Community College of Baltimore County
Committed leadership and the dedication efforts of extraordinary faculty and staff continue to make-possible the scaling of four core Achieving the Dream-inspired strategies to enhance student success at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC).
CCBC has completely aligned its 2011-2013 Strategic Plan with Achieving the Dream establishing student success as its primary goal.
The college is committed to closing achievement gaps, particularly those that pervade and persist along lines of race and ethnicity. Unfortunately, students of color make-up the majority of those students enrolled in developmental courses.
In an attempt to close achievement gaps between racial and ethnic student populations, the college is pursuing and scaling four core strategies, including:
- Offering Accelerated Learning Programs to permit students to contemporaneously enroll in gatekeeper courses and upper level developmental education.
- Scaling ACDV 101, the College’s one credit college success course required for every degree-seeking student.
- Bringing cohesion to its Comprehensive Academic Advising by blending required and voluntary participation in advising sessions at determined benchmarks.
- Incorporating Financial Literacy curriculum into the student success course; and requiring a professional development intervention entitled “The Culturally Responsive Teaching Intervention.”
Located in, and serving suburban metropolitan Baltimore, the Community College of Baltimore County boasts an enrollment of 23,500 students.
The college maintains three primary campuses and three additional satellite campuses; both complemented by an online learning catalog.
The student population at CCBC is rich in diversity, with nearly 40% of its students being students of color.
CCBC is the previous recipient of both the Bellwether Award for programs that support teaching and learning and the MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award for the services the college offers to disadvantaged populations. Providing curriculum targeted toward equity concerns is critical to the success of CCBC’s African American students, because a much larger portion of this population comes from households with incomes below the poverty line than other students.
The Achieving the Dream Model
Achieving the Dream community colleges commit to our Student-Centered Model of Institutional Improvement. Based on four principles, the model frames the overall work of helping more students, particularly low- income students and students of color, stay in school and earn a college certificate or degree.
Each college approaches the work differently, but Achieving the Dream’s five-step process provides practical guidelines for keeping the focus where it belongs and building momentum over time. Throughout the process, Achieving the Dream coaches offer customized support and help each college’s core team implement data-informed programs and policies that build long-term, institution-wide commitment to student success.
