To help students, some colleges provide double the teachers

Terrica Purvis squinted through goggles as her hands carefully guided a pipette full of indigo-tinted fluid into clear glass test tubes.

It was the last chemistry lab of the winter quarter at Everett Community College. Purvis was working through the steps of what chemistry professor Valerie Mosser jokingly refers to as the “post-apocalypse survival” lab — an experiment using boiled red cabbage water to test the acidity of common household chemicals.

Purvis, 27, is in her first year of study for an associate degree in nursing at Everett Community College. She is also one of more than 6,000 Washington community and technical college students enrolled in the state's Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (IBEST) program.

Students who need extra help in subjects such as algebra struggle to learn if the content is taught in an abstract way, educators say. So I-BEST programs feature two teachers in the classroom: One provides job training and the other teaches basic skills in reading, math or English language.

Nationally, two-year community colleges have the worst completion rates in higher education, with only slightly more than 40% earning degrees within six years.

In Washington state, students in the program graduate at a higher rate. Among students who started college from 2015 to 2018, an average of 52% enrolled in I-BEST classes earned a degree or certificate within four years. That compares with 38% of students who did so while enrolled in traditional adult basic education coursework, according to the state Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

The program is so successful that 12 states have begun implementing an IBEST model at one or more education institutions.

For Purvis, who hadn't been in school for nearly a decade, this class meant getting extra math help when she needed it: during a chemistry class.

Each time Mosser gave a lecture or held a lab, she was joined by Candace Ronhaar, who works as a tutor and extra math instructor.

In one session, Ronhaar drew a heart on the whiteboard. She wrote the word “mole” beside it, and explained it is a unit of measurement equivalent to the amount of atoms in 12 grams of carbon-12. She guided students through practice problems, calculating the mass of chemical compounds.

All six students in Chemistry 121 were also taking an entry-level statistics class, and Ronhaar was co-instructor for both courses. Mosser said Ronhaar's presence was the most valuable part of the I-BEST model.

“I'm an assessment instructor,” Mosser said. “She's just a helping instructor. In the minds of students, the difference is incalculable. They have a different relationship with her. They're more willing to go to her, because she doesn't grade them.”

Purvis said chemistry was the first class that ever “humbled” her. She doesn't think she would have passed without IBEST. Students fresh out of high school had an easier time remembering chemistry and math, Purvis said, but she hadn't studied those subjects for 10 years.

“They couldn't have picked a better second instructor,” Purvis said of Ronhaar. “I loved it. We went to her office hours all the time.”

After high school, Purvis spent six years as a cook in the Navy, and took classes at a couple other colleges. Last year, she was medically discharged and returned to school at Everett Community College fulltime. She plans to go on to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, and hopes to work in labor and delivery at a hospital.