• US Two-Year Colleges

• Texas Two-Year Colleges

• Texas Community Colleges

• Virtual College of Texas

• American Association of Community Colleges

• League of Innovation in Community Colleges

• Community & Technical Colleges on the Web

• Chronicle of Higher Education

• Office of Institutional Research & Planning at U of TX - Pan Am

• CollegeNET

• Critical Comparisons of American Colleges & Universities

• Community College Web

• US Universities and Community Colleges

• Creating a Learning College

• SyllabusWeb

• National Center for Research in Vocational Education includes What's New Articles

• M.A.R.S. Project-Student-Driven Cross-Curriculum Project from Anson Community College

• Service Learning

• The Innovation Network

• Academic Plan (Social Sciences) from State University of New York at Buffalo (I included this to show that others have some really bad conflicts!)

• Electronic Journal on Excellence in College Teaching

• Links to Education Sites

• Higher Education Directory

• ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education

• Center for Educational Statistics

• Educational Excellence Network

• The Chosen Ones - my education links page

e-mail Wanda.

• Lunch hour classes in an area that allows students to bring a lunch - promote to downtowners; all sorts of promotional possibilities ("History for Lunch" or whatever...)
• A student suggested to me classes at the Veteran's Hospital.

Short semester courses offered at Tarrant County Junior College; Fort Worth (Sept. 23, 1998)

Want to enroll in a college course but short on time? Tarrant County Junior College may have the answer for you in its short semester classes beginning next month.

Full-semester-length courses taught in a shorter length of time will be offered on all four campuses beginning Oct. 2. Courses in mathematics, biology, English, physical education, psychology, writing and more will be offered on a Monday-Wednesday, Friday or Saturday only, 10-week schedule on South Campus, 5301 Campus Drive, Fort Worth. Nine-week courses in electronics, meeting Monday through Thursday, begin Oct. 19.

Northeast Campus at 828 Harwood Road, Hurst, will begin an eight-week semester Oct. 26, offering such courses as biology, art, chemistry, English, history, government, speech, reading and study skills, among others. Class meeting times vary, daytime and evening.

Among eight-week offerings at Northwest Campus, 4801 Marine Creek Parkway, Fort Worth, are computer application, Web page design, jazz and dance, English, history and government. South Campus has scheduled eight-week classes in ethics, sociology, automotive technology and keyboarding.

Southeast Campus, 2100 TCJC Parkway, Arlington, will offer Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday classes in government, composition, psychology and sociology.

Courses in business and sociology via instructional television will begin Oct. 26, as well. All short semester classes will end December 17.

Although I have not found much on the internet at this point in regard to marketing innovative programs, there are sites that reflect new trends and ideas. Below you will find links to college pages that I found to be most interesting. At this point, I have focused on Texas community colleges, but I have begun to search beyond our borders. Currently, I am working on California and have a few links for their programs. Since California has a reputation of being a trendsetter, I thought they might have some good ideas. I've also wandered into our northern neighbor's territory, Oklahoma. In addition, I have a Journal of just ideas, and to the left, you will find some additional links of interest for further research in curriculum delivery, innovations, conferences, and education-related topics. Although I have begun to search, I have not found anything of interest relating to other Dispute Resolution Courses, but I am continuing to search.

Alamo Community College District seems similar to DCCCD in structure with several campuses. The What's New Page is useful for promoting new programs. San Antonio College Campus offers some Special Programs including an interesting Cooperative Education with work experience. They also have Flex Sessions. The Palo Alto College campus has another News Page with News Releases such as a description of a Child Care Directors & Workers Program and Off Campus Classes. The Northwest Vista College campus offers Flex Sessions.

Alvin Community College has an interesting selection of Mini-Semesters.

Angelina Community College has an interesting Continuing Education curriculum including a kid's college and genealogy.

Austin Community College has a Substitute Teacher Training Program that seems appropriate for El Centro considering the teacher shortages in the Dallas area.

Central Texas College District has a helpful What's New Site to promote new programs, etc.

Coastal Bend College offers an interesting variety of academic two-year degrees such as History, Music, Sociology, etc. that can be found on their Programs of Study Page. (This apparently used to be "Bee College".)

The College of the Mainland has an Evening Child Care program. Their home page includes a helpful News Desk for promoting new programs including Innovations.

Collin County Community College District has section "Academic News" to promote new programs and a variety of interesting adult and continuing education programs including Fitness for Senior Citizens. The What's New Site provides useful information. This college also has an interesting "Wintermester".

I created a page about our new Social History and Society Learning Community and the Chains to Change Learning Community at El Centro. These pages includes a few links to other learning communities and information. I really think there needs to be an effort to promote innovative programs on web pages. I have placed mine on free Tripod Pages with a link from the History Home Page or my Common Sense index of all my history, education, and professional pages. I use the Tripod and Netcom pages simply because I prefer to do my home page building at home where I can prop my tired feet on the coffee table. Then, I like to be able to make changes whenever I have the time, but there would be no problem placing these on the school's server. These free page servers provide space that needs very little understanding of HTML. Besides that, anyone can learn basic HTML (enough to make paragraphs, bold print, center text, etc.) in a few minutes. Of course, Tony Gobar will be glad to help. He uses the HTML editors that are probably good for those who haven't gotten used to doing their own HTML. I like doing the HTML.

El Paso Community College has a nifty online student newspaper, El Conquistador. This seems to me to be a potentially powerful method of promoting the school in general as well as innovative programs. Of course, if it's a student newspaper, there's less control over what they might write!

Houston Community College System has Flex Entry Courses and a Holiday Mini-Term.

Kilgore Community College has an online newsletter, The Flare, that includes information on programs, awards, student accomplishments, etc.

McLennan Community College has a online newsletter, The Highland Herald, that includes plans for the future, new programs, student input into developing programs, etc.

Midland College has an extensive Kid's College.

North Central Texas College has an e-zine, NCTC-Zine that has a wealth of information about programs.

Northeast Texas Community College has a Mini-Mester (Winter).

DCCCD's North Lake College has an off-campus program at South Irving Center that includes a self-paced physical education program of jogging and walking.

San Jacinto College has a Winter Mini-Semester and Weekend College. They also have an interesting program to assist Home Schools although this might be controversial at El Centro due to our connections to the public schools. San Jancinto College also has a Strategic Plan for Technology online that seems to be similar to putting our plans online as discussed in our last meeting.

Tarrant County Community College is promoting its new mini-semesters/flex schedules. I have included a copy of this news release here to show their description. Since this is a news release, it may be gone before you can check it out.

Texarkana College has a Kids' College.

Vernon Regional Junior College has an 11 Week Semester and Fast-Track Courses.

Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, has short courses, weekend courses, a women's re-entry program, real estate licensing program, and something called "Connect Project" to assist in job placements. See their Schedule.

Cerritos College has a Re-Entry Center which seems to big in California. This one at Cerritos is not specifically for women as at Cabrillo. This one at Cerritos is for older, returning and other non-traditional students. They also have a program called CARE, a program for welfare recipients. Cerritos also has a Mentor Program.

Chabot-Las Positas Colleges have a program called PACE for Working Adults as well as flex entry and weekend courses at the Chabot campus in Haywood, CA.

Chaffey College at Rancho Cucamonga, CA., has late start classes and Friday/Saturday classes.

Oklahoma City Community College has a Fast-Track Program, Intersession (January), and a popular Flamenco Dance Program.