In Shakespeare with Power Tools, Erin Carlyle explains how St. Paul College in Minnesota made it to number one on the Washington Monthly’s list of the 50 best community colleges. Once a vocational high school, St. Paul is now a “community and technical college,” blending liberal arts programs with vocational classes.
About two-thirds of Saint Paul students are either first-generation college-goers, of color, from low-income families, or some combination of the three. Many are immigrants, reflecting the area’s high concentration of Somalis and Hmong. Students like that tend to drown in impersonal lectures. So Saint Paul classes are small, averaging nineteen students. Teachers roam the rooms, providing guidance as students work on individual assignments and group projects.
On the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, “nearly all of the students surveyed at Saint Paul said they had discussed ideas or readings from class with their instructors outside of class time. At most two-year schools, close to half of the students never do this.”
Ninety-three percent of Saint Paul students work with their instructors on activities other than coursework. Nationwide, about 70 percent of students at two-year schools say that they never do this. Ninety-eight percent of Saint Paul students say they’ve taught or tutored other students. Less than one-third of students nationwide have had the same experience.
St. Paul instructors in both trades and liberal arts classes stress problem solving.
Compared to other community colleges, the instructors at Saint Paul spend more time teaching students to evaluate and synthesize information, make judgments about it, and apply concepts to perform new skills. This is as true in vocational classes as it is in the traditional liberal arts disciplines.
. . . Saint Paul hasn’t just brought the hands-on ethos and intense student-faculty interaction of the trades to the liberal arts. It’s brought the critical thinking and wide perspective of the liberal arts to the trades.
Saint Paul’s graduation rate of 41 percent is well above the national average for community colleges. If a student is struggling, the instructor can send an online “early alert” to a “retention specialist,” who will contact the student to offer help.
Despite the high number of immigrant students, the college has decided to set high expectations, says Thomas Matos, director of student services. “ ‘You have to work for the grades you get in the classroom.’ And then we work to give them the services that support them.”
