Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

A New Kind of High School, College Partnership

Photos and Story by James Hill

by James HillIn a new agreement between Southridge High School and Portland Community College, Southridge students can now enroll in classes at PCC’s Sylvania Campus and earn credits toward both their high school and college degrees. The new partnership will help students transition to college more smoothly. "It is a model partnership,"said Alice Jacobson, executive dean of the Sylvania Campus, "with Sylvania classes actually listed in their class schedule. It makes it very easy for students to come to our campus to take advantage of college-level courses."The partnership began in the 2000-01 school year and is designed to encourage life-long learning and develop a natural path to college for students. Taking classes ranging from Northwest geology to Spanish and Japanese to computer programming at PCC, the students get a taste of college and complete critical high school credits. Plus, they don’t have to wait in line at an admissions office or worry about finding the right class in the schedule book because the registration process is done quickly and easily through Southridge. Two-year old Southridge is in the Beaverton school district and located near Washington Square, close to the PCC Sylvania Campus. The school enrolls approximately 1,800 students and is on a trimester system. It utilizes seven academies that are organized like college majors, in which students work toward satisfying the academy’s graduation requirements. As they work through the academy, they may choose to take any college transfer or professional-technical classes from PCC listed in their planning guides.Four students from Southridge, juniors April Kelly, Pratima Ingle, Sheerali Patel and Anna Phillips, are among the first to take advantage of the new partnership. Kelly was actually the first student to try out the new arrangement by enrolling in a geology course on Saturdays during the fall term. She had her tuition paid for by the Southridge Booster Club."It makes me work harder because I’m the first person to do it and I didn’t want to waste their money,"said Kelly, who is in the natural resource management academy. "It’s flexible because it allows me to free up my schedule at school by taking the requirement at PCC."Ingle and Patel are in software engineering and Phillips is studying law. The students also took the classes outside of school time, such as on Saturdays, in the evenings or during the summer. "It gives you freedom to manage your schedule, it’s cheap, you get college credit, and it will help you get started on your future,"Phillips said.Sarah Boly, principal at Southridge, is the driving force behind the partnership. Boly coordinated with Shirley Anderson, dean of instruction at Sylvania, to develop the agreement and facilitated many of the meetings between staff of both schools. As a result, the Southridge academic planning guide was developed to include PCC classes and once the students have taken the PCC placement test at Southridge, they are ready to come to PCC."The students can focus on a career that is really meaningful to them,"Boly said. "PCC has always been very proactive where public schools are concerned, and because of our proximity, it was the right thing to do. The partnership was waiting to happen."Dennis Bailey-Fougnier, coordinator in Admissions at Sylvania, said it would complement Southridge students and their area of study. "We have expanded the number of classes to bring more than what the high school can offer,"he said. "This is the first time we’ve sat down and asked a single school how we can meet their needs."The partnership will really take flight in full by fall term of 2001 when more students begin to explore the partnership offerings. "The key is that the focus is on the student,"Anderson said. "It will make it easier for students to move through the educational process with as few barriers as possible."