Designing Curriculum

Designing curriculum for your school with the college-bound student in mind

Concurrent Enrollment can help high school students to prepare for college by helping them to transition to college level expectations, and by giving them advanced standing when they start college. Depending on the number of credits they earn, and the combination of them, this advanced standing can benefit the student by either freeing up their freshman year schedule, or even by eliminating a semester of college level work.

When you are planning your master schedule, you may want to keep your Concurrent Enrollment options in mind. We advise schools to focus mainly on offering 100 level courses that will apply to a student's college curriculum regardless of their major. Nearly all college majors require ENGL 101 and 102. Students are also expected to have some liberal arts electives - such as a history course, psychology, or sociology. CollegeNow’s SUNY General Education chart categorizes Tompkins Cortland’s approved SUNY General Education offerings according to knowledge and skill areas and notes those courses available as Concurrent Enrollment and Online courses.

Most students, even in liberal arts programs, will be required to have some math and natural sciences - like college level Algebra, Trigonometry, Calculus, Chemistry, Physics, or Biology. Many students will also be required to take a Foreign Language. We have high schools that are offering most of the courses listed. A motivated and hardworking student in one of these schools could graduate with a college transcript, backed by the State University of New York system, which shows they have already earned 36 college credits.

Many high-achieving students take a combination of Advanced Placement and Concurrent Enrollment courses in their junior and senior years. When an Advanced Placement course also runs as a Concurrent Enrollment course, a student who does not earn the required score on the AP exam is still able to earn college credit based on his or her Concurrent Enrollment course grade. The Advanced Placement Tompkins Cortland Course Equivalents chart can help students plan how AP credits would be accepted at Tompkins Cortland Community College. The chart can also assist schools in deciding which courses to run as Concurrent Enrollment courses. Keep in mind that if your school is already offering an AP course, it could benefit students to also offer the course as Concurrent Enrollment.