By: Ashley Ruby
“Thought you might like this!”
Just a few short years ago, a colleague sent me an email touting the subject line above. It was an informational piece from Complete College America proclaiming the famous ‘Game Changer strategies’. Driven by my own best judgment and that single email, I took it upon myself to implement some of the Complete College America Game Changers at my institution.
Using the ‘act now, apologize later’ approach, I weaved CCA’s 15 to Finish campaign into our native academic advising program in an intentional and meaningful way, beginning with the student’s first on-campus experience. This resulted in a 4-percentage point increase in the number of students enrolling in at least 15 credits per semester in one short year; many of those same students going on to achieve success in those and subsequent courses. I have never had to apologize for my ‘act now’ impulses.
Complete College America casts a wide net of engagement. It was by happenstance that I recently came upon an email inviting readers to join CCA’s network of Content Experts, passed along to me by that same colleague. While I was unsure that I could provide enough meaningful contributions to ever be considered for this prestigious role and spent weeks weighing the decision to apply, I finally went for it. The reward came shortly thereafter with an invitation to join the Complete College America Content Expert team. What. An. Honor.
I barely had time to absorb the news when CCA invited me to my first event – the West Virginia Momentum Planning Academy this past September in Charleston, West Virginia. I was to attend as a Content Expert and share my strategies and best practices with the great folks from West Virginia’s public universities and community and technical colleges.
The Academy was an overwhelmingly energizing experience. As a Content Expert, my sole purpose was to share my knowledge and skills with regard to my CCA strategy of Proactive Advising, my designated area of expertise. So essentially, I got to talk to like-minded higher education people about the stuff I live and breathe in my professional life – how wonderful. As the Director of Advising & Academic Success at my institution, this suits my skill set perfectly. Furthermore, I oversee many different components of student success in addition to advising, so while I can certainly speak to impactful advising strategies, I can also talk about corequisite remediation, academic maps, technology implementation, and more. CCA served as the vehicle for me to share the work I do at my small rural community college on a wide public platform in an inviting environment.
What I did not expect to experience in this role was the intense feeling of accomplishment I felt at the end of each day. While workdays sometimes speed by as if on ‘auto-pilot’, serving as a Content Expert has allowed me to take a scenic detour to reflect on the long-term impacts I have made and continue to make on student success. No moment in my professional career so far has resulted in this type of enlightenment.
Through this work, I have also gained a new network of equally committed and student-centered professionals; or as CCA Senior Vice President Bruce Vandal calls us, the ‘Secret Sauce.’ My new Content Expert colleagues are people I know I will call on from time to time and look forward to collaborating with at future CCA events.
My experience to date as a CCA Content Expert has been a profound reinforcement of two distinct career elements – I love what I do and I am doing good work. It has helped me to push for nothing less than excellence in the many ways I serve my institution and our students with results that demonstrate as much.
Take a chance. Do the thing. Make a difference. Complete College America has reminded me that my work does, indeed, matter.
