Pathways Creation, Student Basic Needs, and Network Development at PBCCs & HBCCs

CCA is particularly attentive to populations too often left behind in college completion efforts. This imperative requires that we focus efforts on institutions that have not had equal access and subsequently did not participate in previous college completion initiatives.  Historically, the institutions who have had the least access serve the most vulnerable of our students.  This project seeks to address those exact issues by focusing on Predominantly Black Community Colleges (PBCC) and Historically Black Community Colleges (HBCC) and their adult students of color. 

Goals

• Create a comprehensive network for all PBCCs/HBCCs to promote expertise, share resources across institutions, and promote culturally relevant learnings to all PBCC/HBCCs. 
• Support PBCCs/HBCCs to develop and utilize well-sequenced pathways that align academic programs, career choice, workforce needs, and credentials of value to meet the unique needs of adult learners of color.  
• Emphasize bundled supports to keep students on-track on these pathways, allowing them to maintain momentum to on-time completion. 
• Utilize data to identify disparities and to develop and implement culturally relevant strategic interventions to meet the identified needs.  
• Increase the national visibility, evidence-base, and prominence of PBCCs/HBCCs – their history and their critical role in shaping higher education.

Overview

As the CCA student success strategies have become woven into the national college completion agenda, the opportunity to fully participate in these efforts, focusing practices and policies, on achieving equitable student outcomes has not always been afforded to many PBCCs/HBCCs.  

This project is centered around engaging institutional leadership in appropriately identifying and responding to the needs of their adult students of color. Combining this student-centric approach that emphasizes institutional accountability with the establishment of baseline data for individual and collective student outcomes across the cohort will provide an opportunity to measure institutional progress toward eliminating different educational outcomes by race and age. Many of the institutions we will partner with for this investment need direct technical assistance and infrastructure support to fully actualize their student success plans. The development of a cohort of content experts from within the institutions will serve to build internal capacity for increased collaboration and resource sharing. The establishment of a network for collaboration and partnership will contribute to building a community with the necessary resources to empower students and support their needs and success.