Celebrate Learning! Spring 2011 (Volume 2, Issue 1) | Page 7

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