tag: Community colleges
Research Report
April 28, 2021
Moving the Needle on College Student Basic Needs
National Community College Provost Perspectives
For many years, higher education data collection and funding efforts have focused on student success metrics like enrollment, graduation, retention, and course completion rates. At the same time, higher education leaders have become increasingly aware—in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic—of the vast array of challenges that college students face outside of the classroom that prevent them from fully succeeding. To shed light on the challenges and opportunities associated with the collection and prioritization of a broader set of student…
Past Event
April 28, 2021
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg and Melissa Blankstein at NISOD 2021
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg and Melissa Blankstein will unveil brand new national survey findings of community college provosts on efforts to measure and address student basic needs. Join them to discuss the current landscape of metrics for determining student success and opportunities for including new holistic student metrics going forward. For more information, please visit this site. …
Blog Post
March 3, 2021
How Can Community College Services Be Organized to Best Meet Student Needs?
Over the course of their attendance, community college students must navigate through an array of services—delivered through student affairs departments, academic affairs departments, libraries, and their instructors—to find the support they need. Whether they find that support depends in part on whether their institutions have developed effective service models and organizational strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the attendant necessity for increased remoting learning amidst enrollment declines and budgetary strains, also creates new challenges for students as well as…
Research Report
March 3, 2021
Student Focused
Fostering Cross-Unit Collaboration to Meet the Changing Needs of Community College Students
Ensuring that community college students have access to academic and student support services requires more than simply understanding students’ needs—it also requires relating those needs to actionable service models and organizational strategies. Community college students navigate ecosystems of services provided and supported by academic affairs departments, student affairs departments, libraries, and faculty. How can these ecosystems best be organized and developed to adapt to changing student needs—particularly amidst the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic?…
Blog Post
January 13, 2021
Upcoming National Survey of Community College Library Directors
We are excited to announce that Ithaka S+R will launch a national survey of community college library directors and those in equivalent leadership positions this February. This study is part of a three-year IMLS-funded initiative—the Community College Academic and Student Service Ecosystem (CCASSE) project—to examine the current landscape of student service provision at community colleges and the role of the library in best contributing toward student success within this ecosystem. Over the course of the project, we have already…
Blog Post
December 15, 2020
Ithaka S+R to Expand Transfer Improvement Efforts with CUNY
With Support from the Petrie Foundation, ACT Project Expands from Three to Seven CUNY Campuses
When students transfer from one college to another they frequently are unable to count their previously earned credits toward degree requirements at their new institutions, jeopardizing these students’ ability to earn their degrees. Nationally, 43 percent of credits are wasted during transfer, and students who lose that many credits are far less likely to graduate than students who are able to transfer most of their credits. While other…
Blog Post
November 11, 2020
Introducing our Student Advisors
Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems
In 2019, Ithaka S+R began a three-year project, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), to help community colleges and their academic libraries more effectively support their students. This project, known as Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems (CCASSE), is part of a growing program of Ithaka S+R research focused on understanding, measuring, and increasing student success at community colleges. Our first phase of…
Blog Post
October 27, 2020
Student Success, Basic Needs, and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Institutional Research Perspectives on Holistic Student Success Metrics
This year has undoubtedly been marked with unprecedented challenges for higher education, as we and others have documented through ever-building evidence from students, faculty, and administrators alike. As colleges and universities work to maintain enrollment, retention, and student learning outcomes, they are grappling with how to better understand and address the challenges their students are facing. The growing urgency to support students holistically—that…
Blog Post
September 23, 2020
A Letter to College Administrators
Considerations for Virtual Learning
Kimmy Cacciato graduated from The College of New Jersey with a major in Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education – Mathematics Teaching. This fall, she returned to TCNJ to pursue an MAT in Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education. She is currently serving as a student advisor to Ithaka S+R’s Holistic Metrics of Student Success project. Dear College Administrators, As a senior I thought I had it all figured out. But then COVID-19 hit, and the game changed. As we all experienced, there…
Blog Post
September 3, 2020
What Your Students Want to Hear
Effective Communications in the Time of COVID-19
Kimmy Cacciato is currently serving as a student advisor to the Ithaka S+R Holistic Metrics of Student Success project. She graduated from The College of New Jersey with a major in Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education – Mathematics Teaching. This fall, she is returning to TCNJ to pursue an MAT in Deaf/Hard of Hearing Education. During this time of uncertainty, effectively communicating with students is more important than ever. Campus administrators and…
Blog Post
July 14, 2020
