The Austin Community College District promotes student success and community development by providing affordable access, through traditional and distance learning modes, to higher education and workforce training, including appropriate applied baccalaureate degrees, in its service area. To fulfill its mission, the college will provide, within its available resources, the mission elements prescribed by the State of Texas:
1. Vocational and technical programs of varying lengths leading to certificates or degrees.
2. Freshman- and sophomore-level academic courses leading to an associate degree or serving as the base of baccalaureate degree program at a four-year institution.
3. Continuing adult education for academic, occupational, professional, and cultural enhancement
4. Special instructional programs and tutorial services to assist underprepared students and others who need special assistance to achieve their educational goals.
5. A continuing program of counseling and advising designed to assist students in achieving their individual educational and occupational goals.
6. A program of technology, library, media, and testing services to support instruction.
7. Contracted instruction programs and services for area employers that promote economic development.
Intended Outcomes
The Austin Community College is committed to enhanced learning success for all students. The primary goals of the College’s efforts to promote student success shall be to:
1. Increase persistence (term-to-term & fall to fall)
2. Complete developmental and adult education course progression to credit courses
3. Increase completion of all attempted courses with a “C” or better
4. Increase degree/certificate graduates and transfer rates
5. Increase success equity across all racial/ethnic/gender/ income groups
The Austin Community College District will establish institutional effectiveness measures designed to assess the College’s success in providing:
1. Balanced instructional offerings among the College’s mission elements;
2. A teaching and learning environment that encourages students to be active, life-long learners;
3. Accessible and affordable post-secondary and higher education programs and services for all who qualify and have the ability to benefit;
4. Enrollments reflecting diverse and traditionally underserved populations in numbers that represent the local populations of our Service Area;
5. Job placement from career workforce programs into family- wage careers;
6. Efficiently administered programs and services that create an institution that is a good place to work, learn, and otherwise experience the higher-education process.
7. Student success and institutional effectiveness measures and assessment results will be reviewed annually by the Board of Trustees as an indication of the College’s progress in achievement of its Strategic Plan.
Vision
The Austin Community College District will be recognized as the preferred gateway to higher education and training, and as the catalyst for social equity, economic development, and personal enrichment.
Values
The Austin Community College District values and respects each individual student. In Austin Community College District’s internal and external interactions with each other and our community, we value:
· Student success and equity in which all students have equal opportunity and support to achieve their academic goals.
· Student access to an affordable, challenging, and empowering higher education.
· Excellence, innovation, and relevance in all of our programs and services.
· Preparation of students for a globally competitive and technologically complex workplace.
· Open, honest, and respectful communication, collaboration, and teamwork in all of our operations.
· Promotion of equity as a means to understanding, an appreciation of cultural and individual differences, and a democratic society.
· Ongoing professional development by all faculty, staff, and administrators.
· The use of data and proven best practices in our evaluation processes, decision-making, and plans for continuous improvement.
· Ethical, effective/efficient, and accountable use of public resources.
· Partnerships with local, state, national, and international entities that are respectful, engaging, and help us leverage our resources and expand our expertise.
· Creation and maintenance of a sustainable, safe, and healthy environment for students and employees.
Texas Community College Education Initiative
Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) created the Texas Community College Education Initiative (TCCEI) as an affiliate of the association. Under the TCCEI auspices TACC secures grants to fund key activities like the Texas Success Center, the Developmental Education Initiative, and other initiatives from funders that include the Kresge Foundation, the Houston Endowment, the Greater Texas Foundation, the Meadows Foundation, and TG Philanthropy.
TACC
TACC is a nonprofit organization that represents 50 public community college districtions. Our primary mission is advocacy to help lead policy development, innovation and institutional practices in higher education.
We provide a common voice on behalf of member colleges during the Texas Legislative session and build relationships with state policymakers during non-session years. This voice promotes the sustainability of, and equity among, community college districts across the great state of Texas.
Catch the Next
Catch the Next, Inc. (CTN), established in 2009, is a national, award-winning professional development organization, empowering students to catch college and career dreams while empowering faculty, staff, and institutions to fulfill their professional and educational missions and visions. Catch the Next’s mission is to increase the educational attainment of Latinos and other underserved communities and to close achievement gaps in Texas.
Catch the Next, Inc. has primary responsibility for overall program planning, coordination, and administration, including fiscal and policy responsibilities for the CTN Ascender program and the Teaching and Learning for Student Success Peer Mentoring program. In addition, CTN is responsible for all program trainings, data management, analyses, and reporting, in partnership with member colleges. CTN's strategy consists in implementing data-driven professional development as well as program planning and coordination leading to a rigorous, accelerated, interdisciplinary, and culturally relevant model of instruction, student services, and engagement.
Catch the Next implements best practices in professional development through its three-part series of intensive and research-based seminars, led by skilled practitioners in the Ascender Program, as well as its Teaching and Learning for Student Success Monthly Webinar series, featuring presentations of research, teaching practices, and creative expressions of our national body of scholar, author, and community leadership mentors. This sustained professional development, all with foundations in empathetic mentoring and coaching, has proven success in the enrichment it provides to the classrooms and student interactions among our member faculty, staff, and administration.
In addition, representing the philosophy that together we are stronger than we are apart, CTN’s Teaching and Learning for Student Success program provides faculty, staff, and administrators both mentorship and continuous opportunities for professional growth by offering both presentation experience at our tri-annual seminars as well as opportunities for peer-reviewed publication through our Catch the Next Journal of Ideas and Pedagogy in addition to the professional development opportunities for both faculty and students published in our monthly newsletter.
The CTN approach to student success is founded on the following principles:
Because knowledge of academic and professional literacy practices supports academic success across disciplines, all students take an accelerated, rigorous English course with writing supports for underprepared students.
All students complete credit-bearing coursework in English and Mathematics in the first year.
Teaching and learning incorporates evidence-based, culturally relevant curricula and pedagogy.
Linked courses (cohorts) and support services, such as advising, counseling, and mentoring, are integral to the first-year experience.
Student engagement and leadership until the student graduates and/or transfers are integral to student persistence and retention.
Faculty, staff, and administrative/institutional peer mentoring and professional development with experienced scholars, researchers, and practitioners sustains teaching and learning practices for student success.
PURPOSE
Catch the Next’s mission is to increase the educational attainment of Latinos and other underserved students and to close achievement gaps in Texas. The Ascender Program (previously “Crossing Bridges, Catching Dreams”) was designed in 2012 to create a community of learning focused on the development of students and faculty and to improve individual and institutional performance and effectiveness. In the new policy climate and shifting landscape of developmental education in Texas, Catch the Next partners with member colleges to break down institutional silos, provide research-based curricular and pedagogical models, and create spaces for community and familial engagement in the effort to support student success.
As the graph of our data below shows, our model has effectively moved students out of developmental education and into credit-bearing courses. We are now poised to support the same profile of students as they begin college in co-requisite courses to ensure their ultimate attainment of bachelor’s degrees and beyond.
Texas CoReq Grant Steering Committee
Grant Co-Chairs
Gaye Lynn Scott, Associate Vice President, Academic Transfer Programs
Carolyn Reed, Department Chair/ Math Developmental, Professor, Associate
Steering Committee members:
