Welcome to MDEC!

Congratulations, Linda Spoelman!

MDEC 2013 Developmental Educator of the Year

From Our MDEC President:

It is a great privilege to be MDEC president. One of the most important tasks of the MDEC president and board is to be a voice for developmental educators at the state level.  Three areas in particular where that voice needs to be heard are the Center for Student Success (a new initiative from Michigan's Community College Association), adult education which is now mandated to transition students effectively from GED completion to college, and workforce development which is charged with making sure more people get an educational credential beyond high school and move into employment as quickly as possible.

The Center for Student Success is in its infancy. Funded through the Kresge Foundation, this Center will coordinate, strengthen, and centralize efforts in the state to build economic strength through education. According to Mike Hansen, President of the Michigan Community College Association, this Center will "help improve Michigan's economic prosperity, one student success story at a time." I encourage you to visit the Michigan Community College Association web site (mcca.org) for more information. Certainly, overall student success in Michigan will be greatly impacted by the quality of developmental education that we provide for the underprepared students who come to us.

Adult education also needs to hear from developmental educators. As recently as five years ago, the goal of a GED center was to get students to pass all GED tests and receive the GED certificate. Now, however, these programs must prepare students to successfully transition to higher education and/or training. There are issues to be worked out. Who should be providing college readiness services? How should those services be delivered? How can adult educators and developmental educators collaborate rather than compete in this work?

And, finally, developmental educators have something to offer workforce training. Job training programs are finding that their applicants are increasingly underprepared. At the same time job skill requirements in reading and math steadily increase. How can the work of developmental educators, who are experts in building reading and math skills, be adapted to this area?

These are some of the questions your MDEC Board members are grappling with at the state level. They will increasingly be issues that individual colleges and their developmental educators will have to address. This is a golden opportunity for developmental educators to receive as well as to give. We have much to learn from adult education and workforce development, two programs that have been effectively building student basic skills for decades. I challenge each one of us to increase our efforts to collaborate so we can make our 2013 conference theme, "'Students' Success is Michigan’s Success” a reality.

Joe Lamontagne, MDEC President

 Who We Are

     The Michigan Developmental Education Consortium, MDEC,  serves post-secondary education across the state of Michigan by creating an active network for educators to research and share best practices, to refine strategies for quality programs, and to advocate for developmental education. MDEC focuses on learning as a life long process.

    MDEC members teach developmental courses at colleges and universities,  develop & administer programs concerned with academic success, counsel under-prepared students, assess placement and exit measurements in developmental courses & programs, serve as developmental education's liaison with business, government, and industry, network on state and national levels with other developmental educators, and advocate for developmental education.

 

MDEC is an active affiliate of the

National Association for Developmental Education.

 

Impact the future of developmental education in Michigan!

You are invited to attend the monthly MDEC board meetings.  Most of the meetings will be held using a conference call format (for conference call directions please contact Joe Lamontagne, MDEC President, at jlamontagne@davenport.edu). This enables us to include a variety of people on our board and minimize the travel costs to their institutions.   If you are interested in joining us or would like more information, please contact our Membership Chair:  Karel Asbury, Kellogg Community College,  (269) 565-2651, asburyk@kellogg.edu,