Community College Journal - April/May 2013

together ensure everyone at the table remains “laser-focused” on the end goal: student success.

A Tailored Approach

Reaching that goal won’t be easy.

Each college is different—by extension, so too are the needs of its community. Translation: What worked in one place, won’t necessarily work in another.

To bring these initiatives to scale, educators and other stakeholders must frame them in the context of their local communities. What are the needs of employers in the region? Do students face travel challenges or other obstacles that might prevent them from receiving the training and education they need to succeed? What’s the mood throughout the district?

“We may come up with a set of recommendations, but how those recommendations are implemented should be based upon the needs of the community in which the college exists,” explains Dukes.

Pathways to Completion To increase completion rates and help more students find work, many community colleges have turned their attention to the formation of academic pathways— comprehensive systems that help students identify an academic or professional interest and guide them from the moment they set foot on campus to employment in the job market.

This is a point of focus for implementation team two and an area that Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and co-chair of AACC’s 21st-Century Commission, says could be a “game-changer” for community colleges.

Learn more by reading “Premise to Promise: Developing New Pathways for Community College Students,” by McClenney and her colleagues Donna Dare and Susan Thomason, on page 56.