Vision:
The Center for Student Success provides state-level support to Michigan’s 28 community colleges by serving as a hub connecting leadership, administrators, faculty, and staff in their emerging and ongoing efforts to improve student outcomes, emphasizing linkages between practice, research, and policy.
Background:
Mounting evidence suggests that a postsecondary credential will be a prerequisite for a majority of jobs in the future, resulting in growing calls from policymakers, experts, and foundations to increase educational attainment to meet labor market demands and global competition. Michigan is not immune from these pressures and, over the past several years, community colleges across the state have responded by intensifying efforts to improve student outcomes. The challenge, given the decentralized nature of higher education in Michigan, has been that college innovations are taking place in insolation on individual campuses. To address this disconnect and provide greater opportunities for colleges to collaborate, the Michigan Community College Association recently established the Center for Student Success through a generous Kresge Foundation grant. Below are the four overarching goals of the Center.
Goals:
- Enhance existing and establish new student success communities of practice through the regular exchange of information at convenings and professional development opportunities.
- Promote innovation and continuous improvement through the appropriate collection and use of data and performance metrics.
- Develop a sustained student-success research agenda based on the needs of Michigan community colleges and key issues correlated with improved student outcomes.
- Identify areas where collective, state-level policy action is warranted to enhance collaborative college efforts to innovate toward improved student outcomes.
