photo credit: Courtesy Collin College/Nick Young

Ten community colleges selected for grants in the first round of the Community College Encore Career project are facilitating career transitions into teaching, nursing, and nonprofit leadership. “Pathways to Encore Careers” details the colleges’ innovative programs.

Collin College near Dallas helped Julie Greene, a former marketing executive, get her certificate to teach math in less than a year. "I was always hearing about how we’re falling behind in math and science education," says Greene who comes from a family of teachers. “I have a lot of respect for the profession and a passion for learning.” Read Julie's story.

At the age of 48, after years of thinking about a career in the classroom, Greene, a former marketing professional, got her teacher certification at Collin College just outside Dallas, Texas.

Like much of the country, Texas faces a shortage of math and science teachers. But the area
around Collin College was a “telecom corridor,” and now, like other communities experiencing
downsizing, it has a pool of laid-off or retired tech workers. Many have backgrounds in math.

Sabrina Belt, director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Professional Development at
Collin, saw the opportunity. “There was a large clientele to match our needs,” she says.

Collin already had a teacher certification program for adults with bachelor degrees, which met evenings and weekends. But Belt created a daytime program specifically targeted at retired or laid-off boomers. It began with five students, all close to age 50, most with engineering backgrounds.

The fast-tracked, daytime certification program meets three days a week and uses the same curriculum as the night classes. But day students finish the course in one semester, spend a second semester student-teaching, and may land a job before the year is up. They also take a session on how to teach math.

“Knowing math and teaching math are not the same,” Greene says. “The content session on how to teach math was really helpful.” Greene liked the hands-on approach. “It wouldn’t have been as enriching if the program was mostly taught online,” she says. “I needed the touch-and-feel, to see and hear and be in the room with people my age embarking on this new stage.”

As a student teacher, Greene learned more by doing. The experience “affirmed my decision that I wanted to be a teacher,” she says.

The students enrolled in this pilot program were unusual in their “professionalism, high-level communication skills, and willingness to learn and take feedback,” Belt says. But they also “tended to have higher expectations, and didn’t want their time wasted.”

The lesson for other colleges: “Be very efficient, upfront about your expectations and
explain why things are done the way they are, every step of the way.”

Collin plans to expand the program, advertising in local magazines and working with local
school districts to recruit and place these older graduates. So far, Belt says, administrators have reacted positively to the “professionalism, ability to immediately establish relationships, and communications skills of this group of students.”

Julie Greene says she can’t wait to start her full-time teaching job. “Math often gets a bad
rap. It’s so rewarding when a student who thinks he can’t do it, gets it for the first time.” Working with teenagers has benefits too, she says. “It gives me a glimpse of what my daughter will be like soon.”