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The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

City College to divide work experience program for students

City+College+to+divide+work+experience+program+for+students

The City College Work Experience Program will be broken up into three different courses allowing working students to repeat classes, according to General Work Experience Officer Christopher Phillips’ proposal.

The program allows students working off-campus to earn transferable units, based on the number of hours worked throughout the semester.

“Our goal is to make the program available for Spring 2014,” Phillips said.

In Fall 2013, working students couldn’t register for a previously taken work experience class because of the courses repeatability policy issued two years ago by the State Office.

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The State must reimburse students who are repeating the same class. This policy limited the number of federal aid funds used to pay for previously passed courses.

“I am sad it affects students so intensely,” said the Associated Student Senate President Elie Katzenson. “Students might have to go with some other classes they don’t necessarily want.”

City College embarked on a major effort to eliminate all repeatable classes last year.

The departments had to recast the classes, breaking them up into minor steps to master more content. Now, students who fail a class can only retake it the following semester.

By Fall 2013, the course repeatability policy started to effect the Work Experience Department.

As a result, students who have full or part-time jobs found out a week before the beginning of the semester they could no longer repeat some classes.

Christopher Phillips promptly came up with a project to divide the Work Experience sections.

Phillips tried to maintain the general structure of the program by dividing it in three different courses and expanding each one of them with a different focus and contents.

The sections are:

  • Career education planning

  • Career advancement focus and dealing with resumes and interviews

  • Work place success focus, pertaining communication and interpersonal skills

I think it improves the Working Experience Program,” Phillips said. “Each course will have a unique curriculum and students will still be able to get units based on how many hours per week they work.”

The curriculum advisory committee started proposal’s initial review on Monday and the students will know if it is going to be approved by the end of September.

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