Student Completion
At Anne Arundel Community College (AACC), we recognize the completion agenda as a transformational call to action. Recent seminal works from the American Association of Community Colleges and others leave no doubt that “taking on bold ideas and dramatic change is the only way to meet college completion goals” (American Association of Community Colleges, 2014, p. 3). Further, as a member of Achieving the Dream, we know that dramatic change cannot happen without “designing all interventions with equity and scale in mind” (Achieving the Dream, 2017, para. 1). This article explores the use of...
Since the launch of the American Graduation Initiative in 2009, the call to increase college graduation rates and to create a better educated workforce for the jobs of the future has become nearly universal. According to Former President Obama, speaking at the University of Texas on August 9, 2010, “in a single generation, [the U.S. has] fallen from first place to 12th place in college graduation rates for young adults" (as cited in de Nies, 2010, para. 3). He advocated for America to “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” by 2020 (as cited in Fry, 2017,...
Midland College (MC) has been named as a Cadre 1 community college to participate in an integrated statewide approach to student success. For the past two years, MC has been designing and implementing a pathways model with clear, educationally coherent program maps that are aligned for program completion, quality credentials, workforce skills, and transferability for baccalaureate and graduate degrees. As a result of MC’s efforts, the college has been recognized as a leader in the Texas Success Center’s Texas Pathways initiative, and the MC developmental math program has been named as...
Snead State Community College launched the College Completion Agenda in 2010 to encourage student success with the ultimate goal of earning an associate degree. The initiative became the one thing at the college that drives everything faculty and staff do to encourage student success.
Snead State was the first two-year college in Alabama to sign on to the College Completion Agenda, which developed out of a Call to Action signed by six key educational organizations: Phi Theta Kappa National Honor Society, American Association of Community College, Association of Community College Trustees,...
Students of color, males in particular, face significant challenges in higher education. African American male students, on average, are less successful than other racial/ethnic groups, including African American women. Compared to Asian/Pacific Islander or White/Non-Hispanic students, they are less likely to succeed in both developmental and college-level coursework and are more likely to drop out. Latino students are the least likely of all racial/ethnic groups to transfer. African American students and Latino males have the lowest persistence rates (Elgin Community College, 2010).
Students...
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In the fall of 2009, the first cohort of more than 100 ninth-grade students were admitted into Early College High School at Midland College (ECHS@MC). The school focuses primarily on serving first-generation college students, those with a low socioeconomic status, and/or those whose ethnicities are underrepresented at the college level.
Today, Midland College (MC) and the Midland Independent School District (MISD) have recognized three cohorts of graduates from the successful program. Over 85 percent of those students received associate degrees from Midland College at the same time they...
March
2015
In fall 2012, I applied for a Learning Challenge Grant to develop and present a hands-on workshop that would introduce a counseling, assessment, and retention tool (CART) system to the Electronics Engineering Technology (EET) department faculty and staff at Sinclair Community College (SCC). After this workshop, the goal was to offer it to the Science, Mathematics, and Engineering (SME) division, then to all SCC faculty.
The workshop was requested to:
Develop teamwork within the EET department;
Enhance the overall success rate of students and faculty by implementing a system to increase the...
2015
This file includes the References list for Expanding Opportunity for All: How Can We Increase Community College Student Completion?
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February
2014
As colleges strive to improve student success and completion, helping students delay pregnancy and parenting (or having additional children) means one less factor that can interfere with their college education. However, pregnancy planning and prevention is not something most community colleges have addressed. Free resources are now available for colleges, including three short and easy-to-use online lessons that have been shown to improve students' knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intent when it comes to preventing unplanned pregnancy.
Unplanned Pregnancy and College Completion
Unplanned...
2014
Beginning in fall 2011, as part of a three-year Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant-funded intervention, nine urban, small town, and rural U.S. community colleges were selected to adopt a Facebook-based application, known as Schools App, for limited use by invited students, staff, faculty, and administrators.
This report on the Getting Connected Project provides an overview of this research, which was the first longitudinal research study to use real-time data generated by the users of Schools App to examine how commuter-based community colleges attempt to use social media technology...
