The districts implements Achieving the Dream initiative
By: Joe Douglas
– Editor-in-Chief –
On Aug. 27, St. Louis Community College offices and classrooms closed at 1:30 p.m. in order for faculty and staff to attend the kick-off meeting for Achieving the Dream.
The four-year, data-driven program looks at information collected in Banner Self-Service from the current and prior academic years to help faculty and staff-based teams find trends in student success issues. The goal of the program is to increase community college student success rates with a focus on minority and low-income students.
“I’m really excited about an initiative that gets us to talk about [student success] collectively all of the time,” said Donna Dare, Ph.D., STLCC vice chancellor of academic and student affairs and co-chair of the Student Success Team.
The Student Success Team and Data Team, designed specifically for Achieving the Dream and composed of Meramec faculty and staff, will spend the next four years looking at data to see what strategies have been working and which haven’t.
“It’s all about really measurable outcomes,” said Teresa Huether, coordinator for Achieving the Dream for STLCC. “We really want to make sure that whatever we’re doing is going to have results.”
From there, it will work with administrators, faculty and staff to create programs and implement changes to address the most common and damaging issues that prevent community college students from succeeding.
According to Achieving the Dream, student success will be measured to improve student progression at rates which students successfully complete remedial or developmental courses; enroll in and successfully complete initial college-level and gatekeeper courses; complete the courses they take with grades of C or better; persist from one term to the next; and earn a certificate or associate degree.
“Whatever we choose to do will be to accomplish those goals,” Huether said.
As Meramec enters its first year with the program, the Student Success Team will spend this year analyzing the data and brainstorming strategies based on what they decide are the greatest issues. The team had its first meeting on Sept. 9, to introduce its importance and goals for the upcoming years.
“We can’t say what we’re going to change until we’ve decided what we need to change, and that’s what this whole year is for,” said Linden Crawford, Meramec vice president of student affairs. “But what we do will be dependent on what this team does to assess our processes and our educational outcomes.”
Huether said by April, the team will have its ideas prepared. By May, they will be finalized and STLCC can begin preparing the changes for the 2011-2012 academic year.
Throughout next year, the Student Success and Data Teams will evaluate the effectiveness of the decisions made this year.
“If we are improving, then we’re going to keep going at it. If we’re not, we’ll tweak it or make another decision,” Huether said.
Throughout this first year, Huether will be holding student Focus Groups with help from faculty and staff from each STLCC campus so students can communicate what issues affect them most from their perspectives.
“We can look at all the data in the world, but until we have input from the stakeholders, if you will, about what those things mean, the data is pretty meaningless without some interpretation and analysis,” Dare said.
The data-driven change initiative was designed in 2004 to help community colleges address the obstacles that prevent students from succeeding in college. According to a STLCC press release, STLCC is the first community college in Missouri to take part in the program. Only 26 other colleges received the honor this year and only 105 colleges have been chosen before.
“I’m kind of excited about all of us kind of polarizing around a big goal of student success,” Crawford said. “Again, reaffirming that, I think that’s the goal that anybody who works here certainly supports, but it gives new meaning to that and new energy to that and that’s exciting to me.”
