A run at dual-credit certification

[Administrative Rule 10.57.437 Class 8 Dual Credit-Only Postsecondary Faculty License. (1) A faculty member of a postsecondary institution is required to hold a class 8 dual credit license, unless already licensed Class 1, 2, or 4 and properly endorsed, whenever a faculty member is teaching a course for which one or more students will earn both high school and college credit.

http://www.mtrules.org/gateway/showrulefile.asp?RN=10.57.437, accessed 4/19/2009]

The notion of teaching college classes to high schoolers caught my attention six or seven years ago when an article on the topic appeared in the Great Falls Tribune. I thought that such teaching might give me a better understanding of issues facing our future freshmen and perhaps even some insight about why so many of them seem underprepared for post-secondary studies. Also, coordinating classes with our local high schools ought to foster collaboration with my counterparts at these schools, something the MUS regents have favored for years. And, finally, I confess to being attracted to a new pursuit: facing students who have yet to harden their opinions about higher education and its divisions or about the world at large. We'll see.

At any rate, my interest was rekindled by two opinion pieces by Mary Moe (then Dean of the College of Technology in Great Falls) concerning dual-credit courses (GF Tribune, 12 November and 13 December 2007). According to Moe, the COT had 258 high school students enrolled in dual-credit courses in 2006! (The article in this issue explains clearly the nature of dual-credit courses. I should note here that the student's high school receives Average Number Belonging (ANB) funding from the state, and the teaching professor's higher education institution receives tuition revenue.) The COT is affiliated with MSU-Bozeman, as is MSU-Northern. If the COT can offer such classes, I thought we ought to be able to do so as well. In her Tribune articles, Moe was criticizing the Board of Public Education's failure to approve online offerings of dual-credit courses. This tip of the iceberg revealed the struggle among the K-12 education partners, including the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) and the Montana University System (MUS), over whether to license professors to teach high schoolers, and, if so, how to proceed with that licensure./1/

So at the beginning of spring semester when my provost informed us that all education partners had finally reached an agreement on licensing, a number of us at MSU-Northern asked for application kits. These applications have three parts: Part A is an employment verification, to be filled out jointly by applicant and university; Part B is a "character and fitness/fingerprint background check" performed by the State of Montana and the FBI (per Montana's Board of Education Administrative Rule 10.57.201A); and Part C is "Evidence of Eligibility for Licensure," which consists of a résumé and several pages of entries under categories established to evaluate all prospective teachers in the state of Montana (Administrative Rules 10.57.301 "Endorsement Eligibility" and 10.58.501 "General Requirements for All Teachers"). Anyone who has ever participated in an "OPI review" of a department's courses to insure that they meet BPE licensure requirements (any courses that fulfill required slots in an education baccalaureate, for example) has wrestled with these sheets.

One must complete Parts A and B and submit them to OPI with a $36 fee and submit the fingerprint card (which one obtains by arranging an appointment with local police) to the Montana Department of Justice with a $29.25 fee. Once one is cleared by both OPI and FBI, OPI sends a notice asking for completion of Part C and its submission to OPI's Review Panel for consideration./2/ This panel meets twice a year to review applications and issue or reject them. This year's decision meetings take place March 16 and July 22, with the reviews occurring over the previous few days.

According to Elizabeth Keller at OPI's licensure division, the agreement for a "Class 8 Dual-Credit Only Postsecondary Faculty License" took about two years to hammer out among all partners of the MUS and Montana's BPE. The process was finalized in late December 2008. Application packets became available for potential licensees at the end of January this year, with the first deadline for submission set at February 20.

Probably because assistance personnel for this Class 8 license became active only after January 26, the tight timeline for submissions prevented OPI from receiving very many. In fact, only three made the deadline. OPI expects many more in July.

As soon as I received my packet in early February, I scheduled my fingerprint session with the local police, which took about 45 minutes. All of my materials for Parts A and B were mailed in by mid-February, and OPI sent me clearance to submit Part C on March 5. Unfortunately, the March decision meeting had been scheduled for March 10, so my materials reached the review panel too late to be considered. Thus, they are on the docket for review in July.

The earliest any dual-credit course can be offered under the new licensure plan is fall 2009. I'm hopeful that my license will be granted in July. My goal is that by fall my provost and at least one local high school will have agreed about a pilot course that will be offered fall semester.

I will be glad to report on my further experiences in this journal next year. Meanwhile, http://www.opi.mt.gov/cert has information and application packets available in pdf format.