Preparing Future Community College Faculty: News from the Bat Cave

The need for staffing adjunct community college faculty and the lack of specialized training for two-year college teachers led to the creation of The Faculty-in-Training Program. This program was established by Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) in North Carolina in cooperation with two local university English departments at the University of North Carolina and at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University. This pilot program employed teaching assistants at GTCC from the graduate programs at these universities, targeted toward those who might consider teaching careers at community colleges. The stakeholders in this program are: the English department, GTCC, the graduate teaching assistants, and the graduate schools. The paper outlines the advantages to each of these stakeholder groups for participating in this program; recounts the initial phases of starting the program, getting GTCC approval and making university contacts; states that three main groups worked together to implement GTCC's program: the mentors, the program director, and the teaching assistants; describes each of these three roles and its duties; asserts that preliminary anecdotal and statistical evidence suggest that the pilot program has had a remarkably successful start; and concludes with a teaching associate's description of the process of discovering her teaching persona, classroom competence, and professional faculty role after her completion of the pilot program. (VWC)