Colleges use Achieving the Dream to meet higher goals
Community College Times, Feb. 2, 2007
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Coastal Bend Community College (Texas), received news of its designation as one of the first Achieving the Dream: Community College Counts institutions in the country, John Brockman was particularly ecstatic.
Brockman, who is president of the college, said it appeared as if there was “divine intervention” in naming the college to join the initiative, which focuses on increasing completion rates of at-risk and underserved students at community colleges.
“I thought our prayers had been answered,” Brockman said with a laugh.
Aside from the initiative helping Coastal Bend better serve a targeted population, Brockman also hoped it would simultaneously satisfy the accreditation requirements of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), particularly requirements that pertained to the college’s institutional effectiveness program and quality enhancement plan.
Speaking at the Achieving the Dream 2007 Strategy Institute here last week, Brockman noted that SACS requires all of its member institutions to engage in “ongoing, integrated and institution-wide researched based planning and evaluation processes.” He added that those processes must result in improvement on a continuing basis as well as show that “the institution is effectively accomplishing its mission.”
SACS additionally required that Coastal Bend have up and running a quality enhancement plan (QEP) as part of an ongoing planning and evaluation process, Brockman said. And while all of this was going on, the Texas legislature cut its funding because of a shortfall in the state budget.
“About that time I got a postcard in the mail talking about Achieving the Dream, about improving student learning outcomes, about becoming a data-driven institution—and that there was money available to assist colleges in doing that,” Brockman said.
Signing on with Achieving the Dream and working closely with the initiative’s staff and advisors helped Coastal Bend develop a more focused approach, QEP, Brockman said
“We were able to use Achieving the Dream to fund a new position in our institution effectiveness office [use that person] as a researcher,” Brockman added.
Ultimately, Coastal Bend was able to satisfy the SACS requirements regarding both its QEP and institutional effectiveness program, which led to SACS’ reaccrediting the college.
Repeatedly during the Achieving the Dream conference, community college leaders said that by joining of the initiative their institutions were not only progressing to reach the initiative’s goals, but also they were enhancing their colleges’ vision as well.
“Many of the goals of Achieving the Dream have turned out to be the goals of our college, so there really has been a nice meshing,” said William Law, president of Tallahassee Community College (TCC) in Florida.
Although TCC has the highest percentage of African-American student enrollments among Florida’s 28 public two-year colleges, only about 12 percent of those students graduate, compared with 42 percent for whites, 30 percent for Hispanics and 25 percent for Asian Americans.
Through its partnership with Achieving the Dream, TCC has established a “strategic knowledge management system” that provides information for more timely interventions and decisionmaking for students, faculty, staff and administrators, while at the same time moving more students from lower completion-rate developmental courses to courses that can lead to a degree, Law said.
“Achieving the Dream has been one of the most transformative things that have happened on our campus in the 15 years that I has been there,” said Janet Laughlin, the director of the Student Success Center at Danville Community College (Virginia).
Laughlin noted that the college has long nourished a vision of improving both retention and completion rates for its African-American students, which comprise 35 percent of its enrollment. The initiative has prompted Danville to examine its mission through a campus-wide dialogue that included members from every sector of the college.
“The conversations have been substantive about learning outcomes and student success,” Laughlin said. “We asked faculty and staff what they thought and they appreciated being included in the process. And, of course, we went to the students and found out what we could do to help them.”
As a result, Danville is now using data collection and analysis—one of the hallmarks of Achieving the Dream—in an ongoing effort to, among other things, increase the number of students who complete developmental math courses, improve overall grade point averages and increase completion rates.
“For far too long, I think, we have relied on anecdotal data, the stories of a few successful students,” she said. “And we can no longer do that.”
“We have become much more concerned about our data,” Laughlin added. “We have to show how all of our students are succeeding or not succeeding. So we now have data to support what we need to do to improve, and we have lots of opportunities for improvement.”
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