The university is making progress toward expanding dual credit offerings for high school students around the state.
While dual credit at ACU isn’t an entirely new operation, the expanded offerings, set to begin next fall, will open up opportunities for partnerships with Christian high schools and prospective students. All existing dual credit offerings for local AISD students will continue to be offered.
Dr. Susan Lewis, vice provost, said the conversation for expanded dual credit began several months ago when five or six Christian high schools invited ACU academic and admissions administrators to discuss the possibility.
“They told us they were particularly interested in high-quality, rigorous courses from a Christian perspective and in a flexible delivery format, and they asked if we would consider offering dual credit courses for their students,” Lewis said.
Lewis said she felt like ACU would be meeting a need for secondary schools looking for this sort of option.
“ACU’s relationships with Christian high schools and their students are important to us,” Lewis said.
The program will roll out next fall with four courses in the line up for the academic year: American History I & II, Intro to Psychology, and Quantitative Reasoning.
Lewis plans to add four more courses for dual credit for the 2017-2018 school year and will determine those offerings later this spring.
“The faculty and department chairs of the four courses have been great partners for me in this project,” Lewis said. “They are eager to introduce dual credit students to ACU through their courses.
The courses will be offered to high schools in three different delivery methods:
- A credentialed teacher at the high school can teach the course and submit the grades to ACU.
- An ACU professor will teach the course entirely online and the high school teacher not credentialed for the college level can oversee the online progress of students.
- A teacher with some graduate training in the discipline, but not fully credentialed, will receive materials from a supervising ACU faculty member and administer the course.
David Hendricks, director of dual credit, will be the point person for both ACU faculty and high school teachers involved.
Hendricks said he hopes more students will see what ACU can offer and will want to be a part of the university.
“If we can get the students a good ACU experience and say from the beginning, ‘You’ve earned 12 hours from ACU, you are a Wildcat,” hopefully we can capture them and see them transition in,” Hendricks said.
Lewis, too, echoed Hendricks in her hope that students will have a meaningful experience with the university even in an online setting.
“I’m confident these offerings will be the beginning of great partnerships for student learning,” Lewis said. “I hope that after their dual credit experience many of these DFW-area students will determine that ACU is a good fit for them to complete their degrees.”
