Teaching and Learning at Vol State

Volunteer State Community College began the Work Based Learning (WBL) Program in Fall Semester 2017 and has expanded to sixteen courses representing all academic divisions including Business and Technology, Health Sciences, Humanities, Math and Science, Nursing, and Social Science and Education. Work Based Learning is a course based, credit bearing, experiential education opportunity offering students “real world” experience in an off-campus business setting in the student’s career/academic program preference. Eligible students to participate in a WBL course must possess a minimum cumulative grade point average of 2.0/4.0 scale, a minimum grade point average in their academic program of 2.5/4.0 scale, be approximately 50% (30 credit hours) completed in their degree program, and work with Dr. Rick Parrent to be approved for course registration. Students register for a WBL course and work off-campus during a semester gaining valuable industry experience/awareness as well as career readi...

It’s no big secret that you as a professor you are most likely passionate about the subject that you teach. That’s why you dedicated countless amounts of hours and money to your content area. However, despite how passionate you may be about your topic area, your students may not share your same enthusiasm. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Marcus Lucas, II, and I teach Spanish. Although the need for being bilingual continues to grow in our nation, the desires of people to make that change have not grown. Each year I am presented with students rolling their eyes, attitudes, and trying to convince me why my course was irrelevant to their lives. I quickly learned that if students were going to learn my language then I must first speak theirs. My first step in speaking their language was to change the name of my course from a Spanish course to a money course. Throughout the year, I showed my students how to use what they were learning to increase their income. I noticed that the o...