RichmondCC Board Celebrates Growing Success for County Schools

Richmond Community College’s Board of Trustees received a report on the partnership between RichmondCC and Richmond County Schools to improve college and career readiness of students, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) areas.

The College and the school system were awarded a grant from the Golden Leaf Foundation in June 2015 to support the Richmond STEM Transformation project. The $750,000 grant spans three years and has already made vast improvements to the education of Richmond County students.

“The Golden Leaf Foundation was so amazed that a school district and a community college were wanting to work together,” said Kelly DeLong, director of K-12 Math and Science for Richmond County Schools. “But we discussed it, and we both wanted what was good for the citizens of Richmond County.”

The project is focusing on improving students’ math skills and increasing the percentage of students who are eligible for RichmondCC’s dual enrollment program, Career and College Promise (CCP), which puts high school students into college transfer and technical pathways. Thus far, the STEM Transformation project has:

• Increased Math I proficiency from 15.6 percent in 2012-13  to 67.1 percent in 2015-16, becoming the highest scoring county in the 10-county Sandhills Prosperity Zone.
• Increased the number of high school students enrolled in at least one college course by 52 percent.
• Increased the number of high school students who earned college credit in STEAM courses by 430 percent.

The Golden Leaf grant has allowed for technology upgrades in all middle and high schools. Math teachers at the middle schools and the Ninth Grade Academy received 610 laptops and 1,400 Chromebooks were made available to high school students. The grant has also provided professional development training for 67 middle and high school math teachers and placed technology facilitators at the middle and high schools.

“The school district had been working toward a one-to-one initiative, but knew we lacked the infrastructure to support it,” said Dr. Cindy Goodman, superintendent of Richmond County Schools. “Along with additional devices, the grant helped provide enough wireless capacity to support our needs.” 

The College and Richmond County Schools also collaborated on 11 summer camps for K-12 students in 2016. 

Cynthia Reeves, associate dean of Grants and Special Projects at RichmondCC, said they will now focus on expanding extracurricular activities to increase and maintain interest in STEM topics. In the works for 2017 is the Saturday Academy at RichmondCC, which includes five Saturday camps that will expose students to emerging technologies, computer programming, 3-D designing and 3-D printing. The culminating event is a weeklong “Hackathon” where students will draw from the skills they learned during the previous camps to compete for prizes.

“I appreciate the investment the Golden LEAF Foundation has made in the partnership between RichmondCC and Richmond County Schools,” said Dr. Dale McInnis, College president. “This collaborative project has been a game changer for our county and has helped our students gain the skills and knowledge they need to compete for jobs and establish successful careers.”