Jeff Ellenbird

Professor, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Lindsay Naggie

Interim Director, Learning Communities
Professor & Former Chair, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Alan Shute

Professor, English Language Learning Department
Co-leader, AANAPISI ELL Design Team
Bunker Hill Community College

Maria Kathleen N. Puente

Professor, Department of Behavioral Science
Project Director, AANAPISI Grant
Bunker Hill Community College

In 2016, Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) was awarded an Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI) Title III grant which paved the way for a major five-year reform of the ELL program. This comprehensive reform was the heart of this grant, designed to address the structural inequities of the original ESL program that resulted in low retention rates of ELL students as they progressed through a long sequence of ESL classes, sometimes totalling as much as 36 credits.

In this article, three professors of the ELL Department discuss their roles, perspectives, and stories in leading this reform, each one of them contributing a section to the article. The project director of the grant introduces this article with a brief overview and rationale for this grant and the need for reform in the first section.  The second section then examines the important role played by a faculty-led research review of best ELL practices in scaffolding and anchoring the program reform.  The third section details previous attempts and obstacles to reform at BHCC, and then narrates the steps taken during the grant’s duration in defining new program outcomes and course sequencing.  The final section discusses the key institutional steps and intentional collaboration needed in completing a major program reform.   

Maria Kathleen N. Puente is Professor of Psychology in the Behavioral Science Department at BHCC and Project Director of the AANAPISI Grant.

Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) students come from extremely diverse communities that represent over 40 ethnic groups, and there is great heterogeneity among them in terms of their immigration histories, languages, customs, religions, educational attainment levels, socioeconomic status, and other distinguishing factors (Maramba & Fong, 2020). Yet, despite this diversity, AAPI students continue to be treated as a homogeneous group, best exemplified by the model minority myth that portrays all Asian American students as remarkably successful high achievers who never struggle with any challenges (Suzuki, 2002; Museus, 2013; Murjani, 2014; Jin, 2021). The myth persists because data on Asian American student success are always presented as one aggregate statistic, consequently masking the academic and non-academic struggles of other AAPI students who may be falling through the cracks (Wu-Winiarski, Geron, Geron, & Hoang, 2020). As the CARE Report notes, “the homogeneity of statistics on AAPIs conceals the complexities and differences in English-language proficiency and socio-economic backgrounds that affect the treatment of AAPIs in education policies and programs” (National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, 2013, p. 2).

Limited proficiency in English is in fact one of the major barriers to AAPI students’ academic success and career advancement (AAPI Data, 2017; Wu-Winiarski, Geron, Geron, & Hoang, 2020).  These barriers exist, not because AAPI students lack the cultural capital to overcome them but because the institutional mindset in American higher education has historically been flawed (Murjani, 2014). In particular, AAPI students who are also English language learner (ELL) students are often viewed through a deficit lens, labeled as ‘unprepared,’ ‘lacking the necessary skills,’ or ‘needing more course time,’ instead of being acknowledged for the linguistic and cultural assets they possess that enrich everyone’s educational experience.  Sadly, the same institutional biases extend to all ELL students who are often viewed as “linguistically deficient” (Shapiro, 2011, p. 27).  These biases are demonstrated most concretely by remedial models of English language instruction (Shaprio, 2011) and structural barriers embedded in course curricula that make it nearly impossible for all ELL students to achieve academic progress in a timely manner.  

Against this national landscape, the Federal Government designated Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) in 2016 as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI), and shortly after awarded the College its first AANAPISI Title III Part F grant. These two events, which occurred within a few months of the other, could not have been more timely.  The year prior, the College had just adopted a new mission and vision statement that articulated a core value for advancing equity.  With its AANAPISI designation, the college joined the community of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) across the nation, unequivocally embracing its core identity as an equity-focused institution charged with improving educational outcomes for low-income, first generation, underrepresented students of color. 

AANAPISI grant-funded institutions use their grant funds to provide targeted support for AAPI students.  However, the interventions they design are also intended to benefit the entire student population. For this reason, AANAPISI grants are inherently capacity-building grants. In the process of supporting the success of AAPI students, they ultimately support the success of all students. 

Within this context, BHCC’s AANAPISI Part F grant provided the right platform to achieve this goal. The AAPI community is the fastest rising demographic group in the state of Massachusetts and across the United States (Museus, 2013; National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, 2013; Watanabe & Lo, 2019). Yet, opportunities for social and economic mobility among AAPIs continue to be hampered by lack of educational support systems critical to their success. The College’s data represented a microcosm of this widespread phenomenon among AANAPISIs (Maramba & Fong, 2020). Compared to the general student population (see Figure 1), AAPI-identifying students at BHCC are overrepresented in terms of being first-generation in college, low-income, and more likely to be placed into courses in English as a Second Language (ESL).

