CCM Students Call Peers to Complete Degrees and Certificates

CCM Students Call Peers to Complete Degrees and Certificates

College’s Honor Society Chapter Supporting National Initiative with Multiple Events – Posted 10/10/14

Members of the Phi Theta Kappa national honor society chapter at County College of Morris (CCM) are showing their support for the importance of completing an associate degree or certificate by holding multiple events during October.

Alpha Kappa Kappa (AKK), CCM’s chapter of the honor society, are serving as the student arm of the Community College Completion Challenge, or C4 as it is known, a national education initiative. The group will be holding sessions for students to sign a completion pledge on Tuesday, October 28, in the Student Community Center and Thursday, October 30, in Cohen Hall. Both events will take place 12:30—1:45 p.m. on CCM’s Randolph campus at 214 Center Grove Road.

Administrators, faculty and staff have also been asked to sign the pledge, committing themselves to do whatever they can to facilitate completion of student credentials.

In addition, AKK is holding a student panel on Tuesday, October 21, in the Student Community Center, Davidson Room A, where Phi Theta Kappa alumni Catalina Caravajel, Carlos Herrera and Chaz Weiner will share their experiences and reasons why obtaining an associate degree was important to them.

AKK’s role is part of the greater national and state initiative. NJ C4 is sponsored by the New Jersey Council of County Colleges’ (NJCCC) Center for Student Success and is an effort to increase the number of community college students completing their associate degrees and certificates so they can successfully transfer to four-year colleges and universities to earn their bachelor’s degrees and enter careers that provide family-sustaining wages. Statistics show that while 65 percent of students who drop out plan to return, only about 38 percent come back.

The initiative was spearheaded in April 2010 when leaders of six national organizations representing the nation’s 1,200 community colleges signed The Call to Action, a pledge to increase student completion rates by 50 percent over the next decade. Phi Theta Kappa was the representing student organization, and subsequently launched the Community College Completion Corps to help communicate the importance of completion from a student’s perspective.

You can learn more about the completion corps at www.cccompletioncorps.org. In addition, the Community College Completion Challenge website, www.cccompletionchallenge.org, showcases the missions, action plans and strategies developed by each organization to involve their constituents to produce five million more associate degree and certificate holders by 2020.