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Higher Ed Dive
Nonprofit taps 7 rural colleges to improve student success
Natalie Schwartz
Feb. 18, 2021
Dive Brief:
Achieving the Dream, a nonprofit aiming to improve community college
student success, launched a three-year initiative this week to improve
workforce development at rural schools.
Backed with nearly $3.4 million in funding, the organization will work
with an inaugural cohort of seven colleges on institutional reforms,
narrowing equity gaps and providing personalized support to students.
The initiative joins other efforts to strengthen rural schools in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Dive Insight:
The initiative means to spur the colleges to launch projects that will
help all of their students, said Karen Stout, the nonprofit's president
and CEO. Participating institutions, for instance, may change their
admissions or advising practices.
"Colleges are not taking on small, boutique, siloed, disconnected
interventions that only touch a few students and that never really get
to the structural core of the college," she said of the program.
Achieving the Dream will help the colleges determine what projects they
want to undertake. Later, the schools will examine whether those
interventions improved student success metrics such as completion
rates, Stout said.
The nonprofit selected the colleges based on their leaders' commitment
to building a culture focused on student success and whether they
served high shares of low-income students or students of color, she
said.
Although most of the schools are community colleges, the organization
also tapped a two-year institution that's part of a university system.
The seven institutions are:
Berkshire Community College, in Massachusetts.
Clovis Community College, in New Mexico.
Columbia-Greene Community College, in New York.
Halifax Community College, in North Carolina.
Louisiana State University Eunice.
Northwest Mississippi Community College.
Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College.
The cohort members will be able to help each other achieve their goals,
said Ellen Kennedy, president of Berkshire. "There's not a lot of
competition between community colleges for the same students, so
there's a lot of willingness to share things that are successful," she
said. "Our finding out what's working in New Mexico or in some of the
other regions these colleges are in will be really helpful in exploring
whether they'd work in Berkshire County."
The pandemic underscored the need to invest in rural areas,
particularly to help people participate in the digital economy, Stout
said.
It has also highlighted the extent to which some rural students lack
reliable internet access. Conditions for some may improve, however. The
Federal Communications Commision in December awarded $9.2 billion in
contracts to provide high-speed internet to some 5 million rural homes
and businesses.
Achieving the Dream's initiative follows another recent effort to
strengthen rural schools. Education Design Lab late last year selected
five rural community colleges to create new postsecondary education
pathways. The nonprofit plans to publish a report on rural learners'
needs and highlight models that bring their communities more economic
mobility.
Read this and other stories at Higher Ed Dive
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