Hudson County Community College Joins Achieving the Dream to Pursue Transformative Change, Improve Student Success
May 9, 2019
Jersey City, NJ / May 9, 2019 – Recently, Hudson County Community College (HCCC) announced that it has joined Achieving the Dream (ATD), a network of more than 220 colleges in 43 states dedicated to improving student success. As an ATD Network institution, HCCC will innovate to implement, align, and scale cutting-edge reforms, work with ATD coaches to build institutional capacity, and connect with peers to foster learning and share information.
“Joining ATD will assist Hudson County Community College in moving to the next level of excellence,” said HCCC President Dr. Chris Reber. "In working with ATD, we look forward to continuous improvement in the College’s capacity to address our students’ diverse interests and needs, and participating with them in achieving their academic goals and their lifetime dreams.”
“The strength of local and regional economies, our ability to rebuild the middle class, and the possibility that a new generation will achieve their goals depends on community colleges,” said Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of Achieving the Dream. “Colleges that join the ATD Network show an exceptional commitment to becoming the kind of institution that will lead the nation into the future.”
ATD offers a capacity-building framework and companion self-assessment that allow colleges to pinpoint strengths and areas for improvement across seven institutional capacities in areas such as leadership and vision, teaching and learning, and data and technology. ATD’s approach integrates and aligns existing college success efforts and offers valuable support in preparing for accreditation, fostering conversation about goals, and making bold, holistic, institution-wide changes because initiatives that don’t reach most of a college’s student body have not shown strong results.
A team from Hudson County Community College will meet with leaders from 15 other colleges in Phoenix, Arizona in June to plan the launch of their ATD work. The work at HCCC will initially focus on identifying and developing key performance indicators that reflect the College’s progress in achieving its strategic goals for student success in both instructional and non-instructional endeavors.
ATD Network colleges report data using metrics that answer critical questions about who attends college, who succeeds in and after college, and how college is financed. To advance goals of social mobility and equity, the metrics provide information on how low income and other underserved students fare. These metrics are categorized into performance metrics, efficiency metrics, and equity metrics at points during the student experience from access through post-college outcomes.
As colleges in the new cohort progress, they may apply to participate in initiatives supported by philanthropic funding and managed by ATD. These initiatives help incubate new ideas that help colleges refine practices based on evidence of what works and allow ATD to disseminate knowledge to the broader network and the field. New initiatives address the challenge of engaging adjunct faculty more deeply as key members of colleges’ workforces and implementing degree programs using open educational resources (OER).