Achieving the Dream bestows highest honor to two community colleges for improved student success

Achieving the Dream (ATD), a national organization committed to advancing community colleges as accessible hubs of learning, credentialing, and economic mobility, today awarded the Leah Meyer Austin Award, its highest recognition, to Chattanooga State Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College. 

The award, given annually, signifies a college’s adoption of practices and strategies leading to a student-focused culture, notable increases in student outcomes, and a reduction of equity gaps. The announcement was made today at ATD’s annual DREAM conference, which brought over 2,000 community college leaders, faculty, student affairs staff, and other higher education practitioners to the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. 

“Selection for the Leah Meyer Austin Award is a highly competitive process,” noted ATD President and CEO Dr. Karen A. Stout. “Winners of this award do not just demonstrate pockets of excellence; they employ a holistic approach to student success that permeates their entire institution and results in whole-college transformation. Chattanooga State and Southwestern Oregon community colleges have the bold leadership and the across-the-board commitment of faculty and staff that make them true standouts in their student success efforts. I congratulate them wholeheartedly on their achievements.” 

Chattanooga State Community College 

Chattanooga State Community College joined the ATD Network in 2016, received the Network’s Leader College status in 2019 and Leader College of Distinction status in 2023.  

The college’s latest strategic plan, Vision 2027, has inspired numerous reform efforts that have favorably impacted student success rates. The shift from 15-week to seven-week terms, a more personalized and relationship-based academic advising system, a strengthened commitment to basic needs assistance and wrap-around student support services, as well as the implementation of an affordable learning resources (ALR) program that provides course materials for $50 or less have all contributed to noteworthy increases in student success that are borne out by data. 

For example, Chattanooga State’s fall-to-fall persistence rate from the fall 2019 cohort to the fall 2022 cohort saw a 7.1 percentage-point gain. Moreover, the credit completion rate jumped from 54.6% among the 2020 fall cohort to 66.4% among the fall 2023 cohort — a striking increase of 11.8 percentage points.  

In addition, as the result of the college’s focus on creating college-to-university agreements and outlining course roadmaps to complete a Tennessee Transfer Pathway, there has been an 8.2 percentage-point climb, from the fall 2015 cohort to the fall 2018 cohort, in the rate of students who transfer and earn a baccalaureate degree within six years of matriculating. 

The institution has also placed great emphasis of late on bolstering completion rates for gateway English and math courses. The adoption of a co-requisite model that places students in supplemental learning support classes alongside their college-level courses, the placement of embedded tutors in the support classes, and enhanced services in the college’s academic support centers, as well as through online tutoring, have resulted in significant gains: Gateway math completion rose from 38.5% among the fall 2020 cohort to 49.5% among the fall 2023 cohort, increasing 11 percentage points, while completion rates for gateway English grew by 17.2 percentage points, from 49.3% to 66.6%. 

“We are deeply honored to receive the Leah Meyer Austin Award from Achieving the Dream,” said Chattanooga State Community College President Dr. Rebecca Ashford. “This recognition is a testament to the bold, innovative work our faculty and staff have done to remove barriers and create real opportunities for students to thrive. Receiving the Leah Meyer Austin Award will only strengthen Chattanooga State’s commitment to ensuring every student has the support they need to reach their full potential and to improve their lives.” 

Southwestern Oregon Community College 

Southwestern Oregon Community College has been an ATD institution since 2012, when it joined the Network as one in a group of nine rural Oregon community colleges. The institution achieved Leader College status in 2015, which it held until 2021 and regained in 2023.  

Southwestern’s dedication to student success has long been rooted in its responsiveness to community needs, and the college has particularly excelled in its recent efforts to engage and support its district’s adult learner population. Recognizing that adult learners are often forced to balance their studies with work and family responsibilities, the college has implemented several reforms that benefit both adult learners and part-time learners — two subpopulations that often overlap. By creating specialized advising and new age- and lifestyle-appropriate student orientations; performing a thorough evaluation of both its communication practices as well as its portfolio of academic and workforce programs; and improving its online services, which are often utilized by adult learners who appreciate the convenience, Southwestern has realized several notable improvements. 

For example, in comparing the 2017 cohort to the 2020 cohort, the four-year completion rate among part-time learners improved by 8.7 percentage points, narrowing the equity gap between adult learners and traditional-aged learners by 3.2 percentage points. Between adult learners and traditional-aged learners, the gap narrowed by an impressive 6.7 percentage points, as the rate of completion among the former rose 12.3 percentage points. 

With nearly half of the total student body composed of first-generation students — many of whom are also adult learners and many of whom are economically marginalized — great efforts have been made to accelerate the success of this population through financial supports. As a complement to TRIO services, the college introduced the SNAP Training and Employment Program (STEP) to provide students with basic needs assistance as well as support with the costs of books, transportation, and interview clothing. Southwestern also employs a benefits navigator who assists students in finding help with basic needs support in the community. In addition, the college’s foundation supplements these services with scholarships, including emergency scholarships to help with unexpected expenses or utility bills. As the result of these efforts, the equity gap between first-generation and non-first-generation learners in fall-to-fall persistence narrowed by 3 percentage points, from 8.2% in the fall 2019 cohort to 5.2%, in the fall 2022 cohort. 

Mandating academic advising, implementing a more robust early alert system that notifies advisors and support staff when a student needs additional assistance, utilizing new placement procedures, and moving to a co-requisite course system, among other innovations, have contributed to overall advances in student success rates for the college. Most notably, from the fall 2017 cohort to the fall 2020 cohort, the overall four-year completion rate grew 6.6 percentage points, and the rate at which students transfer and earn a baccalaureate degree, despite severe geographical hardships, rose 3.7 percentage points from the fall 2015 cohort to the fall 2018 cohort. 

“We are so pleased to be honored with this award,” shared Dr. Patricia Scott, president of Southwestern Oregon Community College. “This recognition reflects an unwavering commitment to student success by every single employee of our college. We know our students. We know they have diverse needs and complex lives. We have proven that by putting students first and adapting our programs and services to their individual needs, they will succeed. Ultimately, not only do our students benefit, but so do their families, our workforce, and our communities.”  

The Leah Meyer Austin Award was established in 2008 to recognize outstanding achievement in supporting and promoting student success through the creation of a culture of evidence, continuous improvement, systemic institutional change, broad engagement of stakeholders, and equity. The annual prize is given in honor of Leah Meyer Austin, former senior vice president for program development and organizational learning at the Lumina Foundation and emerita director of the ATD Board of Directors, whose visionary leadership shaped the development of Achieving the Dream. Chattanooga State Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College are the 23^rd and 24th ATD Network Colleges, respectively, to receive the award. A complete list of past winners can be found here.