Hudson County Community College Cabinet Accepts Invitation to Field-test New Executive Leadership Curriculum
August 26, 2020
August 26, 2020, Jersey City, NJ – Recently, Hudson County Community College (HCCC) President Dr. Christopher Reber accepted an invitation on behalf of the College’s leadership team to be part of a cohort of just 13 Achieving the Dream (ATD) colleges who will experience and test a new executive leadership curriculum.
Achieving the Dream is a national educational reform network whose work has had a transformational impact on the colleges with whom they partner. The ATD mission focuses on helping higher education institutions build equity and capacity in their student success initiatives by using data to inform practice.
Eight HCCC students attended the DREAM 2020 conference. Seven are pictured here with HCCC Academic Advisor and DREAM 2020 Conference Participant, Jenny Henriquez. Pictured from left: Koral Booth, Katricia Colon, Suri Hidalgo, Alcia Batchelor, Crystal Newton, Tyler Sarmiento, Hillary Kouevi, and Jenny Henriquez.
In her invitation, ATD President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Karen A. Stout wrote: “Over the past year, Achieving the Dream has worked closely with the Aspen Institute and other higher education organizations to develop a curriculum designed to help increase the capacity of senior leadership teams to scale and accelerate student success efforts, across all sectors of higher education. The working hypothesis driving the development of the curriculum – funded by the Gates Foundation – is that high-performing leadership teams are an essential component of student-success oriented transformation and that both presidents and leadership teams can take concrete steps to increase this essential organizational capacity.”
The program will include three virtual sessions — one exclusively for participating ATD college presidents, and two for college leadership teams.
“My colleagues and I are dedicated to fostering an environment that promotes student success. It is an honor to be part of this national test program, which we are certain will benefit our students, instructors and staff,” Dr. Reber said. He noted that the curriculum was developed through a process of interviews with presidents and senior college leaders as well as a document review that included ATD college leaders.
Hudson County Community College joined the Achieving the Dream Network in 2019. In becoming an ATD member college, HCCC has adapted a laser-like focus on improving key student success metrics in the areas of student engagement, retention, persistence and completion.