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Background
Throughout its historyDurham Technical Community College has responded to the changing needs of residents in Durham and Orange counties. These culturally-diverse and racially-integrated counties are within The Triangle between Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and Cary in central North Carolina.
Durham Tech has a proud record of making technical and transfer education available to minorities, low-income students and other populations who have been under-represented in higher education. Its campus is “non-majority”: 41.5 percent of its student body is Black, and 42.3 percent is White. Most of the 24,000 students enrolled each year take occupational training and non-credit courses
Achieving the Dream Goals
The college’s Achieving the Dream initiative intends to enhance opportunities for student engagement in the learning process. Toward this end the college has undertaken a comprehensive collection and assessment of quantitative and qualitative student data. It is using this information to formulate plans to:
- Improve the retention of minority students, specifically African-American students, from their first semester to their second semester;
- Improve minority students’ performance in developmental studies and gatekeeper courses;
- Understand students’ learning behaviors;
- Develop systematic improvements in the learning environment that identify and assist students who are “at risk” early in the academic term.
- Improve the success rates of all students in developmental studies and gatekeeper courses.
- Narrow the performance gap between African-American students and others.
To achieve these goals the college will develop a pre-enrollment orientation program, strengthen its academic advising system, expand its college success course to emphasize study skills; and develop an early alert system that identifies and addresses student behaviors that put them at risk for failure.
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