Volume 1, Issue 1
Why Achieving the Dream Matters at TCC
Background
Tulsa Community College has
been involved with Achieving
the Dream since 2007, focusing
efforts on understanding and
improving persistence rates for students. At the heart of
our ongoing conversations with students, staff, and faculty is how to address the challenges students face in
attaining college success. In our open acceptance environment, our struggle is in measuring our students’ success against critical factors of (a) three- or four-year
degree/certificate attainment rates, (b) developmental
course success rates, (c) gateway/introductory general
education course success rates, and (d) semester retention rates (particularly within the first year).
cal and institutional in relationship to these factors, guiding Achieving the Dream partners to look for interventions that not only acknowledge the inherent challenging
patterns associated with income, race/culture, and gender, but also seeks to address the societal, institutional,
and historic practices that drive the invisible barriers
that many of our students face each semester. In other
words, our interventions need to do more than make it
easier for those who already have a bank of support
resources; instead, our interventions need to establish
essential resources for those students who are part of
historically underrepresented groups, those who have
survived in spite of institutional, hegemonic practices
and thinking that often perpetuate student failure within
education and society.
Why do we struggle with these factors? We struggle
because our conversations and encounters with our students reveal that the story of persistence is deeper,
more complex, and more elusive than statistics can depict. The numbers represent the problem, but the stories
of our students paint pictures of individuals with varying
educational backgrounds, social difficulties, physical
and emotional challenges, and economic concerns—all
so diverse that simple solutions fail to counter the many
situations our students face.
Latest Achieving the Dream Research Findings with
TCC Students, Staff, and Faculty
So how does Achieving the Dream make a difference in
our common struggle? First, Achieving the Dream provides a matrix to develop institutional processes for
solving complex problems related to student success.
Additionally, by partnering with Achieving the Dream,
we connect ourselves with a wealth of national research
and lessons learned from our community college peers
who face the same challenges in helping students find
the path to achieving their educational and career
dreams. We also have an accountability factor, social
equity, which guides the focus of our efforts. The issue of
equity helps us frame the severity of problems we observe beyond surface-level statistics. A measure of success that observes low persistence rates among students
with low-income, of color, or of male gender becomes
of greater significance through the historical lens of equity.
Faculty and students have identified other issues of