As a recently retired professor of 28 years at Southern Maine Community College, I must respond to the article “LePage ‘looking to make a change’ in community college leadership” (Jan. 10).

Gov. LePage’s lack of knowledge about how curriculum is developed and transferred from college to college was obvious in his blaming the system administrator for not doing his job.

I spent most of my last decade at SMCC on the curriculum committee. The curriculum committee is made up of professional academics from a variety of backgrounds. The academic dean and a curriculum transfer specialist are part of the team.

Departments have been working for years with institutions like the University of Southern Maine to make certain we were teaching the same content and offering the same credits for the work. For example, when SMCC was a technical college, we offered two three-credit calculus courses designed specifically for a couple of our technologies. Students had to take Calculus I and II at SMCC to transfer for one course in the university system.

The math department worked with the university system to create three four-credit calculus courses (Calculus I, Calculus II and Calculus III), covering the same mathematics content as the university classes, to make them transferable.

When departments offer new courses to the curriculum committee, part of the checklist is to indicate to which schools the course will transfer. It must transfer into the University of Maine System.

The academic dean, associate dean and curriculum specialist also work with other four-year institutions in the area to develop articulation agreements. For example, SMCC recently developed a full articulation agreement with the University of New England.

Our students have been transferring smoothly to the University of Maine for years, and some of the best and brightest end up with full transfer credits to Northeastern University, Brown University and other elite institutions.

Joyce Leslie

Peaks Island

Copy the Story Link