these classes.

Chris Smith, a 17-year-old senior in Debra Goldberg's dual- enrollment trigonometry class at Ironwood Ridge, said he was glad to get at least one class taken care of early. He plans to go to Pima for a couple of years after graduation before moving on to Arizona State University or the University of Arizona to study engineering.

His father, Claud Smith, said he was glad to see his son take the opportunity.

"Considering that I never had that opportunity, I think it's pretty impressive" that Chris is taking the course at his high school, said Claud Smith, who is an accountant. "To be honest with you, I didn't want him to go to school and only take three classes his senior year. It keeps him moving in the right direction."

Parents aren't the only people who feel that way.

"You have to take this course in college no matter what, unless you test out of it, so you might as well take it now," said Ironwood Ridge senior Melissa Benjamin, 18. Benjamin is one of Goldberg's 27 dual-enrollment trigonometry students.

Benjamin said she also has taken college courses, mostly writing, at the Pima Northwest Campus.

In fact, by the time she graduates from Ironwood Ridge in May, Benjamin will have an entire semester's worth of college credit under her belt as she heads into the first semester of her freshman year.

"You don't have to take it in college. You're killing two birds with one stone," she said.

The only drawback lurking just ahead is that Benjamin will have to declare a major sooner than most people, she said. And right now, she's not sure what that major might be.

Classmate David Mangelsdorf, 17, said he was drawn to the dual- enrollment course on his campus because it is free, and the grade is weighted just like those in his Advanced Placement courses.

He, too, has taken writing courses at Pima Northwest, but he prefers the setting inside his high school, where he is surrounded by students that he's known for a long time, he said.

Benjamin and Mangelsdorf both said they would not have gone off- campus for college credit if the Northwest Campus hadn't opened in 2003.

In fact, the opening of the Northwest Campus seems to have opened doors for a lot of high school students who either don't have access to dual enrollment at their high schools or who are looking for a little more oomph in their class schedules.

Flowing Wells High School junior Lauren Talkington, 16, lives near North La Cholla Boulevard and West Ina Road.

She took a psychology class at Pima Northwest last semester and plans to take more classes next semester, she said.

She took off this semester so she could play softball at her high school.

"I want to challenge myself. I want to get ahead," she said. With plans to eventually major in political science and minor in psychology, she felt it was better to instill a strong work ethic now, while she still has support from her parents, she said.

"If I can do it now, I won't have a problem my freshman year of college."

Talkington knows she would not have felt as motivated if the Northwest Campus didn't exist.

Her orientation session was held at the West Campus, a drive of around 10 miles to Anklam and Greasewood roads, and it was daunting for her to drive all the way out there just for that, she said.

Not only would the time constraints of travel have been an issue, but it's not likely her parents would have allowed her to drive all that way when she was, as she put it, two weeks into her driving career.

Marana High School alumna Amanda Gordon, who turns 20 this month, remembers the grind of traveling to the West Campus for her sign language classes when she was still in high school and the Northwest Campus was under construction.

Gordon will graduate from Pima - where she has continued to attend class at the West Campus as well as at the new Northwest digs - in May with an associate degree in liberal arts.

Despite travel issues, the choice to take college courses while in high school was worth it, she said.

"There was the driving time, and it had to be a night class, because during the day I was in school." Even so, she wishes she had taken more college courses at the time, she said.

"It gave me a feel for the college atmosphere before I went into it all the way."

A day in the life of two dual-enrollment students

Gabriel Moreno, 16

Senior at Amphitheater High School.

Took two writing courses at Pima Community College Downtown Campus.

Both were six-week courses - one last semester and one this semester, which ended two weeks ago.

On Thursdays, when he had his class:

7:30 a.m.: Wake up, get ready for school.

9 a.m. to 1:50 p.m.: Attend Amphi.

1:50 to 6 p.m.: Go home and prepare for Pima class, including completing reading and any written assignments.

