The Committee on Chemistry in Two-Year Colleges (COCTYC) is the executive committee governing the Two-Year College Chemistry Consortium, 2YC3. 2YC3 is an external membership organization that is primarily charged with enhancing student learning by providing a national forum for educators teaching in the first two years of college chemistry. The COCTYC currently facilitates 2YC3 goals by coordinating professional development conferences, webinars, and community forums while also publishing newsletters and providing online resources.
Since our last report, 2YC3 is looking forward to its strategic planning retreat and the upcoming transition back to in-person conferences. A survey regarding the perceived state of the organization has been sent out to over 2000 stakeholders in preparation for the strategic planning retreat and the responses have been collected and analyzed. Representatives from current 2YC3 leadership, SOCED, past 2YC3 members, Chemical Education Research, DivCHED, CPT, CTA, and ACS Office of Higher Education have committed to attend the retreat at ACS headquarters on October 14-15, 2023.
We have held one webinar on “Using Current Events to Teach Seminal Topics in GChem and OChem” with 89 registrants since our last report.
In collaboration with other organizations, our co-authored NSF grant "Facilitating Accessibility in STEM at Two-Year Colleges" (Award number: DUE-2228226, [07/01/2022-09/30/2023]), is in progress and we sent delegates to a conference on June 26- 28 at Minneapolis College. Additionally, the AACT has reached out to us and we are currently working on sharing resources to increase the value of membership to both of our organizations.
We continue to report that recruitment for leadership positions has been difficult, and this continues to be so. We are currently soliciting candidates for the 2025 chair elect, and for newsletter chair.
Industrial sponsors have been especially difficult to cultivate as the online format of our meetings continue. There were no sponsors in 2022, and we have been unable to obtain any for 2023. We look forward to our return to in person meetings in 2024 for possible sponsorships.
We plan to restart our monthly webinars in 2024. Our first post-COVID in-person conference is slated for Spring 2024 in Arizona Western College in Yuma, AZ. Currently there are tentative plans for a Fall 2024 conference at Montgomery County Community College in Baltimore, MD; and a Spring 2025 conference at Johnson County Community College in Kansas City, KS.
2YC3’s revenue model is primarily membership driven. Current memberships year to date have been stagnant compared to last year at this time. It is of note that while our membership has roughly halved from years immediately before the pandemic, and at 30% of levels from a decade ago. We are planning to address our revenue model along with our membership structure in the upcoming strategic planning retreat.