Cutline: A final version of this cutline will be sent Tuesday. We’re still waiting to hear back
from a few people to fill in the blanks.
Front row (left to right): Vartouhi Asherian, Rosemary West, Pattie Thomas, Shellie Keller and
Lisa Finnegan
Second row (left to right): Michelle (Vicky) Dominguez, Kelly Wuest, Jim Matovina and Wendy
Weiner Dennis Soukup, Janice Glasper, Santos Martinez, Charles Milne, Alok Pandey, JoAnn
Friedrich, Nadine Huyck and Tina Hughes
Third row (left to right): Carla Wright, Bill Neff, Darin Dockstader, K.C. Brekken, John Bearce,
Jet Mitchell, Rob Sherfield, Hyla Winters, James McCoy, Laura Latimer, Scott Camero, Ed
Kanet, Ted Chodock, Troy McGinnis, John Bardacino, Laura Yavitz, Warren Hioki and Chae
Watson.
ACHIEVING THE DREAM: How college faculty and staff are working together to change
the fate of thousands of students
CSN’s first year under Achieving the Dream, the nation’s most comprehensive college reform
network
CSN faculty and staff recently took a snapshot of data and looked at credential-seeking
students enrolling in the college for the first time between the fall 2009 and spring 2012
semesters. They found:
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African American women in the study dropped out at higher rates than any other
ethnic group or gender at the College of Southern Nevada.
Students in the cohort who took classes only online or at night were less likely to
continue on with their studies from semester to semester or year to year.
Men – with the exception of Asian men – in the group were less likely to pass
popular, high enrollment courses at CSN than women.
For the past semester, CSN faculty and staff have been talking about these problems and
others. They have drilled into data. Over the spring semester, they will use sound research
gathering methods to determine why certain groups at CSN aren’t succeeding and develop
potential solutions that if successful can be expanded.
As part of Achieving the Dream, the nation’s most comprehensive college reform
network, the College of Southern Nevada is looking to make it easier for students, particularly
those from under-represented groups, succeed and complete.
“Achieving the Dream is helping CSN uncover the underlying reasons why students
don’t pass their classes or graduate, identify solutions, using best practices from around the
nation, evaluate and scale programs to be most effective and do so with support from our faculty
and staff,” said CSN President Dr. Michael Richards. “In short, ATD will steadily transform
CSN.”
For years, community colleges spent energy on access to make sure no student would be
turned away. In the wake of President Barack Obama’s call to increase the number of community
college graduates by 5 million by 2020, two-year schools are working to do more to make sure
the students who come through their doors can effectively learn new skills and leave, ready to
take on the world.
Achieving the Dream helps colleges do this by providing them with a structure, coaching,
research methods and relationships that help them effectively reform themselves.
“One of the most important changes with Achieving the Dream is that we’re going to
give up on our past practices of ‘Ready. Shoot. Aim,” and we’re going to aim first,” said CSN
School of Arts and Letters Dean Dr. Wendy Weiner.
She is a core team leader and one of dozens of faculty and staff involved in the Achieving
the Dream process at CSN.
“We have a comprehensive but very structured organization at CSN that is leading the
way to this reform,” said Janice Glasper, who is in charge of Achieving the Dream at CSN. The
lead cheerleader, Glasper has the tough job of making sure faculty and staff data and core teams
complete their responsibilities under tight deadlines set by the national organization and CSN’s
two Achieving the Dream coaches.
Once the core group determines exactly which areas to focus on, trained faculty and staff
will conduct focus groups and surveys. Then the core group will review academic literature and
other national best practices to research and develop one to three interventions, or pilot projects,
that CSN can implement.
“These may be policy changes or they may be more resource intensive projects, but the
institution has to decide what is right for it and move forward quickly,” Glasper said. “We need
to start small at first and then we can expand as we continue this process, year after year.”
Over the next year, CSN will work to implement and evaluate these pilot projects to
determine if and how to scale them up to fit the entire target population at the college.
“By this time next year, the college will have new data to report, hopefully on how we’re
helping students and how we plan to expand our projects to help more of them,” Glasper said.