6 p.m.: Leave home to arrive at Pima in time for class at 6:50.

6:50 to 9:10 p.m.: Attend Pima writing class.

9:10 p.m.: Go home and do homework for Amphi classes.

11:30 p.m., give or take a few minutes: Bedtime.

Other days:

Almost every day, Moreno would not arrive home until 5 p.m. at the earliest, and between 6 and 6:30 p.m. at the latest, depending on which extracurricular activity he had that day.

"I would be starving by then. It became a daily ritual of fasting, I guess."

Lauren Talkington, 16

Junior at Flowing Wells High School.

Took a psychology class at Pima Northwest Campus last semester.

Is taking this semester off so she can play softball, plans to take another Pima class next semester.

Pima class was Mondays and Wednesdays.

On those days:

7:40 a.m. to 2:20 p.m.: Attend Flowing Wells.

2:22 p.m.: Drive to Pima Northwest to be in class by 3 p.m.

3 to 5 p.m.: Class.

5 p.m.: Go home, do English and statistics homework for Flowing Wells, then psychology homework for Pima.

Other days:

Talkington played in band after school on Tuesdays and Fridays and played with the band at football games on Friday nights.

She didn't schedule anything for Thursdays after school.

"That was my free day. It was my time to go home and sit on the couch."

Pros and cons of college credit

* Things to consider before deciding to pursue college credit while in high school:

PROS:

* Students are able to take courses their high schools don't offer.

* Certain requirements are met in a shorter amount of time, because frequently one semester of college credit is equivalent to two semesters of high school in the same subject.

* Students mature into college life more quickly after graduating from high school because they already have college experience.

* Capable students remain academically challenged throughout their senior year.

* Students and their parents can save money on the beginning of college, especially if the student is taking a dual-enrollment class on the high school campus, because those classes are free.

* It allows high schools to constantly monitor college and university expectations about preparedness on graduation from high school.

* Students get to see the difference between high school and college in a contrast before they are completely on their own in college.

CONS:

* Community college credits don't necessarily transfer out of state. If students already know which out-of-state university they want to attend, they should check first and see if the credits will transfer.

* Depending on the number of college courses a student is taking, it might become tempting to begin skipping high school classes and be less engaged in the high school community, which in turn could cause the student to begin floundering in high school.

* Some course work is more appropriately taken at high school, among peers, where there is no need for teachers to play to the middle of student abilities because all the students in one high school class tend to be close to each other in ability.

* Travel time to and from college campus.

* Time commitment to get two sets of homework and studying done.

* Additional expense for students who take college courses on the college campus. Current tuition at Pima is $44 per credit hour for in-state students, plus the cost of books and course fees for certain classes.

* Choosing to leave the high school campus and take a college class, rather than taking an Advanced Placement course and trying to test out of certain college classes, could hurt a student's grade- point average because most AP courses have weighted grades, while community college grades are not weighted.

Sources: Anne-Marie McCartan, president of Pima Community College Northwest Campus; Brian Corrigan, honors counselor for ninth-12th grades at Amphitheater High School; Hollis Hemingway, counseling department chair at Mountain View High School.

What they're taking

* Popular Pima classes among high schoolers:

Foreign languages outside the usual high school offering, such as Italian, Japanese, Arabic or sign language.

Advanced or specialized math courses that are not available in their own high schools.

Core college-freshman writing classes.

For a step-by-step guide to the Pima Community College admissions process, go online to www.pima.edu/admissions/ AdmissionsProcess.shtml. All high school students taking Pima credits - regardless of whether in a dual-enrollment situation on the high school campus or whether the student is taking courses at a Pima campus - must take the same assessment tests that anyone registering to attend Pima must take. The assessment tests determine what level of each subject a student is academically qualified to take.

Source: Anne-Marie McCartan, Pima Community College Northwest Campus president.

* Contact reporter Shelley Shelton at 434-4078 or sshelton@azstarnet.com.

Source: Arizona Daily Star

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