Welcome to the second issue of Teaching and Learning Excellence through Scholarship from the Community College of Baltimore County (TALES from CCBC, or TALES)! As with any sophomore release, there are jitters about living up to the first. For TALES this was no short order – the first issue featured strong content written by articulate authors that was honed by our dedicated peer reviewers and presented professionally by our dedicated editors and CCBC’s Creative Services. These efforts led to crucial support from President Dr. Sandra Kurtinitis, who funded a print release of the first issue. Provost and Vice President of Instruction Dr. Joaquín Martínez has further given TALES its most necessary and practical gift, funding for our publishing accounts so we can continue to release open-access content to you free of cost. Achieving this level of professional production in a year was no small feat; in fact, TALES received an award from the League for Innovation in the Community College for the inaugural issue!
This second issue not only lives up to the first, it surpasses it. For this issue Michael Hands led a team of peer reviewers that represented each academic school at CCBC. We met our goal to broaden beyond CCBC as well; this issue contains articles authored by colleagues at Montgomery College and Wor-Wic Community College. Such inclusivity improves the journal by making the discussion about best practices in teaching and learning span all of CCBC and also regional colleges so that we can learn from the insights of others while we share our own. To this end, TALES should publish diverse articles within the scope of best practices in higher education, and we are excited that this issue contains a new section of “Featured Tales” under the lead editorship of Jeremy Caplan. The authors of these articles elaborate on larger initiatives that have been undertaken to support women in technology at CCBC, and a collaboration between faculty at Montgomery College using open software to enhance digital course content. As you read these and the other insightful research articles in this issue, you may appreciate the appealing new design of our PDF files thanks to the professional work of David Zobel, the newest member of TALES’ team of invaluable volunteers.
Where does TALES go from here? Now that we meet the prerequisite for having published multiple issues, TALES will apply for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Having a broad readership is half our mission; having a broad body of published content is the other. You can help us with both! Please, register to be a TALES reader here, and also submit an article that shares your insights into best practices in teaching and learning. Your involvement is valuable to us and we’d like to hear your tale.
Until the next issue,
Robin K. Minor, PhD | rminor@ccbcmd.edu
Editor-in-Chief
Community College of Baltimore County