Accelerate Your Studies at KCC
by Yelena Mandenberg

Accelerated Studies in Associates Programs (ASAP) is a new pilot program that started in Kingsborough in the fall of 2007 to help incoming freshmen graduate sooner. Fifty percent of all college students are enrolled in community colleges nationally.

There are many difficulties that students face that often prevents them from graduating, or continuing with their education. ASAP was created to combat most of the problems that prevent students from succeeding. There are currently 1,100 students enrolled is the program in the 6 community colleges across New York City. In Kingsborough there are 247 students in ASAP.

The expectation and goal of ASAP to is to graduate 50% in three years and 75% in four. The administration hopes to do better than that and exceed all expectations.

ASAP students receive many benefits including: free books, monthly-unlimited MetroCards, a tuition waiver, guidance counselors, workshops and tutors. They also have learning communities. This means linking two or more classes together, so they have the same people in all of those classes and related material in each. It helps students adjust and make friends to study with. The best advantage ASAP students have are their advisors.

It is a lot easier to plan out the next few years of college with someone's help and experience.

Other colleges recognize the benefits of learning communities. A lot of other colleges are looking to get those in their schools as well. Kingsborough is actually helping teach colleges how to implement those programs. ASAP is partly built on the success of learning communities. So far, the program has been working out well.

The retention rate (students returning for another semester) is much higher than in the rest of the school. According to Richard Rivera, the director of ASAP, retention rates are the best way to measure success in school such as large and diverse as Kingsborough. At least 90% of the ASAP students have come back for the spring semester. Also, most of the ASAP students have been taking extra classes in the winter and summer.

The majority of ASAP students are expected to graduate in spring of 2009. However, it hasn't always gone so smoothly.

The concept of ASAP was created around this time last year, and there was not a lot of time to plan everything out.

So there were a lot of mix-ups and confusion in the beginning. In the fall semester ASAP students were required to attend after school workshops, a lot of which conflicted with students work schedules and other responsibilities.

The spring semester has been running much smoother. They now have an ASAP seminar class during the day and other workshops, mostly before noon, so students can attend without a problem. To stay in the ASAP program and keep their benefits, students have to keep their grades up to the Kingsborough standard (a 2.0 GPA or higher) and have to follow academic and behavioral standards.

They also have to attend workshops and ASAP seminar classes.

ASAP was created as a test program. They put together all the benefits to see if they really do help the students. If it succeeds, they may try to do more programs like this or even expand some of the benefits to the rest of the school.

Some of the ASAP activities have already been accepted into the main curriculum in the school.

ASAP students had a seminar in the summer, where they took classes such as acting, poetry, and musical theatre. It worked out so well that now all incoming freshmen that started in the Spring of 2008 got a one-day orientation with the same type of program. ASAP was a very expensive endeavor (about $6 billion), and to be able to spread it to the rest of the school would be very difficult.

We will find out if the program is fully successful in two to three years, and depending on the success of the program, the government will then decide what to do with it.