Where would you find a high school student willing to take a college course on a Saturday morning? At Guttman, of course.
This semester, 110 New York high school students from all over the city, including but not limited to A School Without Walls, Brooklyn Emerging Leaders Academy (BELA) Charter High School, Bushwick Community High School, Forsyth Satellite Academy and Information Technology High School are enrolled in one of three classes offered in person or virtually each Saturday. Four three-credit transferable courses, Science and Society, Introduction to Media Studies, and Introduction to Psychology (two sessions), are taught by Guttman adjunct instructors. These classes are open to all NYCPS students free of charge through CUNY’s College Now, a free college transition, dual enrollment program for New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) high school students, begun in 1984.
Another 78 high school students are taking three Guttman courses with Guttman adjunct professors for early college credit during their school day at Harvest Collegiate High School in Greenwich Village. Two of the courses are Introduction to Psychology and the other is Social Foundations of Education, all three-credit, three-hour transferable courses. Harvest Collegiate students’ dual enrollment classes are underwritten by FutureReadyNYC, a program of NYCPS’s Office of Student Pathways.
Guttman’s Associate Director of Pre-College Programs & Academic Success Laura Fritz Greenlee is proud that the College is supporting New York City high schools in graduating students with a strong academic foundation that includes college skills, experiences and credits. “It’s important to me that we build our dual enrollment program in a way that allows students from across NYCPS to experience the high support that is integral to the Guttman model,” she says.
To ensure an authentic experience, Greenlee has hired a pre-college advisor, Bob Sodikkhujaev, who supports student retention and facilitates two sections of a First Year Semester workshop, “Intro to College Planning and Success,” every Friday at both Guttman South and Harvest Collegiate. She’s also hired a Guttman alumna and former valedictorian, Luciana Vivanco Puccio, as a College Now embedded tutor, to offer dual credit students the academic support they may need.
“All of the courses we opened for dual credit are filled. We doubled the number of high school students from last Spring and we had a waitlist. This tells me that we’re obviously filling a need and the interest is there,” the program’s director notes. “We’re also collaborating with other units in the College to expand our reach,” she says. “With Admissions, we invited future students who’ve been accepted to Guttman in the fall to consider registering for a dual enrollment class in their final semester of high school. And seniors who excel in our courses may be able to participate in our Honors Program after matriculation.”
Students who sign up for dual credit classes are often interested in the time- and cost-saving benefits of early college and traditionally have their sights set on admission to four-year colleges after their high school graduation. However, Greenlee sees dual enrollment with Guttman as an opportunity to set students up for success while exposing them to Guttman’s unique strengths with the hope of increasing future enrollment at the College.
