Current Continuing Education Needs of Two-Year College Faculty Must Be Met !

Summary Rapid developments in technology and changing student enrollment patterns make updating of two-year college mathematics faculty (TYCMF) skills imperative. Furthermore, retraining of the current staff is feasible. Since approximately one-half of the faculty is under 45 and can expect to teach for at least another twenty years, efforts expended to update current faculty can have long-term benefits to the institutions involved. A substantial portion of TYCMF attempt to update their skills themselves by enrollments in graduate courses and attendance at conferences. In the past, faculty have preferred short, intensive courses, sabbatical year formats or summer session programs. Current formal advanced degree programs do not fill the need for TYMCF renewal. Continuing education needs of TYCMF should be met through expansion of government funding, endeavors by professional mathematical societies, industry and business support, and college and faculty action. The consequences of lack of action in TYCMF continuing education are grim. There will be further inroads into two-year college programs, such as has occurred in remedial mathematics since four-year colleges started offering such courses. It is more efficient and less expensive to retrain and update TYCMF than to create or utilize other institutions whose design might, in the long run, be less effective than the two-year college has been.