Achieving the Dream
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Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count is a national initiative to help more community college students — particularly low-income students and students of color — succeed. The initiative works on multiple fronts — including efforts at community colleges and in research, public engagement and public policy — and emphasizes the use of data to drive change.
Strategies identified to help more students continue their studies and earn certificates and degrees include:
- Helping students better prepare for college-level work by focusing on developmental education.
- Engaging students in the classroom through new instructional techniques that include team learning and the combining of subjects to make learning more relevant to students’ lives.
- Using student success courses to teach skills such as time management and effective study skills.
Building a Culture of Evidence - Regional Workshops
Representatives from our six senior Achieving the Dream colleges will help your team learn best practices and data tools necessary to build a culture of evidence on your campus. Each college is invited to send a team (limit of 4 people) to participate in a regional workshop. These workshops are focused on colleges that are not Achieving the Dream colleges.
- Invitation
Includes complete information including the dates and locations for each of the regional workshops.
- Agenda
- Online Registration One registration per college. Identify an Organizing Lead for your college to coordinate and register the team. It would be helpful if the VP of Instruction would serve in this capacity. The Organizing Lead will be responsible for putting together the team and will submit one online registration per college.
Best Practices
Participating Washington Colleges
There are six Washington colleges among the 23 that joined Achieving the Dream as part of the initiative’s 2006 expansion.
As the six Washington colleges complete their final year in Achieving the Dream, ten new colleges join the national initiative.
- Bellingham Technical College
- Clover Park Technical College
- Edmonds Community College
- Everett Community College
- Grays Harbor College
- Lower Columbia College
- Skagit Valley College
- Spokane Falls Community College
- Whatcom Community College
- Northwest Indian College
More information, including a full list of participants, can be found online at www.achievingthedream.org.
Funding for Achieving the Dream
College Spark Washington continues to fund this initiative in Washington State. National Achieving the Dream is funded by a collaboration of foundations including Lumina Foundation for Education, Education Assistance Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Houston Endowment Inc., Knowledge Works Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
More Information
Information about Washington state policy opportunities related to improving success for low-income students and students of color is provided in the Achieving the Dream Policy Report completed in February 2010.
For more information about Achieving the Dream, go to www.achievingthedream.org, or contact Heather Gingerich, Program Officer, at 206-461-5326 or heather@collegespark.org.
If you have questions regarding Washington colleges in Achieving the Dream, please contact Michelle Andreas, SBCTC, mandreas@sbctc.edu, or 360-704-4338.
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