{"id":257,"date":"2013-09-24T15:05:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-24T15:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ccvhistory.wordpress.com\/?p=257"},"modified":"2013-09-24T15:05:13","modified_gmt":"2013-09-24T15:05:13","slug":"connie-yandow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/2013\/09\/24\/connie-yandow\/","title":{"rendered":"Connie Yandow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Academic Coordinator, CCV (retired)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ConnieY\"<\/a>When I was hired, I was the first full time CSSS (Coordinator of Student Support Services) the Newport site had had.\u00a0 At that time, the pay for the coordinators was under discussion, CSSS being on a step lower than the CIA (Coordinator of Academic Instruction). I am not sure why the distinction existed, except that there was a teaching component required of all CSSS \u2013 teaching Dimensions of Leaning I every semester.\u00a0 At the end of my first fiscal year with the college, the pay changed and both coordinators were placed on the same pay step. The focus of the position was on basic skills courses (scheduling and hiring instructors as well as supervising them), academic support in the form of tutoring,\u00a0 and new students who needed to be placed in those courses as well as working closely with Reach-up workers and providing support to their clients who became our\u00a0 students.\u00a0 In addition, all basic skills testing, scoring and placement was done by the CSSS.\u00a0 In the beginning, no testing or enrollment in basic skills was mandatory for students, just highly suggested. When I began, my mandate was to try to get every new student tested and placed correctly, so my mantra became \u201ctake the tests and then we will talk about course selection\u201d and basic skills testing became mandatory in our site.\u00a0 \u00a0As a result, I became known by our current CSSS director as the \u201cqueen of basic skills.\u201d\u00a0 CSSS has their own director, even though they also worked under a regional director.\u00a0 Under that director\u2019s guidance, meetings were held to discuss basic skills testing, how Dimensions I and II were to be taught (including instructor training as more faculty and fewer CSSS taught the courses),\u00a0creating a college-published text book for Dimensions of Learning (I later became the editor of this text), and curricular changes and refinements in the basic skills courses\/curriculum.\u00a0 As enrollment in the college as a whole grew, so did the CSSS job, encompassing supervision of other curricular areas and advising a more varied group of students.\u00a0 As a result of that, teaching no longer was a required part of the job.<\/p>\n

On my first day I was handed a pile of registration forms and quickly thrown into the excruciating job of calling students to inform them that their chosen class(es) had been canceled and help them choose other(s).\u00a0 Knowing nothing about what requirements there were, or the students\u2019 abilities or past achievements, I spent a lot of time doing research and calling students back.\u00a0 I was also quickly initiated into Newport\u2019s famous or infamous \u201cbathroom wall\u201d course layout.<\/p>\n

In the Newport office at the time was a very large women\u2019s bathroom, whose walls were marble, just off the front of the site and the hall that held the coordinator\u2019s offices.\u00a0 \u00a0One such wall was the largest, clearest\u00a0space easily accessed by all staff, so the site office manager and secretary posted every course on its own sheet of paper, and during registration, students names were entered on those sheets.\u00a0 The principle behind the wall was that the courses were easily viewed \u2013 this was long before computerized registration and site course numbers \u2013 so the coordinators could see how courses were growing or not, and have a solid handle on what needed to be bolstered or canceled.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I attended many \u201cbathroom meetings\u201d with the other Coordinator\u00a0 (and sometimes other site staff and regional directors) to discuss course enrollments.<\/p>\n

The Newport site was housed on the third floor of the state courthouse building \u2013 on the first floor was Probation and Parole and Motor Vehicles, second floor was the actual courtroom, and third floor was CCV.\u00a0 There were times when staff and students got to ride in the elevator with prisoners in shackles and later, when security tightened, all were wanded and searched before being allowed to enter the upper floors, including the president of the college on her first visit to Newport\u2019s site. In addition, when the court was short jurors, our students were stopped on their way in and preempted, sometimes on the first day of classes.<\/p>\n

After a number of years in the state courthouse, CCV Newport outgrew its space and was offered the opportunity to become a resident of\u00a0the new State building that was being constructed on Main street, facing Lake Memphremagog, just at the other end of the main block.\u00a0 Even though the site was moving a city block away, the planning for the move was quite an undertaking; and I, Nan Conley (Reach-up Coordinator), \u00a0and the Site Office Manager, Lisa Daigle-Farney, did most of the logistical planning.\u00a0 In the new site, Newport was originally going to have almost half of the first floor, with classrooms facing the lake, offices facing the cement retaining wall and a very large library space.\u00a0 The library space was scaled down and integrated into the main part of the classroom layout when it became apparent that the college\u2019s library would become more centralized and computerized, meaning that each site\u2019s book collection would be small.\u00a0 As the building was constructed, staff from Newport made many visits to see how things were progressing and to have some input into the layout of the site.\u00a0 We even had an instructor evening in a restaurant across the street from the building with a tour of the site as the\u00a0highlight.\u00a0 When the time came to move, Lisa and I had a multi-page plan for how things were going to happen.\u00a0 The move-in was scheduled during the week before spring semester began, so we were moving in ice and snow.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I was unable to physically take part in much of the actual move – I was able to pack up my office; however, my final role in the move was to direct traffic in the new site as the furniture, office machines and other office materials arrived.\u00a0 Finally, we were pretty well settled in and ready to open for business on the first day of class, spring semester).\u00a0 What an exciting time \u2013 even today, the site has the best views in the college, with most classrooms and the student lounge facing the lake and\u00a0a balcony for staff and student use once the weather warms.\u00a0 I have even held meetings and classes on it in the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Academic Coordinator, CCV (retired) When I was hired, I was the first full time CSSS (Coordinator of Student Support Services) the Newport site had had.\u00a0 At that time, the pay for the coordinators was under discussion, CSSS being on a step lower than the CIA (Coordinator of Academic Instruction). I am not sure why the … Continue reading “Connie Yandow”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-staff-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.ccv.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}