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Quinsigamond Community College Awarded $84K for Accelerated English Classes

December 2017

Quinsigamond Community College has received an $84,100 Performance Incentive Fund (PIF) grant from the state to provide accelerated English classes to students eligible for remediation in English. The college will use the grant to increase its Accelerated Learning Program (ALP), which focuses on improving the success of developmental education students by working to accelerate these students into college-level English courses.

QCC has already piloted this program with noteworthy results. Between 2014 and 2016, 75 percent of QCC students who completed an accelerated English course by taking both remedial and college level English, received a “C” or higher, compared to 66 percent of QCC students who only completed the traditional college level English course.

“This innovative model is particularly beneficial to those from underserved populations such as low English Language Learners (ELL),” said QCC President Dr. Luis G. Pedraja. “This PIF grant will help us to increase the number of high quality English reading, writing and critical thinking courses we offer to these students to help them succeed in college.”

The funding will be used to train additional QCC faculty in order to scale up its current ALP, in addition to creating a new, integrated reading/writing course; three accelerated writing English workshops, and developing a new bridge English as a Second Language (ESL) course. The new bridge ESL English course will enable ELL students to more rapidly transition from ESL to developmental and college level English.

“This grant will enable us to expand access to educational opportunities for residents of Central Massachusetts, which in turn will lead to increased job opportunities for QCC students,” Dr. Pedraja said. “This is a win for the college and for the community.”

The Performance Incentive Fund is a competitive grant program that supports public campuses in creating or strengthening programs that advance the goals of producing the best educated citizenry and workforce in the nation. 

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