Celebrate Learning
Page 7
Toward a Better Shore: Achieving the
Dream at TCC
By David Charlson
Strategies students persisted into a third year if they
needed one at a rate 14 percent higher than nonStrategies students. The bar chart below presents all
this graphically.
Two recent articles in education journals seemed to
call into question "Achieving the Dream" efforts
across the nation. The articles were responses to a
report by the MDRC (a nonprofit educational research
group) and the Community College Research Center
entitled "Turning the Tide: Five Years of Achieving the
Dream at Community Colleges." that headline phrase
is hardly fair to various truly positive developments
(some even reported in the articles themselves). New
and needed conversations are instilling a "culture of
evidence" nationwide, and various successful interventions are offering hope and results, including here
at Tulsa Community College.
TCC is actually right in line with the two most prominent successes at Round 1 Colleges noted in "Turning
the Tide" (Round 1 began in 2004; TCC, a Round 4
College, joined Achieving the Dream in 2007). First,
we have an active Office of Planning and Institutional
Research that conducts ongoing analyses of student
achievement, aided by a first-rate Data Team of hardworking faculty and staff. Second, the Office has been
happy to relay the data that our "Academic Strategies" course— scaled up through Achieving the
Dream—has already produced big changes. For the
last two years, students who took Strategies persisted
from fall to spring semester at a rate 27 percent
higher than those who did not take the course;
Strategies students enrolled from fall to fall semester
(students’ second year) at a rate 20 percent higher
than those who did not take the course. Furthermore,
Fall 2008 and 2009 Combined Cohort Results
While early data is only just emerging for the
African American Male Student Success Team, positive change is already evident in the lives of dozens of
fortunate young African American men who now
have mentors this academic year, and the deep
meaning of mentoring emerged rather dramatically at
last semester's holiday celebration. Dr. Gary Crooms,
former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer for TCC, was the guest speaker, and alongside
the mentees in the audience was another black man
too, Pastor Terry Buxton. Pastor Buxton came up to
Dr. Crooms after the speech to thank him for being a
role model for him long ago, for showing him the way
to a better life. That was an amazing moment, and
the mentees saw it all.
Thomas Brock, a co-author of the "Turning the
Tide" report, has mentioned just such positive intangibles that Achieving the Dream has brought to community colleges nationwide, and I see evidence of
that every day in my role as Faculty Co-chair of
Achieving the Dream. My fellow faculty and staff tell