Conference Schedule

Over the past decade, the number of community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees has increased substantially. Once limited to just a handful of locations and a few niche degrees, today 24 states and 145 public community colleges offer bachelor’s degrees in nearly 700 programs, ranging from computer science, to nursing, to teaching, to management. These degree programs are expanding access to affordable and convenient baccalaureate education to community college students in both urban and rural settings. This session will explore how community college baccalaureate programs fit into the community college mission, how they can address equity gaps in degree attainment, and how they can help diversify talent pathways and support the local economy. It will include findings from recent inventory of institutions and programs by New America as well as research on student demographics and outcomes. The session will also include leaders from pioneering ATD colleges that have developed highly successful baccalaureate programs across a range of disciplines.

Pre-registration required.
 

College Promise programs – including over 348 local and 33 statewide programs plus the District of Columbia, seek to eliminate financial and systemic barriers to an affordable, quality postsecondary education that includes essential student supports. While recent proposals for a federal-state partnership seemed headed toward making college education as universal, free, and accessible as high school, stalled efforts jeopardize the nation’s ability to remain competitive in the global marketplace, to create pathways to economic and social mobility, and to prepare an educated citizenry. This session will make the case for why College Promise is worth the additional investments of our time, effort, and money; explore emerging models designed with equity goals in mind; and highlight the role of community college leaders in building internal and community support.

In recent years ATD colleges have devoted greater attention to teaching and learning, understanding that meaningful changes in classroom pedagogy can deepen student learning and success. Faculty and administrators are collaborating to implement promising instructional practices; and cross-functional campus teams are strengthening professional learning programs to support full-time and part-time faculty as they take up these innovative approaches. In this spotlight session, three ATD colleges will share their progress in building capacity in teaching and learning. We will highlight their efforts to strengthen professional learning as a lever for institutional change and their accomplishments with implementation of open educational resources and adaptive learning technologies to advance student success.

Invitation only.

This reception will welcome colleges and universities not currently in ATD's Network to DREAM. It will provide an overview of Achieving the Dream for colleges and universities that have never participated in ATD's Network or have stopped out and are not currently active. Through a set of fun activities and short testimonials, attendees will gain an understanding of the impact of ATD on colleges and their student success efforts.

Colleges across the country are using ATD’s Teaching & Learning Toolkit to build capacity for equity-focused change. Filled with the latest research, college case studies, and planning tools, the Toolkit is a powerful resource for ATD colleges seeking to strengthen professional learning and advance equity in student outcomes.

In this DREAM Lab we will focus on a process through which college teams can leverage the Toolkit to examine a range of evidence-based instructional practices; identify courses that would benefit from the introduction of these practices; and then design high-impact professional learning to support full-time and part-time faculty as they implement and scale the use of these pedagogies and practices.

As institutions seek to expand access, ensure equity, and remove barriers to student success. they must consider opportunities to structure pathways and course offerings to meet the competing demands of the students they serve. Post-traditional students need to be able to balance work, family, and education. To address these needs, a growing number of institutions are exploring promising strategies such as guided pathway design. To ensure guided pathways are a success, institutions must ensure that courses are scheduled in alignment to the pathway and accommodate student demand.

One of the most frequently asked questions is how to use data to understand the impact of pathways as an equity strategy. Learn one institution’s approach to using pathways and aligning the course schedule to expand access, ensure equity, and improve student success.

(Advance Registration Required)

Join this DREAM Studio for a hands-on exploration of how to use open pedagogy and digital tools to advance equity in student learning. Using ATD’s new Culturally Relevant Teaching with OER Faculty Resource Guide as a framework, session attendees will learn how the flexibility of openly licensed content, paired with culturally responsive and other equity-focused teaching practices, can be used to create a sense of belonging and deliver powerful, student-centered learning experiences, whether in the classroom or online.

The Culturally Relevant Teaching with OER Faculty Resource Guide showcases tools, classroom strategies, examples from the field, and curated resources that provide an alternative to the traditional white and Euro-centric learning content found in most academic textbooks. Using course content that can be freely revised and remixed to reflect the interests, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds of all students can be a powerful way to deepen learners’ engagement with and connection to their learning. This session is ideal for faculty, faculty developers, instructional designers, library staff, and other college staff interested in learning how to design and deliver equitable and innovative instruction.

Pre-registration required.

Last year, as the pandemic forced colleges to close their physical spaces, it accelerated a realization that had been coming for over a decade: the traditional bookstore approach to providing students with their textbooks is not a viable long-term solution.

