Jill Biden: Support leads to success in community college

President Obama asked community college professor Jill Biden this month to help him raise awareness of the importance of two-year colleges. Biden, who earned a doctorate in education in 2007 and wrote her dissertation on student retention in community colleges, has been an educator for 28 years. She spent 15 years teaching English composition at Delaware Technical & Community College.

After she and her husband, Vice President Biden, moved to Washington, she joined the adjunct faculty at Northern Virginia Community College. This spring, she taught developmental English and English as a Second Language to students at the school’s Alexandria campus. She shares some of her classroom experiences with USA TODAY.

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-26-comcoljillbiden27_N.htm

***

Community colleges try new formula for remedial classes

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

Shayla Dinh learned two key things about math this spring.

One: She can do it.

Two: She likes doing it.

"I love math. I never thought I’d say that," says Dinh, 34, who recently passed the first math class she has taken in more than a decade. It was a remedial course, taught here on the main campus of Northern Virginia Community College (known locally as NOVA), and it was her first big hurdle toward getting a bachelor’s degree in communications.

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-05-26-comcol-main_N.htm