Educational partnership born

Lakeland teams with career center for GED program

Adults lacking high school diplomas who plan to climb back onto the scholastic ladder, may want to consider the First Rung to College program.

It’s available through a Lakeland Community College/Auburn Career Center partnership and, new next fall, it’s offering its constituents the option to add Lakeland’s First Year Experience class for college credit.

The program, itself, has been around about eight years, according to Randy Jeffries, program coordinator for Lakeland’s Men’s Resource Center.

“It was started a number of years ago — at least eight,” Jeffries said in a July 10 phone interview.

“It was started because we had a lot of students interested in obtaining their GEDs along with college credit. This year, we added the First Year Experience class.”

Described as a “bridge” program in a news release from Lakeland, it’s designed for people who want to prepare for the General Education Development exam, then enroll in college.

“That way, they can complete that one-credit class while earning their GEDs and will already have that credit toward a college degree by the time they’ve completed the GED preparation program,” Jeffries said, adding that, although interested individuals must pass a prerequisite test to

be accepted into the First Rung to College program, the program is free.

“However, once they complete the 16-week course, students do pay for the GED exam, itself, because that’s done through a testing center and there’s a fee involved,” he said.

According to Lakeland,

the program will run concurrently with fall semester — from Aug. 23 to Dec. 15 — and is offered through a partnership with Auburn Career Center’s Aspire/ Adult Basic and Literacy Education Program, ABLE.

“Auburn instructors will provide GED preparation instruction, while Lakeland

instructors will teach components of the college’s FYEX 1000 (First Year Experience) course, a course taken by Lakeland students during their first semester,” Lakeland’s statement reads.

Jeffries said that, although the GED prep courses are designed to take the full, 16-week semesters on which Lakeland runs, if they’re moving along at a faster pace, participants may consider taking a fasttrack, eight-week GED prep course option.

Morning and evening classes will be held at Lakeland and students in the program will have the same access to Lakeland resources — like the Athletic Fitness Center, library and computer labs — as any other Lakeland students, the college reports.

The prerequisite tests are being administered on Wednesdays, once in the morning and once in the evening, through the rest of July and during the first two weeks of August, Jeffries said, adding that he’s gotten positive feedback from students who have taken advantage of the program in the past.

“The people who have been taking it have thought that it’s been very beneficial,” he said.

“And now this add-on takes it one extra step. It’s a great program and more people who need a GED should take advantage of it.”

NEWS-HERALD FILE A line of soon-to-be Lakeland Community College graduates stretches from the courtyard to the tent at the school’s main campus in Kirtland.