Barrier busters | Achieving the Dream initiative works on many fronts to bolster students' success
If your mission is to expand access and success in postsecondary education,why focus on community colleges –- the sector of higher education typically overlooked by the media and often misunderstood by the public? Simple; because that’s where the students are –- especially the students who face the most barriers to success: those in historically underserved populations.
According to figures from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the nation’s nearly 1,200 community colleges account for 46 percent of all undergraduate enrollment –- 11.6 million students. This total includes high concentrations of low-income students, students of color and students who are the first in their families to attend college.
All of these facts make it abundantly clear why Lumina Foundation for Education has made Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count a multiyear priority. Achieving the Dream began in 2004 with Lumina funding and is now at work on 35 community college campuses in seven states. It is a partnership initiative involving 10 national organizations, including two other grant-making organizations: KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. It also involves dozens of campus leaders, practitioners and researchers; community and business representatives; and education policy-makers. Its overall aim is to improve educational outcomes for at-risk students at two-year institutions.
"College access may form the core of Lumina’s mission," said Leah Meyer Austin, the Foundation’s senior vice president for research and programs, "but helping students to persist and succeed once they enroll is inextricably linked. And the students Lumina is most intent on helping – under-served, ethnically diverse and nontraditional – are the chief reason community college enrollment is swelling."
“It was a natural because so many of these students, for a variety of reasons, begin their education in community colleges,” said Austin. Even so, when the Foundation first floated the idea that would become Achieving the Dream, “a lot of people thought we were nuts,” Austin added.
Lumina took the first step toward dispelling that notion in 2003 when it convened a symposium to discuss how community colleges might be the focus of efforts to improve student access and success. All seemed to agree that improvements are needed. Growing numbers of students are arriving at the door of higher education with lower incomes and lower levels of academic preparedness; too few are staying in school, succeeding and graduating; and community colleges are the point of entry for millions of such students.
Carol Lincoln, a senior staff associate with MDC, the North Carolina nonprofit organization that serves as the managing partner for Achieving the Dream, offered a thoughtful assessment of the situation.“Community colleges were created as places where anyone can get started on higher education, and they do a good job of providing opportunity. But they’re not doing a good enough job of moving students all the way to credentials and degrees.” Lincoln said that two-year colleges must improve instruction and curriculum and bolster support services such as tutoring and counseling so they can “make good on the commitment to help every student succeed.”
The best place to start, according to the initiative’s partner organizations, was to adopt a data-driven model to foster improvement. Community colleges have long used data to monitor student and academic trends, but rarely as part of a systemic effort to enhance student success.
“We haven’t been oblivious (to data);we’ve taken a lot of steps in the past to create early-warning markers and to emphasize advising,” said Terrance Suarez, president of Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Va. “But sometimes you lose track of what becomes of those steps over time. Now we have to take a systematic, long-range approach.”
Commitment to the long-range view is one critical component of Achieving the Dream. Another component is a commitment to the seemingly incongruous combination of cooperation and autonomy.This combination applies not only to the 35 colleges now participating, but also to the 10 organizations that form the Achieving the Dream partnership.
By nature and by habit, community colleges are independent institutions that serve regional constituents rather than state and national ones. Achieving the Dream embraces this independence. “We don’t say to colleges: ‘Here are five criteria to examine; start from here,’”Austin said. “We ask them to look at their own data and to disaggregate the data and to use that analysis to determine which direction the initiative should take (on their campus). That’s been a philosophical underpinning from the beginning. People and institutions own their own goals.”
Still, as colleges incorporate Achieving the Dream into their institutional cultures, questions remain about whether the factions within each school will truly take ownership of the initiative or simply view it as the “flavor of the month,” another well intended but short-lived reform effort.
So far, faculty members at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and other Achieving the Dream schools seem to have embraced the initiative’s aims. Debbie Nycz, president of Broward’s faculty senate, suggests there is one way to get everyone on board. “There will be a trickle-up effect when the faculty starts seeing more students who can read, do math and navigate the system better,” she predicted.
Austin cautions that the scope of the initiative is not limited to a single slice of the community college population. Nor is it limited to on-campus efforts. In addition to the more visible “in-the-trenches” efforts among faculty and students, there are facets of vitally important work taking place in other areas. First, organizations involved in the initiative work actively with elected officials and education policy-makers to improve higher education policy in Achieving the Dream states. Second, the colleges work to engage their communities, reaching out to local businesses, government agencies, K-12 school systems and civic groups to form a working partnership for change.
An early step in this outreach effort began in late 2005 and will continue in the first quarter of 2006: a series of “community dialogues” in four states in which Achieving the Dream is at work.These structured community conversations help raise public awareness about the salient –- and, yes, sometimes negative –- characteristics of the local two-year institutions. Equally important, the dialogues provide a forum for members of the community to offer ideas that can help the colleges confront their challenges and make the changes needed to improve.
“The colleges will be well served by thinking broadly about bringing in lots of stakeholders with lots of ideas to address these issues,” said Will Friedman, senior vice president and director of public engagement at Public Agenda, a New York-based nonprofit and one of the initiative’s partner organizations. Friedman, who leads the community dialogue effort, emphasized that its ultimate goal is to build a group of stakeholders who share a strong incentive to increase student success and a commitment to work together to achieve that goal.
Working together –- on many fronts and in myriad ways –- is perhaps the defining aspect of Achieving the Dream. It is an initiative as wide-ranging and multifaceted as the colleges it assists –- and as diverse as the students being served by those colleges.