Campus bookstores no longer serve as a strong and reliable source of income for many institutions and this has long been a concern of CFOs. However, many institutions fail to recognize the impact on students of the failing bookstore model and that declining revenues are nothing but a symptom of a model that is no longer fit for purpose. 65% of students skip buying textbooks due to cost, putting them at an immediate disadvantage vs their peers and reducing their chances of academic success.

This talk will introduce the concept of Universal Learning, a new approach to textbook accessibility and affordability that presents the possibility of equalizing access to opportunity across the entire higher education system. Universal Learning is about ensuring all students have access to the content they need, on the first day of class—in ways that can have a transformative impact on student persistence, retention, and success.

Hear how South Piedmont Community College has implemented the Universal Learning solution to enable more efficient, effective, and equitable learning. Not only has it allowed for universal access to digital content at a lower cost to students, but also provides SPCC faculty and leadership with actionable insights to improve student outcomes.

Community college students represent fewer than half of all transfer students matriculating to selective institutions and are underrepresented compared with students coming from high school or transferring from other four-year institutions. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, through its Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship, works to help change this pattern by supporting top-performing community college students in transferring to a four-year college and going on to fulfilling professional lives in whatever fields they choose. This presentation will share scholarship program goals and review key performance indicators demonstrating the strengths and success of Cooke Transfer Scholars.

(Advance Registration Required)

As institutions of learning, credentialing and economic mobility for a student population that is 50% ethnically and racially minoritized, community colleges play an essential role in catalyzing equitable and economically vibrant communities. However, for this to be achieved, institutions must commit to a thoughtful process of direct influence that starts with seeing and understanding local communities in new ways, improving educational access and affordability for historically marginalized populations, and tracking the right institutional and community metrics to ensure progress and success.

Learning from several large-scale community collaboratives and drawing from a new ATD data guide, participants will explore a) institutional measures of access, affordability, and student progression for tracking timely completion and upward mobility and b) vibrancy metrics that can help colleges and their partners measure impact in their community over time. Several resources for understanding the latest workforce trends and creating urgency for new partnerships among employers, colleges, and community leaders will be shared as well ATD’s new data guide.

Sponsored by Cengage.

While there is growing consensus that COVID-19 has transformed higher education, and that student success must lie at the heart of a full recovery, to date, there is limited empirical evidence on how institutions of higher education can effectively prepare for the next normal. Utilizing the case study methodology, this session focuses on work undertaken by a two-year institution to address the simultaneous challenges of declining enrollment, increasing financial costs, and the need to better demonstrate value to students and the community. By aligning program offerings with the emerging needs of the pandemic impacted community, Mohawk Valley Community College (NY) was able to stabilize enrollment in key areas, align programs with community needs, and demonstrate how program offerings aligned to a livable wage in the community, subsequently demonstrating increased value to students and the broader community. As institutions continue to search for approaches that can help sustain enrollment challenges, this case study offers an approach that has left the institution and community better off than when the COVID-19 pandemic began.

(Advance Registration Required)

Student parents are most often adult learners and minoritized. Investing in the postsecondary success of the one in four community college students who are parents is one of the most effective strategies for accelerating families’ economic and social mobility and addressing longstanding societal inequalities. Yet, our colleges are not typically designed to support the success of these students and the many intersecting identities they hold. Helping student parents navigate the college experience requires institutions to look closely at their structures, policies, and processes that impact this population of students.

In this session ATD will showcase a new process that can be used with institutions to realize strengths and areas of opportunity in their efforts to support student parent success. Participants will engage with colleagues from an exemplar institution that has designed supports for student parents, explore strategies that can be implemented to meet the needs of student parents. and leave with actionable steps that are tailored to their institution and student parent population.

Pre-registration required.

Sponsored by ACUE.

We see nationwide how initiatives such as Strong Start to Finish, Complete College America, and Jobs for the Future’s Student Success Centers set priorities, generate momentum and create proof points to accelerate change. Learn how the Ohio Association of Community Colleges modeled a similar approach to those initiatives by scaling student success statewide. Panelists from the Ohio Association of Community Colleges will lead a discussion focused on how 23 community colleges across Ohio support the urgent need to scale quality online instruction and strategies for achieving success for all students through faculty development in evidence-based teaching practices. The panel will include college leaders and faculty perspectives sharing their experience implementing the faculty development programs. During the conversation, the panelists will also share early-stage faculty impact data.