Skip to content
Subscribe Donate
Joining Forces: How Students Success Centers Are Accelerating Statewide Community College Improvement Efforts

October 1, 2013

At a Glance

There’s an emerging trend in the national college completion movement: Student Success Centers are creating statewide impact by organizing state community colleges around common action and accelerating student completion efforts.

Topics

There’s an emerging trend in the national college completion movement. A group of small but powerful Student Success Centers is creating statewide impact in states traditionally devoid of a strong centralized tradition of community college governance. Growing directly out of a decade of hard work to dramatically boost student completion rates in the community college, Student Success Centers organize a state’s community colleges around common action to accelerate their efforts to improve student persistence and completion.

Student Success Centers have been created in five states to date: Arkansas, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas. Colleges in these states felt they could benefit from: more coordination and collaboration across the colleges; common data definitions that would provide comparable information; shared professional development venues; and the time and space to think, exchange, and discuss strategy and execution. In essence, the Centers were developed to “connect the dots” between the many initiatives underway in their states.

Related Content

Impact Story

Postsecondary Network

Reforming math in Florida, ensuring equity in Washington, boosting student support in Michigan, partnering with the workforce system in New Jersey—JFF’s renowned network advances policies and practices that help all students attain high-value credentials. Reforming…

April 18, 2018
Impact Story

Leadership Academy

The Leadership Academy connects and supports a network of community leaders, building an understanding of future work and learning trends, and creating opportunities for reflection and design of whole-community strategies that best prepare young residents…

June 19, 2020
Project

Policy Leadership Trust

This select group of education leaders lets experience be their guide in developing state and federal policies that help students attain credentials for greater success in the labor market. In 2015, JFF established The Policy…

May 7, 2018