Community Vibrancy Seminar Series helps colleges broaden impact beyond campus

Achieving the Dream’s Community Vibrancy Framework is helping colleges think beyond traditional success metrics to embrace a broader vision of student and community well-being. As the framework evolves into a core part of ATD’s strategy, the organization is launching a new Community Vibrancy Seminar Series to support colleges ready to expand their impact. This work is especially timely as community colleges confront persistent national challenges — including declining public confidence in higher education, growing student debt burdens, and questions about the return on investment for college credentials. In this Q&A, Shara Davis, ATD’s senior fellow for special projects, shares insights on how colleges are putting the framework into action through data, partnerships, and community engagement — and why this next step offers an exciting opportunity for institutional and regional transformation.

Q: What is new on the horizon for ATD’s Community Vibrancy Framework and Network colleges?

A: Building on our work over the last few years, ATD has an exciting new opportunity for mature Network colleges. We will be offering a Community Vibrancy Seminar Series beginning this fall for institutions that have been in the ATD Network for four or more years (meaning those that are beyond the three-year Foundations of Transformation experience).

The Community Vibrancy Framework builds on — but also moves beyond — traditional goals of college access and completion. It pushes colleges to connect student success to broader outcomes like economic mobility and community prosperity, both for individuals and the regions they serve.

The new series builds upon the work of an inaugural cohort of colleges that tested the Community Vibrancy Framework and a related suite of resource materials. Colleges in the pilot cohort have been working toward community vibrancy in one way or another and learning from their peers about how they can broaden their efforts around community vibrancy beyond a project-by-project basis.

Based on these experiences, we have updated the set of community vibrancy resources and have developed the new seminar series that will support colleges in prioritizing certain groups of students and working with community organizations and employers to find out what the community’s biggest needs are — and how they, as colleges, can be a part of the solution to advance individual, family, and community well-being.
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Q: Tell me more about the new series. What is the format? Who is it designed for? And what can they expect to get out of it?

A: The new series will run from October 2025 through April 2026 and includes a coach-delivered, five-module virtual curriculum accompanied by the customized Data Workbooks, which we released to Network colleges this past spring. The series itself is designed for college presidents as well as senior and mid-level leaders. It offers important opportunities to engage both faculty and staff to ensure program and program mix relevancy as well as access to strong support services that can help new priority populations get to and through college. Overall, the seminar series provides the tools to connect student success efforts with broader community impact. It’s about moving beyond traditional metrics and learning how to use next-generation data, market analysis, and strategy development to drive both institutional transformation and regional prosperity. Participants walk away with an action plan, a clearer case for change, and a network of peers committed to building more vibrant communities.

As evidenced by the work of inaugural cohort colleges, we know there is more worth striving for, and I sincerely hope that more colleges will become boundary-spanning institutions, taking the leap to translate the Community Vibrancy Framework into action!
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Q: Let’s talk about the inaugural Community Vibrancy Cohort. You mentioned that the series builds on the cohort colleges’ work with and insights about the Community Vibrancy Framework. What are some of the insights that were gained by those colleges?

A: Key insights from the first cohort have been summarized in the report Connecting Access and Credential Attainment to Economic Mobility and Community Vibrancy and in college-specific profiles available on ATD’s Community Vibrancy webpage. I am happy to highlight some key points for colleges that are considering our new seminar series. First, translating the Community Vibrancy Framework into action helped college leaders change their narrative and overall value proposition. Roane State College really captured this shift in rethinking the purpose of its student success work. They began to see community vibrancy as the next phase of the student success movement — one that challenges colleges to ask not just whether students are completing but to what end. For Roane State, that meant focusing on ensuring that enough people in the region were experiencing upward mobility so that the whole community could benefit — not just a few.

The work also compelled colleges to see local opportunities in new ways. For example, using their Community Vibrancy Data Workbook, Pierce College District identified the Asset Limited, Income Constrained Employed (ALICE) population as a priority. Given the size of this population, the district also used a place-based strategy to target zip codes with higher percentages of families meeting the ALICE threshold. The district is now crafting an outreach and recruitment strategy to get these people into and through college.

Many pilot colleges elevated program relevancy to advance mobility. Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, for example, recognized the importance of helping students understand not just how to complete a credential, but how that credential connects to real, sustainable career opportunities. As a result, they’re now putting more attention on developing new credentials of value and improving transfer success — students are positioned for long-term success beyond graduation.

Multiple inaugural colleges also reimagined community partnerships and outreach strategies. Western Technical College took a close look at the nature of their community partnerships. Rather than relying on transactional relationships focused on referrals, they began mapping their partnerships to understand which organizations were deeply connected to the priority populations they hoped to reach.

For some of the colleges, this means taking community partnerships to a grassroots level. For example, colleges that have prioritized populations or neighborhoods that have been left behind have shifted attention to community partners already serving these populations and who have strong credibility with priority populations. At the neighborhood level, this might mean new partnerships with the local Community Action Agency. For populations like the justice-impacted population, this might equate with employers willing to hire this population.

This kind of self-reflection was witnessed among other colleges as well who are carefully considering internal restructuring needs, institutional capacity building to support successful community outcomes, and a realistic role for their college related to large-scale social change.

The Community Vibrancy Framework also guided the development of new strategies, including comprehensive strategic plans and strategic enrollment management plans, for multiple colleges. This approach has the potential to advance more colleges to a new level of planning and execution.
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Q: You mentioned that one of the focus areas of the seminar series is moving beyond traditional metrics and learning how to use next-generation data. Could you explain how the Community Vibrancy Framework helps colleges measure what really matters and why new metrics are a critical part of this work?

A: While colleges inherently strive for community impact, that impact is rarely measured or monitored. The front end of the metrics framework emphasizes groups of people and neighborhoods who are not currently served or are missing from college campuses. Data contained within the Community Vibrancy Data Workbook is customized to each college’s service district and uses publicly available data to help colleges identify and pursue new market opportunities to expand college access.

To realize community outcomes, the new metrics inspire colleges and their community partners to start with the end in mind — or the community impact envisioned. Colleges can find a wide array of community metrics within their Data Workbook to stimulate thinking about community impact.

Community impact, however, is not possible without upward economic mobility after the completion of college programs. Mobility metrics include workforce outcomes like living wages, median earnings, and earnings compared to high school only completers — all of which should be tracked by program or program clusters. Cost-to-earnings ratios and other data are also included to help colleges calculate and improve return on education for their students/graduates.

While the new metrics framework requires colleges and their community partners to reach higher, the work colleges have done on whole-college transformation must continue. Continued use of both early momentum and “milestone” momentum metrics (that is, completion and transfer) are encouraged to ensure that new priority populations get to and through college. If anything, college momentum and completion are increasingly important. Nearly all populations left behind by postsecondary education are financially distressed. If we are successful in getting them to college but we fail to get them through college and to experience upward mobility postgraduation, we have only exacerbated their financial hardship!
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Q: Do you have any closing thoughts for colleges considering the new Community Vibrancy Seminar Series?

A: Community colleges are strong engines of economic and social mobility with a pivotal role to play in creating more economically vibrant communities. But for this to be achieved, institutions must commit to a thoughtful and structured process of direct influence that should be monitored towards long-term community success. The Community Vibrancy Seminar Series aims to support colleges on a journey to this end.
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