Los Medanos College will offer new English courses in the spring of 2018. More English courses are needed to transfer, which is why the LMC english department is now offering more English 100, 100S classes, plus many more which are currently being developed.

“Last year about 50 percent of students were mistakenly placed into lower english classes when they could have qualified for English 100. It is equivalent of taking math 12—students could have skipped that class and saved their time and money,” said English professor Scott Warfe.  “Now 80 percent of students go into English 100.”

The professor explained how offering in more courses, such as English 220 and English 230 and more of English 100 classes, which are transfer level, students will have more options.

Last semester the English Department started expanded available courses, involving literature, poetry and gender studies.  

“We took effort to evaluate what transfer academies required and offered more courses that fall into transfer placement,” Warfe said, explaining why more options hadn’t been made available sooner.

The Introduction to Gender Studies course, which went live last spring, is an addition to the new degree in social justice studies. When nobody offered to teach the class, the English Department decided take it on, and was added to the new course offerings. The class was so popular it was standing room only.

Alex Sterling, department chair, is working on the spring schedule.

“English 113 is poetry, 114 is story writing, 115 is drama and playwriting and a new one is 211, Chicano literature. The goal is to offer two creative writing classes a semester instead of one,”  Sterling explained.

In the past there were twenty sections of 221 available, now there will be seven sections of 220, nine sections of 230 and fifteen sections of 221, giving students more options of each transferable course.

“I like all of the options that LMC is providing students with. I do wish they didn’t take this long to add of these new classes,” said student, Pamela Marquez about the new courses. “I would’ve loved to take the poetry and Chicano studies class when I was taking my english requirements, but now I guess I can take those classes for fun as well.”

A few of the new English courses are available now. However, most will be offered in Spring 2019 for all students who still have transferable English requirements to meet.