The Tennessee Board of Regents
Office of Community Colleges
For Immediate Release
February 19, 2015
FACT SHEET: The Tennessee Community College
System’s Plan to Support the State’s Completion Agenda:
Remediation Redesign, Academic Alignment, and
Structured Intervention
In 2010, the Tennessee state legislature initiated a series of reform policies for public higher
education. The Complete College Tennessee Act of 2010 (CCTA) was designed to improve the
state’s economic environment by increasing the share of college-educated citizens. A new value
was placed on higher education state funding for student outcomes, shifting from the previous
focus on enrollment. These reforms have been further enhanced by Governor Bill Haslam’s
Drive-to-55 plan, a goal to have 55% of Tennessee’s population credentialed with a college
degree or certificate by the year 2025. The Drive-to-55 Plan has been created to improve the
college degree attainment levels of key populations – high school graduates and adult workers,
and connect this skilled and educated workforce to the long-term needs of the state’s economic
development plan.
The Tennessee Community College System, governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents
(TBR), serves a vital role in carrying out the goals established by the CCTA and Drive-to-55
initiative. Tennessee’s community college system is comprised of 13 institutions, supported by
the Office of Community Colleges established in 2011 within the TBR. In collaboration with the
system’s institutions, state governing agencies, and offices within the TBR, the Office of
Community Colleges has established a portfolio of initiatives focused directly on efficiently
improving student retention and success.
Early Remediation, Academic Alignment, and Structured Intervention
In order to effectively and efficiently realize significant gains in college completion rates at the
certificate and associate degree level, the TBR Office of Community Colleges has examined the
entire value stream for completion at the state’s 13 community colleges, and begun work to
improve key areas along the student enrollment and completion journey to (1) reduce the cost for
completion, (2) better align credentials with employer needs, and (3) reduce the time to
successful student completion. The initiatives embedded within the Office of Community
College’s improvement plan are:
Remediation Redesign. Studies have revealed the high barriers for post-secondary completion
for students requiring remediation. The additional courses required for preparing students to
enroll in college-level courses can significantly extend the time needed to complete a degree or
certificate. Also, remediation as a course or program can often impact student attitudes regarding
their ability to be successful at the post-secondary level. Nearly two-thirds of the entering high
school graduates in Tennessee will require some form of remediation upon entry to a college or
university. Two approaches are in place within Tennessee to either remediate students prior to
entering college or embed remediation while taking college-level courses.

Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support (SAILS): A program developed by
Tennessee’s community colleges and expanded statewide through funding from Governor
Bill Haslam has allowed underprepared high school students to use a college-level
remediation course to complete their requirement for college-readiness in Math. Using a
product from Pearson to deliver the Math remediation course, the state has begun reducing
the need for Math remediation at the post-secondary level. The program has been offered for
more than a year. This past fall semester, more than 9,000 high school students participated
in the program, with a 62% completion rates. Based on the cost of remediation at the college
or university level, along with other factors, the state has potentially saved more than $6.6
million through early remediation. The success of the program has inspired a future
expansion of SAILS to include early remediation for Reading and Writing.
- http://www.state.tn.us/thec/Divisions/AcademicAffairs/p16/SAILS%20THEC%20Template.pdf

Co-Requisite Remediation: Placement tests such as the ACT and SAT serve as predictors
of success for students entering post-secondary education. However, these predictors often
do not account for the ability of students to quickly learn and adapt to the college setting
when additional academic support is included in college-level coursework. Using successful
outcomes established by the state’s universities, Tennessee’s community colleges have begun
employing co-requisite remediation strategies for students that fall below the established
college-readiness thresholds. Co-requisite remediation allows a student to begin taking firstyear courses, while receiving additional supplemental remediation within the course to
reduce the time required for remediation and program completion. Based on the Fall 2014
pilot initiative for the state’s community colleges, the successful completion of co-requisite
remediation in Math was significantly better than traditional pre-requisite remediation.
Successful completion percentage rates for gateway Math courses increased more than
fourfold for the co-requisite model when comparing the two approaches to remediation, and
nearly two-fold for gateway English courses. Equally as important, the success rates for
remedial courses were higher for the co-requisite model compared to the normal pre-requisite
model, regardless of ACT sub score. Plans are in place for Tennessee’s Community College
System to fully employ the co-requisite model as the standard for remediation.
Academic Alignment. Tennessee believes clear alignment for program transfer, credit transfer,
and matriculation between the different levels of post-secondary education is vital to improving
completion rates. Articulation and alignment initiatives have been implemented in different areas
of higher education.

Tennessee Transfer Pathways: Tennessee has established 50 common articulated pathways
between the state’s community colleges and four-year institutions, which include private
non-profit institutions and all public universities within the state.
- http://www.tntransferpathway.org

Career Program Alignment: The Office of Community Colleges has initiated an effort to
align all Associate of Applied Science programs across the state, using a shared curriculum
framework with common courses, course descriptions, course outcomes, course
competencies, and course numbers.

