Charter Oak's First Effort at the Master's Level

We have been working toward our first Master's Degree in Organizational Effectiveness for a long time (a very long time). This week we actually launched our first effort at this level and how that occurred will surprise some of you.

I attended a press conference at the Connecticut Science Center on July 2nd to announce the launch of the Joyce D. and Andrew J. Mandell Academy for Teachers. The Science Center has created a program of hands on science learning for Connecticut's K-12 teachers, and at the launch they were lauded by the Governor, the Mayor of Hartford, and Stefan Pryor, Commissioner of Education, to name a few. In addition, they attracted the support of the Mandell family in the form of a major donation, so they are currently educating 50 teachers.

The piece of this story that speaks to Charter Oak is that we performed a CCAP evaluation of this educational program and found that it is deserving of nine graduate credits. You read that correctly. So this program is now Charter Oak's first graduate program. Notice that it involved our CCAP approach of using a team of faculty to assess training offered by someone else for College credit. This was the first time we used our master's level authority. Now, if the Science Center enrolls the 1500 teachers they are planning to serve, the number of graduate credits that will be placed on a Charter Oak transcript should be substantial.

When Matt Fleury, the Science Center CEO and our alum, brought me to the podium, I used my three minutes to comment on how Charter Oak is poised to build a bridge between corporate training and higher education that will make the trip to a credential shorter and less expensive for everyone who travels it. I took some pleasure in seeing several heads turn in surprise.

Happy Summer!