College Profiles

Cuyahoga Community College Profile

Background

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) has three campuses in metropolitan Cleveland in northeastern Ohio. With nearly one-third of its residents living in poverty, Cleveland was the nation’s poorest big city in 2004 and 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tri-C is Ohio’s oldest and largest community college. With more than 55,000 credit and non-credit students annually, the college estimates that one in five Cuyahoga County residents has attended classes at the college in its 46 years of education. Thirty-five percent of Tri-C’s students are students of color; 62 percent are women.

Achieving the Dream Interventions

Developmental Math Paired Course

Faculty counsel students to co-register for math and a two-credit survival skills course based on Skip Downing’s OnCourse materials. The course teaches students to set goals, manage their time, assume responsibility for success and failure, and believe in their ability to succeed.  Students are also provided with additional time to review math concepts.  Tri-C is planning to expand the math intervention to all new students who place into Math 0950 (Beginning Algebra).

Results

Tri-C recorded success rates for four entering cohorts based on their initial placement level and analyzed the pass rate of the last course of the developmental math sequence after three years. At each placement level, and overall, student success has increased since 2002.