JCCC is the first and only school in Kansas to join Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative to help more community college students succeed. Achieving the Dream helps participating colleges implement strategies designed to help more students earn degrees, complete certificates or transfer to other institutions to continue their studies. The initiative emphasizes building a culture of evidence, in which colleges use data to identify effective practices, improve student success rates and close achievement gaps.

Each college participating in the initiative spends its first year taking a critical look at data to identify its challenges. Different colleges identify different needs—some focus on minority student success, for example, while others look at adult returning students. For JCCC, developmental education is the most pressing challenge. Developmental programs are those designed for students who need help in reading, writing and/or math before moving on to college-level coursework.

For example, of the 1,891 degree- and certificate-seeking students whose first time in college was in fall 2006 at JCCC, 1,311 placed into developmental math—that’s more than 7 out of every 10 students. For the 483 students who placed into Math 111, the lowest level of the sequence, only 39, or 8 percent, had completed the developmental math sequence successfully within three years. That number is 20 percent for the writing sequence and 16 percent in reading.

 “Through Achieving the Dream and the college’s engagement with developmental education, we realize a great opportunity—to help more students to complete degrees and certificates,” said Dr. Jason Kovac, executive director, academic initiatives.

This fall JCCC will launch three strategies as part of Achieving the Dream, each championed by teams of faculty and staff. The first is a First-Year Connections program, facilitated by the counselors and the division of Learner Engagement. Students who place into the lowest levels of reading and/or writing will be invited to participate in a semester-long experience that includes contributions from Learner Engagement, Student Services, Academic Affairs and other groups on campus. The students’ experience will include sessions with an assigned counselor, special programming in the campus center, college skills coursework, and two college success days—one for students, and one for their parents. Upon completion of the program, students will be awarded a scholarship that they can use in the following semester—supported in part by the JCCC Foundation—so that these students may continue toward college-level coursework.

The second of these strategies involves the math department. Three sections of college algebra will include supplemental instruction to help students be successful in this important gateway class. The department will also offer three special sections of developmental math—one section of each class in the sequence—that are designed to help students who may not need a full 16 weeks at a particular level. For the first two weeks of the semester, students in these classes will have access to special software and instruction that will help them master math skills. At the end of those two weeks, students will be placed into a level appropriate to their skill level in math. Some will stay where they originally tested, while others will move up in the sequence. The purpose is to reduce the time commitment a student has to make to proceed to college algebra.

Another component of the math strategy will be a regional mathematics education summit to be launched in summer 2011. This summit will convene math educators from area high schools, middle schools and universities to discuss challenges and opportunities. The goal is to build a stronger math pipeline as students move from one school to another and from one grade to the next.

The third strategy is a collaborative venture from the reading and writing departments, which are building a learning community for students in the lowest levels of developmental reading and writing. The learning community will launch in spring 2011 and meet five days a week. The student experience here will take place in the college’s learning studio in the Library and include software and supplemental instruction.

Achieving the Dream is a data-informed launch of innovative strategies targeting specific areas of need. Moving forward, JCCC faculty and staff will be conducting significant evaluation of these strategies as they think about which might be compelling candidates for growth.

“The ideas that we incubate, and the potential for success that we discover, could have implications for other developmental classrooms, other disciplines and other colleges around the country,” Kovac said.