Dr. Katie Hern is an English Instructor at Chabot College and Executive Director of the California Acceleration Project (CAP), which she cofounded with math colleague Myra Snell. CAP supports faculty from the state’s 113 community colleges to transform remediation to increase student completion and equity (http://www.AccelerationProject.org).

A 2014 evaluation by the RP Group found that students’ odds of completing college English were 2.3 times higher in high-acceleration CAP pathways than in traditional remediation. Their odds of completing college math were 4.5 times higher in CAP statistics pathways than in traditional remediation. Further, accelerated pathways benefitted all student groups and eliminated the achievement gap for African-American students. CAP’s work has been recognized with awards from the Campaign for College Opportunity, the Association of California Community College Administrators, and the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges. In 2016, Hern and Snell were named to the Washington Monthly ‘s “16 Most Innovative People in Higher Education.”

Hern speaks nationally on remediation reform and integrated reading and writing. Her publications focus on the need to rethink placement, design principles for teaching accelerated English and math, the acceleration movement, pedagogy for integrated reading and writing, and the equity imperative of transforming remediation.