Reverse Articulation: Led by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the state is
currently implementing a reverse transfer program for all public higher education institutions.
The reverse transfer program will allow for credential awarding to university students that
fulfill the degree requirements for select associate degrees. The public universities have
partnered with the state’s community colleges to (1) communicate with eligible students, (2)
review and audit previous courses taken, and (3) confer the degrees to qualified candidates.
The pilot was recently launched and communicated with more than 5,000 eligible students.
These students have been asked to participate in the program – opt in - to explore their
options for associate degree attainment.
- http://www.tntransferpathway.org/reverse-pathways/tennessee-reverse-transfer
Structured Intervention. Tennessee has employed macro and micro level intervention
practices to ensure students have the proper access and support services necessary to complete in
a timely manner. Through efforts from the Governor’s Drive-to-55 Plan and TBR initiatives,
Tennessee students now have options for degree attainment centered on affordability, inclusion,
and career opportunities.

Tennessee Promise: Tennessee Promise is both a scholarship and mentoring program that
will begin in the fall of 2015. It will provide students a last-dollar scholarship, meaning the
scholarship will cover tuition and fees not covered by the Pell grant, the HOPE scholarship,
or TSAA funds. Students may use the scholarship at any of the state’s 13 community
colleges. While removing the financial burden is key, a critical component of Tennessee
Promise is the individual guidance each participant will receive from a mentor who will
assist the student as he or she navigates the college admissions process.
- http://tennesseepromise.gov

Tennessee LEAP: The objective of Tennessee LEAP (Labor Education Alignment Program)
is to eliminate skills gaps across the state in a proactive, data-driven, and coordinated manner
by encouraging collaboration across education and industry and by utilizing regional
workforce data to identify and then fill skills gaps across the state. Tennessee LEAP has
established a Skills Gap Grant competition to provide $10 million in state funds to support
local Drive to 55 alignment groups.
- http://driveto55.org/initiatives/tennessee-leap/

Intrusive Advising: The community colleges of Tennessee have begun implementing
different approaches to targeted advising for at-risk students. Using common student
information system processes, each institution has designed intervention strategies unique to
their resources and student population.
- http://www.collegechangeseverything.org/dotAsset/c0d6c20b-a54e-4ed7-816c-2e3821f50c3c.pdf

TBR Completion Delivery Unit: TBR Completion Delivery Unit (CDU), a cross-functional
team within the system office, serves as a dedicated resource to system and campus
leadership on the completion effort. The CDU focuses on assisting the development of
implementation plans for strategies that have the potential to impact significant numbers of
students. The CDU also provides targeted support to institutions as they identify, implement,
and monitor the impact of priority strategies with a particular emphasis on improving the
success of low-income and underrepresented minority students. The Completion Delivery
Unit partners with the Educational Delivery Institute, a non-profit organization that focuses
on implementing large-scale system change in public education. The CDU currently manages
several initiatives that impact or involve the community colleges in Tennessee:
o Access To Success: The Access to Success initiative aims to improve college-going
and success rates for low-income and underrepresented minority (URM) students at
TBR’s universities and community colleges.
o Architected Choice: This strategy is designed to make choosing an academic program
a more informed and intentional experience for students by grouping disciplines into
nine Academic Foci and eliminating undeclared majors. To ensure that students are
more successful in finding the right program from the outset, entering students will
have to select a foci at the beginning of their academic career. These foci create a
choice architecture in which students are able to navigate their way through the
possible majors by making their choices in a series of manageable stages.
o Articulated Pathways: This strategy creates structured degree maps for every degree
program at every institution, to allow students clear pathways through their 2- or 4year degree, while also aligning these maps to provide a transfer guarantee for their
academic work. These maps will align to create stackable credentials, so that students
are able to progress freely from a TCAT diploma or certificate program through
associate and bachelor’s degrees, on to post-doctoral qualifications whenever
possible.
o Business Process Model: The goal of the Business Process Model project (BPM) is to
develop common business processes and workflows among the thirteen community
colleges within the Tennessee Board of Regents in an effort to create a
comprehensive community college system.
o Community, Belonging, and Inclusion: The Community, Belonging and Inclusion
Priority Strategy recognizes that there is a growing body of research that suggests that
non-cognitive factors are hugely influential in the transition into post-secondary
education and persistence to success. This strategy includes structured learning
communities, cohorts, and bundled curricular structures that create community within
a group, and allow an opportunity for students with a shared experience, for example
veterans or adults, to build support.
o Degree Attainment Efficiencies: The Degree Attainment Efficiencies strategy
addresses the expectation that our higher education systems provide efficient and
effective means by which students can advance toward a credential or degree
expediently and cost-effectively.
- https://completionagenda.tbr.edu/completion-delivery-unit