Streamlining Transfer for CUNY Students in the Bronx
Approximately one-third of college students begin their postsecondary education in community colleges, yet over 80 percent of these students aspire to earn at least a bachelor’s degree. In order to achieve their goals, these students will need to transfer from their community colleges (which mostly offer associate’s degrees) to colleges that offer bachelor’s degrees. Yet, only 13 percent of students successfully transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree within six years of entering community college. Black and…
Blog Post
June 11, 2020
New Report Identifies Strategies for Independent Colleges Looking to Improve Transfer Pathways
Covid-19 has fundamentally altered the landscape of higher education, producing both challenges and opportunities for higher education institutions to better serve traditionally understudied student populations. Transfer students, specifically students that transfer from community colleges to four-year independent colleges, are one such population that has been historically underserved but whose needs will be all the more relevant during and after the pandemic. Enrollment shifts caused by the pandemic highlight the need for…
Research Report
June 11, 2020
Transfer Pathways to Independent Colleges
Every fall, an estimated one million American students begin their postsecondary education at community colleges. In fact, close to half of all postsecondary students start off at these institutions—especially students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. While most intend to eventually earn their bachelor’s degree, less than a third transfer-in to a four-year institution and only 13 percent actually earn their bachelor’s degree in six years. Transfer between two- and four-year institutions is a difficult pathway for students, leaving the well-documented benefits…
Research Report
June 11, 2020
Executive Summary: Transfer Pathways to Independent Colleges
COVID-19 and its aftermath highlight the urgency for innovation around community college to independent college transfer. The pandemic is expected to produce an increase in community college enrollment due to students’ inability to safely travel further from home and families’ financial situations in the current recession. Meanwhile, independent colleges facing declines in fall enrollment will need to turn to local transfer students as a source of much-needed tuition revenue. Yet, the path from community college to four-year institution is often…
Blog Post
May 18, 2020
When Knowledge Breaks
As research, teaching, and learning in higher education drastically changed over the course of a few weeks earlier this term, effectively providing campus communities with relevant—yet continually changing—information has been critical. However, as we have documented in a recent multi-institution service planning initiative, students already were facing substantial challenges with navigating the college landscape prior to the pandemic. A few years ago, LaGuardia Community College developed an online platform to provide students with answers related to college services and…
Playbook
May 18, 2020
Planning, Partnering, and Piloting
A Community College Library Service Innovation Playbook
Service Concept Testing As part of a multi-year student service innovation project, co-led by Northern Virginia Community College and Ithaka S+R, we developed and implemented a new mixed-methods assessment approach: service concept testing.[1] With participation from six additional community college partners and support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we designed, evaluated, and piloted a variety of service prototypes. In this playbook, we describe the services generated and piloted as a result of these collaborations and…
Past Event
March 3, 2020
Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success
Melissa Blankstein at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, March 3, Melissa Blankstein is presenting a poster on “Shaping Up Services: Developing Prototypes for Student Success,” at the Educause ELI Annual Meeting in Bellevue, Washington. For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. About the poster What methodologies can higher education institutions employ to develop new services that promote student success? This poster will share a data-driven approach recently implemented across a cohort of colleges: concept testing. Through concept testing, service providers can…
Past Event
February 20, 2020
Student Success Information Interventions: Helping Students Navigate College Services and Resources
Christine Wolff-Eisenberg at DREAM 2020
On Thursday, February 20, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg will be presenting on a panel, “Student Success Information Interventions: Helping Students Navigate College Services and Resources,” at DREAM 2020 in National Harbor, Maryland. Christine will be joined on the panel by Jean Amaral (Borough of Manhattan Community College), Christie Flynn (Pierce College), and Elizabeth Jardine (LaGuardia Community College). For more information and to register, please visit the conference website. About the panel Research recently conducted across seven community colleges has demonstrated the…
Blog Post
December 5, 2019
Making the CCASSE for Support Services
When we interviewed dozens of community college students about their challenges and unmet needs, many reported struggling with navigating college resources. When we subsequently heard from over 10,000 students via survey about the services they need to achieve their vision of success, the overwhelming majority responded positively to a service centered around helping students navigate these resources. Last year, we embarked on the…
Research Report
December 5, 2019
Organizing Support for Success
Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems
The Community College Academic and Student Support Ecosystems (CCASSE) project examines how academic and student support services at not-for-profit associate-degree granting colleges are organized, funded, and staffed, and how these services can most effectively advance student success. In spring 2019, we surveyed 249 chief academic and student affairs officers at community colleges across the United States on success measures, services offered, resource challenges and constraints, and vision for future service provision.