DeFelice on AP committee

    PRESQUE ISLE – Dr. John DeFelice, assistant professor of history at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, has long enjoyed working with the Advanced Placement Program. Thanks to a recent appointment, he’s taking that involvement one step further.
    DeFelice has accepted a position on the Education Testing Services College Board’s Test Development Committee.
    Nationwide, the Advanced Placement program allows motivated high school students the opportunity to take college level courses at their own school.
    “I was honored to be selected for this committee,” DeFelice said. “It is composed of some very distinguished scholars (and) some great high school teachers.”
    The Test Development Committee designs the exams administered to approximately 100,000 students worldwide taking part in Advanced Placement courses.
    “This is a formal design process that takes several years for each exam,” DeFelice said. “I serve as the liaison from this committee to the College Board.”
    Among his roles on the committee is the facilitation of changes to the Web page that helps teachers prepare for any grading standards of the exams. DeFelice also attends meetings of the committee and reports exam changes to the associate director of the Advanced Placement Program.
    “I go through each part of the exam and critique questions and suggest changes,” DeFelice said. “I report on the activities of the committee and then evaluate the Web page and make sure the material available to teachers is current with the upcoming examination.”
    DeFelice notes with AP classes growing in numbers annually, it is important to have university faculty involved in the process. Such involvement, he adds, translates to better prepared UMPI graduates.
    “Teachers that can graduate from an institution with some idea of how to teach an AP history course get better job placements,” he said.
    DeFelice has been an active AP reader in European history for seven years, scoring history essays with more than 300 other readers each year. Last year he was asked to serve as the content coordinator for the AP European History College Board Web page.
    “That meant I had to solicit book reviews and articles that would prove helpful to high school teachers across the country in designing their AP European history courses,” DeFelice said. “I performed well and when the position was redesigned to include service on the Test Development Committee, they offered it to me.”
    Though the position is only for a year, DeFelice sees his commitment to the AP program as very long term and rewarding.
    “We love what we are doing,” he said of his fellow committee members. “We have a vision of how this can help students all over the country earn college credit while in high school and we work together as a highly motivated team.”
    DeFelice is no stranger to the concept of pushing oneself academically. He abandoned his studies of archeology in 1973 when his parents expressed disapproval of his chosen field and wanted him to obtain what they considered a more marketable degree.
    So, he instead worked for many years as a retail optician. But DeFelice never gave up on his dreams and in 1988 he and his wife sold their optical business and he went on to earn a double major in theology and history with a concentration in classical languages.
    “Being a first generation college student really helps me anticipate the needs of my advisees,” DeFelice said. “Many of them are going through the same struggles I did as a student.”
    Now DeFelice is helping throw down the academic gauntlet to challenge current motivated high school students.
    “This is a challenging position,” he said of the Test Development Committee post. “But I do enjoy the challenge. It helps me stay current with the way survey courses in history are taught in colleges across the country.”