Bettering One’s Self to Better Serve Others

Carole Mehle-Bittner

At Edgecombe Community College, professional development is a priority for faculty and leadership alike.

One instructor putting this principle into action is Carole Mehle-Bittner, who has taught English and humanities at ECC since 1999.

Mehle-Bittner was one of 23 instructors from 16 community colleges around the state who graduated as the first cohort from the North Carolina Community College Master Instructor Program (NC3MI) in May in Asheboro.

The NC3MI program, launched in January, is described as “a transformative journey designed to recognize and enhance the talents of distinguished faculty across North Carolina community colleges.” It focuses on three key performance areas: professional development, student learning, and collaborative leadership.

“The faculty received an email around Christmastime about this program,” Mehle-Bittner recalled. “I talked to my dean and my vice president, expressed some interest in it, and I applied for it.”

In choosing from among the applicants, “We selected those who demonstrated a deep dedication to student success and a strong commitment to collaboration,” said Dr. Lane Freeman, director of online learning for the NC Community College System, who administers the program.

“It has been a while since I have had any really focused training on being an instructor,” Mehle-Bittner said of her decision to pursue the NC3MI certification. “There are always new approaches that we can learn to be better instructors. I wanted to gain knowledge, so that not only would my students benefit from the new techniques, but so that I could share with my colleagues. I’m always trying to find ways to be a better instructor and to be the best instructor that my students can have.”

Participants prepped for the program starting in February, doing weekly assignments and lessons online. They gathered twice, the first time in “icebreakers so we would get to know each other,” she said.

Lessons focused on “how we could build relationships with students, how we could improve our teaching, how we could think about some student needs that we had possibly not thought about before,” Mehle-Bittner said.
“We got together to build a community – the learning community – so that we would know who was in the class with us,” she continued.

Putting those concepts into practical use was a primary focus, she said. “We talked through a lot of things like note-taking; how do we encourage our students to take notes, and how do we get them to really retain the material?” Mehle-Bittner said. “If we’re asking them to read something, how do we motivate them to read what we’ve asked them to read, and how do we motivate them to get information from it?”

This often hinged on the topic of critical thinking, she said. “We touched a lot on it, some of the attitudes that [students] have about themselves. How can we get them to really be excited about learning? And how do we get them to activate that knowledge?”

Reaching students is the nub of the teaching challenge, she said. “One thing that motivates me to continue to want to improve my teaching is, when you’re really just a master in the area that you teach, we can know our course material, but we’re not trained to think about things like how the environment that our students are coming from can impact their ability to learn.”

In Asheboro, participants were required to do a “capstone” project, a culminating end-of-course presentation. Mehle-Bittner did a vocabulary exercise with the audience “about the words they might need with critical thinking and asking them to think about what they were starting on,” she said.

Freeman lauded Mehle-Bittner’s selection to the NC3MI program. “The selection process was designed to identify faculty who not only excel in their current roles but also have the potential to contribute significantly to the evolution of the program and the broader educational community,” Freeman said. “Carole was selected because she exemplified these qualities — her commitment to student success, innovative teaching practices, and collaborative leadership made her a standout candidate.”

ECC’s dean of arts and sciences, Christine Nicodemus, concurred. “A college is only as strong as its faculty and staff,” she said. “That’s why professional development is crucial — it keeps educators updated on the latest teaching strategies, technologies, and student needs. By staying current, faculty not only deliver top-quality education but also create environments where students can excel. ECC is proud of our own Carole Mehle-Bittner for leading the way by participating in the NC3MI certification program. We’re excited to learn from Carole as she continues her collaboration with the program this year,” Nicodemus said.

Looking forward, Mehle-Bittner says she’s excited about putting her master instructor status into action. “The way I hope to use it is, by sharing information with my colleagues through the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, any way that ECC would like me to share it,” she said. “And have me not only be a master instructor, but help our faculty to become master instructors themselves.”

Programs like NC3MI are “always good for us,” Mehle-Bittner said. “Especially with the emergence of the technology that has come along, and the ways that can help us, even with the generational changes that are happening. I think that there are different students sitting in my classroom now than there were when I first started teaching.

“The way to play the game changes, and it’s always good to learn how to play the game.”