What Is Momentum Day? Business illustrations by Storyset Late last September, eleven staff and faculty went to Odessa, Texas, to attend a leadership conference. I wasn’t looking forward to the trip – a…

Business illustrations by Storyset

Late last September, eleven staff and faculty went to Odessa, Texas, to attend a leadership conference. I wasn’t looking forward to the trip – and wasn’t exactly sure why I was going - but then I recalled Progression Day 2021. 

On that day in February, the faculty attendees were presented with a webinar by Odessa Community College and learned about their transition to 8-week courses. That webinar was something of a surprise, but we quickly got with the program: YC was following the lead of many schools in offering more 8-week courses. All aboard! The YC Summer Institute that year introduced the online course review process, where TeLS instructional designers partnered with faculty who signed up to convert their 16-week courses to 8-week online courses. This intense process continued through March of 2023, and the faculty’s hard work produced over 150 courses that met the YC essential design standards, with many more 8-week courses developed since then. 

There’s the history in brief.

Image by Layerace on Freepik

The group that went to Odessa last fall returned with a renewed vigor, momentum, one could say, for the 8-week effort that began here 4 years ago. Odessa (heard that name enough yet?) really is quite the place — those folks are all-in, big time! In debriefing how to bring some of that enthusiasm home, we realized that Yavapai already offers well over half of its courses in 8-week terms. The work to provide more courses in this format will be very different this time and will not be an online course review process; we envision TeLS providing support in a more professional development capacity than through direct interventions. And, ‘course conversion’ is only part of the story; creating and aligning holistic support structures for faculty and students is the other piece.  

Momentum Day, coming Friday, February 21, 2025, is about discussing the why and how of our move toward becoming a majority 8-week term institution. We don’t have to be 100%, and many courses need to continue in a 16-week format. There will be faculty and staff panels with lots of Q and A. We know there are concerns about course rigor, teaching load, and student success in this paradigm. We don’t have all the answers. Please bring your voice to the event so we can get it all out in the open and move toward real strategies to make this work at YC. 

Thanks, 

Thatcher Bohrman 
TeLS Director