Figure 1 

2016 Comparison Profile of AAPI vs. All BHCC Students.
Source: BHCC Office of Institutional Research and Assessment

Given the critical role that proficiency in English plays in one’s academic progress and social-economic mobility in American society, the AANAPISI grant sought to address a clear, identified need that had existed for years at BHCC: the comprehensive reform of the ESL* Program.  Momentum for the needed change had gradually built up even before the College won the grant.  ELL students hurdled formidable educational barriers that were rooted in inequitable structures, a reality that was most palpable for AAPI-identifying students who comprise about one-fifth of the total ELL student population (BHCC Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, 2018).

* As a result of the ELL program reform, ELL (English language learner) has replaced ESL (English as a second language) as the standard designation at BHCC to identify the department, program, faculty and students who were previously designated as ESL.  But since that change in designation only happened at the end of the program reform, both terms ELL and ESL are used in this article (and others in this journal issue), with ESL usually used to designate titles as they were known before this institutional change.

The greatest barrier and most inequitable structure was the curriculum itself.  The Academic ESL Program consisted of a total of 36 pre-college level credits across three levels of ESL courses. Students were required to successfully complete four 3-credit ESL courses, or a total of 12 credits at each level, before they could either move on to the next ESL Level, or be allowed to take Developmental English (ENG-095). Given that 65% of ELL students enrolled part-time, finishing one level of ESL coursework could take up to a year.  Thus, a student who was placed into Academic ESL Level I (the lowest level) typically finished the ESL program and ENG-095 in three, sometimes four years, before they could even take College Writing I (ENG-111), the first college-level gateway course in English (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

The Old ESL Program at Bunker Hill Community College

Not surprisingly, students were dropping out of the ESL program at significantly high rates.  Among AAPI-identifying ELL students in particular, a snapshot of the Fall 2011 cohort indicates that the ESL program was retaining only 31% of them in Level I and 44% of them in Level III within two years. (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

Fall-to-fall Retention Rates of Fall 2011 Cohort of AAPI-identifying ELL vs. All Other ELL Students by Starting ESL Level

Source: BHCC Office of Institutional Research and Assessment

The ESL Department faced a very difficult challenge. Clearly, ELL students were not progressing successfully in the current ESL Program.  Yet the ESL program curriculum, which was grounded in a remedial and skills-based teaching approach, had been in existence for decades.  It was also widely practiced across community colleges in the country and considered the standard model of ESL instruction.  How could ESL faculty leaders of the reform successfully get the buy-in of colleagues who had taught a well-established academic ESL curriculum for years and sincerely believed in its effectiveness?

Simultaneously, the advocacy for accelerated progression into college-level courses within the ESL Department and across many academic units was also gaining momentum. As the College started to see evidence of successful student accelerations in developmental math clustered courses, co-requisite courses in math and English, curriculum alignment with area high schools, and accelerations via high school GPA placement (BHCC Fifth Year Interim Report, 2015), the question became inevitable.  If students were successfully completing their math and English courses via innovations in accelerated coursework, how could a similar acceleration model be created to support ELL students in accelerating into the gateway college-level course in English?  

In the following sections, three ELL faculty leaders at the helm of the comprehensive ELL program reform reflect on some of the most critical elements that effectively addressed these inequities as they discuss the steps and strategies that led to the success of the reform.  In Section 2, Professor Jeff Ellenbird describes how a faculty-driven, inquiry based approach helped ELL and non-ELL faculty find common ground as the language of theory, research and evidence became central to creating a new department mission statement and engaging the college community in professional development.  Professor Alan Shute further discusses the liberating impact of this approach in Section 3. Active and collective faculty engagement in research paved the way for exploring a number of possible ways to overhaul the old ESL program.  Strong disagreements among colleagues that had become increasingly divisive over the years gradually dissipated as well, as faculty began to share research findings and apply them in drafting the learning outcomes of the new ELL program.  Finally, in Section 4, Professor and Department Chair Lindsay Naggie underscores the critical role that collaborative leadership played in harnessing the expertise of other faculty, staff and administrators outside the ELL Department and forming alliances with like-minded leaders at the college. Altogether, these intentional strategies created momentum for a concerted movement towards transformational change at our institution. 

We encourage readers to use the reflections of our ELL faculty leaders before or even while embarking on similar curricular reforms at their institution. To be certain, this kind of undertaking is never easy, given the reality that opposing factions can and do emerge in higher education.  Bridging the divide and finding common ground among colleagues can be a daunting task, as our own ELL faculty leaders share in their reflections below. But that is also what makes the work profoundly rewarding, especially when team leadership is cohesive and intentional in its choice of strategies to unite rather than to divide. Finally, the reform process will always be different for each college, shaped necessarily by each institution’s history, culture, dynamics, and structures. Thus, even as we offer some seeds of thought that we have sown, cultivated, reaped, and shared in this article, we hope that by sharing our own stories, you are inspired to shape your own.