SMCC professor goes Dutch
Associate Professor Rachel Guthrie spent more than two weeks in The Netherlands to learn about the differences and similarities between SMCC and a comparable school in that country.
Guthrie visited ROC Technovium, a technical-vocational college in the city of Nijmegen, from May 18-June 1 as part of a faculty-exchange program. For the exchange, she lived with and shadowed an ROC Technovium instructor, Edith Peters. Last October, Peters stayed with and followed Guthrie for two weeks while learning about SMCC.
ROC Technovium is much like SMCC, with a safe campus, a strong sense of community and similar classes, said Guthrie, who is co-chair of the Communications & New Media Studies program. Students are much like SMCC students, class sizes are comparable, and there is a growing immigrant population.
But there are plenty of differences between the schools, she said, including:
- Age. ROC Technovium doesn’t accept students who are over 24. The average student age at SMCC is 27.
- Major. At the end of their first year, ROC Technovium students are given a pass/fail in their chosen major. If their GPA in courses in their major is below a “C,” the school lets them know that’s not a good career choice and moves them to another major.
- Computer labs. Rather than offer computer labs for students, ROC Technovium has a BYOD (“Bring Your Own Device”) policy, Guthrie said. The savings allows the college to offer students 10 to 15 “scholarship computers” each year, which the school buys at wholesale prices.
- Faculty. To keep faculty “fresh,” ROC Technovium offers anyone over 55 with at least 10 years teaching experience the opportunity to teach 2/3 of the time at their same salary, Guthrie said. The remaining 1/3 position is given to a new teacher, who is paired with the older instructor until their retirement.
- Offices. ROC Technovium faculty don’t have their own offices. Instead, Guthrie said, they are grouped into large rooms where they can sit at communal desks, creating a collaborative community type of feeling.
- Transportation. Seemingly everyone rides bicycles to the college, with parking lots full of literally thousands of bikes.
While on the exchange, Guthrie also visited other towns in The Netherlands and nearby Belgium, including Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague and Arnhem.
“I am newly inspired around developing exciting lesson plans. Although many of our lessons are the same, there are also some different ones,” Guthrie said. “I am also excited about the ways in which technology can be utilized differently, more efficiently.”
The exchange was made possible through the SMCC Global Studies Center’s participation in RADIX (ROC Association for Dutch International ConneXions), a two-week professional and cultural exchange that matches faculty members and administrators from the Netherlands with American counterparts with similar job responsibilities.
SMCC Professor Daniel Moore (left) with other community college instructors at a gene-editing workshop in June.
Biotech professor attends workshop on cutting-edge technology
Professor Daniel Moore was one of 10 community college instructors from across the country who were selected to attend a 5-day workshop on cutting-edge techniques in gene editing.
The workshop, held in June at Delaware Technical Community College’s Stanton Campus, provided hands-on opportunities for instructors to carry out experiments altering yeast cells and cell cultures with a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR.
The instructors learned what is known about the CRISPR technology and how it is being used in new applications every day. CRISPR (“which stands for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) has been described as a simple yet powerful tool for editing genomes, with potential applications that include correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, and improving crops.
Moore and the other instructors ― from North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Wisconsin and Delaware ― also talked about their college biotechnology programs and how the new editing techniques might be incorporated into experiments that students can perform in their classes.
“This was simply an amazing opportunity to catch up on one of the most important new innovations in molecular biology,” said Moore, who is chair of SMCC’s Biological Sciences Department. “I loved having a chance to meet new colleagues from other colleges and share ideas about how to best train students for a career in biotechnology.”
The workshop was hosted by Delaware Technical Community College and Christiana Care Health System’s Gene Editing Institute, with funding provided from a National Science Foundation grant.