General education and student success

Small class sizes, good options for student choices, faculty enthusiasm for teaching general education courses and excellent communication between deans who work together well were cited as Germanna Community College gen ed strengths during a faculty workshop featuring a well regarded state expert.

Faculty members Wen Maier, Bill Carter and Amanda Dowd
hear Prof. Sue Skinner during a Germanna faculty workshop 

A grant from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia secured by Dr. Ann Woolford made the workshop, “How Does General Education Lead to Student Success?” possible. It was organized by Prof. Cheryl Huff and Dean Shashuna Gray and led by Dr. Kathryne McConnell, assistant director of assessment at Virginia Tech and president elect of the Virginia Assessment Group.

"The workshop continued our active conversation about the role our Gen Ed Program plays in preparing our students for both ongoing education and their vocational lives," Prof. Huff said. "Faculty and administrators need to keep assessing and evaluating, and engaging in hands-on activities like this, with a knowledgable facilitator, helps us do that." 

General education addresses critical thinking, communication, quantitative and scientific reasoning, among other things.

About 40 GCC faculty members heard Dr. McConnell discuss the benefits of general education rubrics.

General education at community colleges is “so important,” Dr. McConnell said. “So many students are attending community colleges and that number is only going to grow.” Germanna currently serves a total headcount of about 13,000 students at campuses in Spotsylvania County and Locust Grove and centers in Culpeper County and Stafford County.

From high school football hero to war hero to college football hero?

Great story by Adam Himmelsbach in Sunday's Free Lance-Star on GCC student Daniel Rodriguez.


Rodriguez, a Stafford resident, is attending Germanna on the GI Bill.

A camera crew from Dan Rather Reports is set to visit the Germanna Stafford Center early this week for a story on Rodriguez, who starred in football at Brooke Point High School and planned to go to college before his father died of a heart attack just prior to graduation. he enlisted in the Army and was decorated for valor in Afghanistan. While studying at Germanna he's been working out, hoping to fulfull his dream of playing college football. Now Virginia Tech and U.Va are interested.

Shootings at Virginia Tech and in Caroline County

Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the students, faculty, staff of Virginia Tech and to the families of the victims. Colleges should be places of enlightenment, free of fear. We must not develop a siege mentality and we cannot turn campuses into fortresses. They must remain places where members of our communities are able to come and go freely in order to benefit from all we have to offer.

Germanna has always been a safe place to learn and work. Nonetheless, the college continually takes steps to make our security tighter, smarter and better able to respond to any problem nimbly and effectively, and we will continue to do so. We will review the actions taken at Tech and learn from their responses.

We also send our deepest our concerns and care to the state trooper wounded in Caroline yesterday. Both incidents show that law enforcement personnel daily put themselves at risk to protect and serve all of us.

--Germanna Community College President David A. Sam

'ALL I KNEW WAS THAT MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WERE BEING KILLED ... THE MEMORY OF THAT DAY ... IT WAS SO TERRIBLE ...'

Stephanie Broman sealed herself in her Virginia Tech dorm room one year ago today, afraid to go outside. She was cut off from communication with her family and friends. She could only watch in horror as that day's tragedy unfolded on cable news...
Click here to read more

Post by Mike Zitz

'WE MUST NEVER FORGET'

"We must never forget what happened at Virginia Tech," Germanna Community College President David A. Sam said today. "The families who lost loved ones remain in our thoughts--as do the Tech students, faculty and staff members who endured that tragic day."

Along with all other colleges and universities, Germanna students, faculty and staff are asked to observe a moment of silence Wednesday at noon to commemorate the anniversary of the April 16, 2007 tragedy in which 32 people were killed by an emotionally disturbed student who then shot himself.