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She accomplished her education goals but swapped career aspirations when CCD announced a new initiative to help first-generation students succeed in college. The program, La Familia Scholars, was designed to stem the high dropout rate among low income, first-generation Hispanic students, a group that makes up a third of CCD’s population.

“I’ve always had a heart for first-time students,” says Valverde, who recalls her own foray into postsecondary education as “difficult” and her transfer to the University of Colorado as “a major culture shock.” Now a senior case manager at CCD, she is part of a team that reaches out to adult learners with a range of support services. These services — peer mentoring, learning communities, intervention and tutoring — have significantly improved the school’s graduation rate.

“College was really intimidating for me,” says Cindy Mora, 40, a recent CCD graduate who was mentored by Valverde and then joined the CCD staff as a peer mentor and student ambassador herself. “This is a wonderful program. It’s a good feeling to help students because I know where they’re coming from. I was there, too.”

Mora, now working on a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, continues to guide incoming CCD students through their transition to campus life. Among her current group of charges is her son, D.J. “He wants to take his core classes here and then transfer to a four-year school,” says Mora.

Engaging the adult learner
At age 18, D.J. Mora doesn’t fit the “typical” profile of a community college student. Statistics indicate that a more accurate description of today’s learner is an older adult who attends class on a part-time basis, has family responsibilities, works out of the home and commutes to school.  Just as the demographics of these students are different, so are their needs.

Tuning into the students' needs and measuring how well community colleges address them are among the goals of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Supported in part by a $1.47 million grant from Lumina Foundation, CCSSE has surveyed 33,500 students enrolled in 48 community and technical colleges to help assess academic quality, identify good educational practices and target areas that need improvement. The Community College of Denver was among the 12 schools in the pilot test of the CCSSE questionnaire.

“It was one of the first to step up to the plate,” says Kay McClenney, CCSSE project director. “CCD is recognized nationally for its exceptional work in helping underserved populations and underprepared students. It’s one of the few public institutions in the country that can point to data demonstrating that the school has closed the achievement gap between white students and their minority peers.”

Recruiting colleges to participate in the study has not been difficult, according to McClenney, because the survey addresses issues that genuinely concern the schools: access to education, teaching, retention and learning. Beginning in fall 2003, CCSSE will report survey findings in terms of five national benchmarks. These benchmarks will help measure active and collaborative learning, student effort, academic challenge, student-faculty interaction and support for learners.

As with the pilot study, results will be published on the CCSSE Web site and in print. “We’re committed to publicly reporting survey findings,” says McClenney. “The schools like this approach and say, ‘Let’s be straightforward; let’s help people understand the work we’re trying to do; let’s be open in addressing the places where we need to do better.’ ”

Members of the CCSSE team anticipate that community colleges will grapple with the findings and look for ways to improve educational practices that lead to higher retention rates and enhanced levels of student learning. To give the schools practical help in those improvement efforts, the project includes a series of workshops conducted by experts from the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development. On the policy side, McClenney hopes to increase decision makers’ understanding of the challenges that community colleges face.

“We want to help them find ways to create policy conditions that make it not only possible but inescapable for colleges to attend to quality issues.”