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Metro Momentum Pathways
Project Overview
CCA recognizes that its organizational mission to dramatically improve postsecondary attainment rates and close achievement gaps intersects well with the mission of metro regions to grow their economy and create upward mobility for their citizens. To advance its mission, CCA must work with institutions that serve large numbers of low-income, place-bound students and students of color and help these institutions achieve significantly better outcomes.
Recognizing this intersection, CCA is proud to launch the new Metro Momentum Pathways Initiative in partnership with the ECMC Foundation to help three metro regions – Southern Nevada, the Metro Milwaukee (M7) Region, and Inland Empire in California – and their postsecondary institutions scale a core set of evidence-based strategies proven to close equity gaps and generate significant gains in college completion rates. Individually, these strategies are CCA’s well-known Game Changers.
The three selected metro regions and their postsecondary institutions will benefit from CCA’s support and expertise to scale Momentum Pathways within a three-year span. The project will facilitate collaboration across institutions, building toward fully transferable pathways among partnering institutions to eliminate transfer-related credit-loss and reduce the time and cost to degree.
Metro Region
CCA defines a metro region as an area that includes a densely populated, urban core along with the less-populated surrounding territory (a commuter belt) that shares industry, infrastructure and housing. The region must serve at least 100,000 students in order to be considered for the project, evidenced by enrollments at participating institutions. Both two- and four-year institutions must be included due to high transfer rate between institutions within a given region.
Momentum Pathways Communication Plan
Complete College America’s communications plan includes talking points, timelines and resources to guide Momentum Pathways sites’ communications throughout implementation of the Game Changers. Read it here.
Regional Reflections
Each of the three Metro Momentum Pathways sites authored a final reflection about their experiences to share their learnings with the larger Alliance. These blog posts explore how working with CCA on this initiative had an impact of setting regional goals and developing strategies to address college completion and institutional performance gaps. They discuss how the CCA gamechanger strategies helped colleges and universities improve student success and how other regions could benefit from taking a coordinated and consolidated approach to leading change.
- GIA’s blog post can be found here.
- M7/HERA’s blog post can be found here.
- Southern Nevada’s blog post can be found here.
Metro Momentum Pathways
The Metro Momentum Pathways initiative capitalizes on the potential for high impact within metropolitan areas, utilizing CCA's Momentum Pathways framework while also engaging social supports to address the non-academic barriers which often hinder persistence.
