How many students are in PCC?
There are presently about 130 members in PCC—from freshmen to seniors, from Early Childhood majors to Adolescent/Young Adult majors, from Business Education to Art Education, from Intervention Services majors to Physical Education majors.  The membership changes each semester as new students join, old students graduate, and members leave and/or reenter due to Semesters Abroad, internships, and life circumstances.

Do you have to live in Kohl Hall to be in PCC?
Members are only required to live in Kohl Hall their first semester; after that, you are welcome to live in Kohl Hall as long as you like, but you are not required to.  Those who stay living in Kohl Hall (approximately 20 each year) serve as mentors to the incoming First Years.  Many of our members move out after the first year: they move to different housing arrangements (like suites in Founders Hall) or off campus (to live in apartments).  They stay active members of the community even though they move out of Kohl Hall.

How is PCC different from other urban teacher-preparation programs?
First, most other urban education teacher preparation programs start your junior year of college, or they wait until you go to graduate school.  PCC begins your first year of college (and we are trying to create partnerships which would allow us to start even earlier than that), and you begin field placement approximately your third week of classes.  Almost from day-one in PCC, you’re developing concrete, real-world experience as well as theoretical background to prepare you for teaching in challenging settings.

Second, most other programs are either a series of specialized courses or an intensive residency (e.g., graduate programs where you do nothing else).  PCC is a living/learning community—a hybrid experience, something between a professional organization, a social fraternity/sorority, an internship program, and an intensive academic/training program.  Plus, you live, work, play, and learn together as a community, mingling freshman thru seniors and all the licensure interests.

And lastly, PCC is not all-inclusive, which means that members also do a lot of other things, like work, join other organizations like band, cheerleading, fraternities and sororities, student government, etc.  But it allows for total immersion as well, based on your individual level of commitment and interests.

What’s different for a PCC member than students in the “regular” teacher preparation program at BGSU?
First, the similarities: PCC students take all the classes that everyone else takes in the teacher prep program at BGSU, and PCC students are able to participate in all the College programs and professional organizations—just like everybody else.  PCC students typically graduate along with their peers (they don’t take longer to graduate), and they

The difference is in quantity and quality of experience:

We schedule smaller classes.  The typical Intro to Education class is in a lecture hall with 150-200
students; PCC’s version is held in Kohl Hall and has about 25 students per class.

We acquire more hours of classroom experience. The typical class at BGSU will require some degree of in-the-field experience, usually 10-20 hours per semester.  We provide 50-hour field placements per semester.  We do more hours than most, and our placements typically “count” for those other course’s requirements.

Our placements experiences are more varied.  The typical field placement at BGSU is comprised of tutoring students, observing classroom behaviors, completing course assignments.  The PCC field placement experience is comprised of working alongside a real teacher in a real classroom, assisting that Supervising Teacher in more of the teaching job—everything from grading papers and entering grades to creating bulletin board, lesson plans, art projects … to tutoring, running small group sessions, and teaching lessons.  We typically eat lunch with the students—a powerful learning opportunity—and we create resumes and cover letters for our placements, complete weekly journals, do interviews with our teachers, and develop a portfolio each semester, displaying what we have learned from our experiences.  And that’s our “typical” experience; we also have alternative experiences with after school programs which allow our students to fully develop and implement and evaluate their own lesson plans.

We have built-in mentoring.  Our membership includes students from all different licensure interests as well as years of schooling, and we have created “families” in PCC to intentionally put younger students in contact with older students for mentoring and advising purposes.  Also, it is rare to walk into a class without running into another PCC member: you’re never without a friendly face in the crowd.

We require more.  PCC students pay more (a membership fee), take more classes (Tuesday night Seminar is a one-credit class), do more field placement hours (50 per semester), and engage in at least one social, service, and professional development activities each semester.

We have staff dedicated to the urban programming.  You will have an academic advisor who will help you schedule classes and weave your way through the institution, and you will have a team of highly trained faculty to teach your classes.  And, you may join clubs and organizations with faculty mentors. And, as a member of PCC, you will also have the director and his assistant who are dedicated to you, your skill development, and your preparation for urban teaching.  We provide at least two more dedicated staff to support you as you face the challenges of college, teaching, and career development.

How much does it cost to be in PCC?
Members of PCC must pay an additional student fee (which may be included in your financial aid package and is Bursar-able).  These fees take care of all program expenses, but primarily goes toward transportation costs for the weekly field placement experience.

The fee structure changed slightly in 2010, but the highest fee bracket has not changed since PCC began. The fee structure is based on year in the program and type of transportation used for field placement. In other words, if you ride the bus, you pay for it; if you use your own transportation, you pay a lower fee because you’re paying for your own gas, etc.:

• First Year (any new member, independent of year): $275/semester ($550/year)
• Second+ Years (taking bus): $200/semester ($400/year)
• Second+ Years (own transportation): $100/semester ($200/year)
• Students in Methods or Student Teaching: $50/semester ($100/year)

What is the placement rate for graduates of the program?
We are in the process of gathering and assessing the data to find out where our graduates are today. Since we began in 2001, our first graduating class of students involved in PCC was 2006.