“There are students who go to community colleges to meet the needs of their employer with a 30-hour certificate,” Austin pointed out. “If that’s their dream, we want to see them achieve that as well.”
According to figures from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the nation’s nearly 1,200 community colleges account for 46 percent of all undergraduate enrollment –- 11.6 million students. This total includes high concentrations of low-income students, students of color and students who are the first in their families to attend college.
All of these facts make it abundantly clear why Lumina Foundation for Education has made Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count a multiyear priority. Achieving the Dream began in 2004 with Lumina funding and is now at work on 35 community college campuses in seven states. It is a partnership initiative involving 10 national organizations, including two other grant-making organizations: KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation. It also involves dozens of campus leaders, practitioners and researchers; community and business representatives; and education policy-makers. Its overall aim is to improve educational outcomes for at-risk students at two-year institutions.
"College access may form the core of Lumina’s mission," said Leah Meyer Austin, the Foundation’s senior vice president for research and programs, "but helping students to persist and succeed once they enroll is inextricably linked. And the students Lumina is most intent on helping – under-served, ethnically diverse and nontraditional – are the chief reason community college enrollment is swelling."
“It was a natural because so many of these students, for a variety of reasons, begin their education in community colleges,” said Austin. Even so, when the Foundation first floated the idea that would become Achieving the Dream, “a lot of people thought we were nuts,” Austin added.
Lumina took the first step toward dispelling that notion in 2003 when it convened a symposium to discuss how community colleges might be the focus of efforts to improve student access and success. All seemed to agree that improvements are needed. Growing numbers of students are arriving at the door of higher education with lower incomes and lower levels of academic preparedness; too few are staying in school, succeeding and graduating; and community colleges are the point of entry for millions of such students.
Carol Lincoln, a senior staff associate with MDC, the North Carolina nonprofit organization that serves as the managing partner for Achieving the Dream, offered a thoughtful assessment of the situation.“Community colleges were created as places where anyone can get started on higher education, and they do a good job of providing opportunity. But they’re not doing a good enough job of moving students all the way to credentials and degrees.” Lincoln said that two-year colleges must improve instruction and curriculum and bolster support services such as tutoring and counseling so they can “make good on the commitment to help every student succeed.”
The best place to start, according to the initiative’s partner organizations, was to adopt a data-driven model to foster improvement. Community colleges have long used data to monitor student and academic trends, but rarely as part of a systemic effort to enhance student success.
“We haven’t been oblivious (to data);we’ve taken a lot of steps in the past to create early-warning markers and to emphasize advising,” said Terrance Suarez, president of Mountain Empire Community College in Big Stone Gap, Va. “But sometimes you lose track of what becomes of those steps over time. Now we have to take a systematic, long-range approach.”
Commitment to the long-range view is one critical component of Achieving the Dream. Another component is a commitment to the seemingly incongruous combination of cooperation and autonomy.This combination applies not only to the 35 colleges now participating, but also to the 10 organizations that form the Achieving the Dream partnership.
By nature and by habit, community colleges are independent institutions that serve regional constituents rather than state and national ones. Achieving the Dream embraces this independence. “We don’t say to colleges: ‘Here are five criteria to examine; start from here,’”Austin said. “We ask them to look at their own data and to disaggregate the data and to use that analysis to determine which direction the initiative should take (on their campus). That’s been a philosophical underpinning from the beginning. People and institutions own their own goals.”
Still, as colleges incorporate Achieving the Dream into their institutional cultures, questions remain about whether the factions within each school will truly take ownership of the initiative or simply view it as the “flavor of the month,” another well intended but short-lived reform effort.
So far, faculty members at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and other Achieving the Dream schools seem to have embraced the initiative’s aims. Debbie Nycz, president of Broward’s faculty senate, suggests there is one way to get everyone on board. “There will be a trickle-up effect when the faculty starts seeing more students who can read, do math and navigate the system better,” she predicted.
Austin cautions that the scope of the initiative is not limited to a single slice of the community college population. Nor is it limited to on-campus efforts. In addition to the more visible “in-the-trenches” efforts among faculty and students, there are facets of vitally important work taking place in other areas. First, organizations involved in the initiative work actively with elected officials and education policy-makers to improve higher education policy in Achieving the Dream states. Second, the colleges work to engage their communities, reaching out to local businesses, government agencies, K-12 school systems and civic groups to form a working partnership for change.
An early step in this outreach effort began in late 2005 and will continue in the first quarter of 2006: a series of “community dialogues” in four states in which Achieving the Dream is at work.These structured community conversations help raise public awareness about the salient –- and, yes, sometimes negative –- characteristics of the local two-year institutions. Equally important, the dialogues provide a forum for members of the community to offer ideas that can help the colleges confront their challenges and make the changes needed to improve.
“The colleges will be well served by thinking broadly about bringing in lots of stakeholders with lots of ideas to address these issues,” said Will Friedman, senior vice president and director of public engagement at Public Agenda, a New York-based nonprofit and one of the initiative’s partner organizations. Friedman, who leads the community dialogue effort, emphasized that its ultimate goal is to build a group of stakeholders who share a strong incentive to increase student success and a commitment to work together to achieve that goal.
Working together –- on many fronts and in myriad ways –- is perhaps the defining aspect of Achieving the Dream. It is an initiative as wide-ranging and multifaceted as the colleges it assists –- and as diverse as the students being served by those colleges.
“There are students who go to community colleges to meet the needs of their employer with a 30-hour certificate,” Austin pointed out. “If that’s their dream, we want to see them achieve that as well.”
