FR hosting college courses

FORT RECOVERY — The ability for high school students to earn college credit is nothing new.
Fort Recovery students have been able to get a head start on their post-secondary education in the past, but in order to do so they had to travel to an area college campus. This year, they’ll be able to do so in the classrooms of their own high school.
Several college courses are being offered at Fort Recovery High School this year as it takes part in the new College Credit Plus program through a partnership with Lima’s Rhodes State College.
“I think it’s a tremendous opportunity for kids to not have to go out to the colleges,” said FRHS principal Jeff Hobbs. “Basically, the college comes to them. It keeps them on campus.
“I think it’s a win all the way around. Our kids get the college credit, but at the same time they never have to leave the comforts of home.”
In order to take college courses in previous years, students had to travel. That would mean a 25-mile drive to Wright State University’s Lake Campus in Celina or a 44-mile drive to Edison Community College in Piqua.
Now students will have the opportunity to earn college credits without having to spend time driving back and forth.

“I just didn’t like the fact that kids left campus,” said Hobbs, noting that the travel option will still be available for classes not offered at FRHS. “If they had to go 45 minutes one way to get there, they basically lost three or four periods of the day. And now they can stay here, take a couple of other classes and still get the college credits.”
Fort Recovery is offering a handful of classes this year, including English courses in literature, composition and English 12. It will also offer biology and AP biology.
Rather than having to specifically sign up for a college course, all students in those classes will receive college credit if they pass with an A, B or C grade. It also removes the necessity for students to take the AP test at a cost of $100 at the end of those courses in order to earn credit.
In order to be eligible to lead the college courses, teachers must have 18 credit hours toward master’s degrees in their field or be in the process of earning those hours. Tracy Obringer, who will teach the college English classes at FRHS, has spent her summer taking courses online through Southern New Hampshire University.
“It’s just a better opportunity for the students,” said Obringer, a St. Henry High School graduate who already has a master’s in education. “They can get college credit. Who doesn’t want that? … If I would have been able to do that when I was in high school, I would have definitely jumped right on that.”
By the end of September she will have six credit hours completed toward her master’s degree in English. Fort Recovery Local Schools has agreed to pay for the first 18 credit hours in an effort to encourage teachers to become eligible to teach college courses.
There will be a lot more preparation work, at least in this first year, Obringer said. That’s because the class is not just “like” a college course, it is designed to mirror the class taught at Rhodes.
She has already met several times with a mentor from Rhodes and has orientation this weekend. After that, she’ll be working to adjust her class to fall in line with college requirements.
“It’s going to be a lot more, because the whole curriculum is changing,” she said. “That is the biggest challenge is to make sure that I’m making it rigorous enough for the college level.”
The five college classes slated for this year are just the beginning.
Administrators have already started to look toward expanded offerings next year with a focus on giving students as much of a jump-start on college as possible.
“We’re already looking at that,” said Hobbs. “It’s a huge savings for a lot of kids to get part of their college out of the way while they’re in high school, but now they get the best of both worlds.”