Facing enrollment declines that date to the Great Recession and accelerated during the worst of the pandemic, community colleges are redoubling their focus on student-readiness to seem — and become — as welcoming as possible through efforts ranging from diversity, equity and inclusion, to other cultural changes, to even facilities redesign.
In doing so, two-year schools say they know that while enrollment figures are expressed in numbers, they’re made up of thousands of individuals who matriculate — and hopefully complete — and that obsessing about the overall numbers risks missing the forest for the trees.
This article is an excerpt from the current issue of the Community College Journal, informing community college leaders for more than 90 years.
“For us, being student-ready is captured with the phrase, ‘meeting students where they are,’” says Suzanne Johnson, president of Green River College in Auburn, Washington. “Being student-ready has become very much a focus of being a college in the 21st century. Higher education, until very recently, especially in the four-year institutional world, has been a system of exclusion: ‘Is the student ready for the college? If they’re at a certain level, we’ll take them in.’ Community colleges promise to be pathways for breaking cycles of poverty, for economic opportunity, for further education.”
Ramping up student equity
“It’s a whole other issue in terms of how you achieve it,” she says. “A college is made up of people — faculty, staff, administrators — and all of us have a role to play in creating an environment that is supportive, belonging and full of care for every single student that comes to us.”
Becoming a more equity-focused institution means identifying what supports students need to achieve their goals, which varies from individual to individual, Johnson says. While Green River certainly is focused on the big picture of enrollment, she says, “We are reaching communities that are underserved, minoritized and can benefit the most from us. My focus on enrollment centers on retaining the student and having them continue to be persistent and achieve their goals.”
Jennifer Ramirez Robson, who chairs the board of trustees at Green River, attended community college herself thanks to the educational benefits she received from serving in the U.S. Air Force. She draws on her own lived experience in thinking about student-readiness and says many of her trustee colleagues do the same.
“When I did this, back in the ’90s, students had to be prepared,” she says. “Every instructor presented the same information in the same way to students. Students had the sole responsibility to take in that information. In the current times, we understand, by lived experience, or education and training, where the barriers are” toward student-readiness.
Institutions need to start this process by establishing goals and priorities and creating a strategic plan, but that’s the easy part, Johnson says.
Getting on board
To that end, Green River has undertaken a great deal of professional development for all employees around becoming more equity-minded, Johnson says. That means “examining and interrogating how we go about delivering education, both content and modalities. We’re interrogating how we hire and retain employees. And we recognize that this work is forever.”
Boards have a critical role to play in this endeavor, Ramirez Robson says.
“Our values show up in our budget. How does that work from an anti-racist and diversity, equity and inclusion standpoint?” she says. “We’re asking questions related to diversity. Sometimes they’re hard questions. Even in the tenure process, in appropriate ways, we are interrogating faculty, and staff and administrators. … We might ask questions about, ‘How is this experience for faculty of color?’ We’re trying to ensure that we are doing things in an equitable manner.”
Students feel more seen and heard when they have peer navigators and mentors who understand the experiences of someone of the same identity, Ramirez Robson says.
“When I was in community college, there were no groups for women of color, no groups for veterans of color,” she says. “You were lucky if you had an academic adviser who was familiar with the rules of the GI Bill. To see how far we’ve come, where you have people who understand your background and identity, it’s key to that student-ready question.”
Healing all wounds
Becoming student-ready also means becoming more trauma-informed, particularly since the pandemic, which also has involved professional development.
“Having trauma-informed understanding and competencies is essential. … We have an office within the student support services area that provides services for students, besides our counselors. We also have an office called the Center for Transformational Wellness that provides specific support for students who have experienced trauma,” Johnson says.
Leadership at Green River realized the pandemic left many people with trauma, Johnson says.
“Learning is largely a psychological and emotional experience,” she says. “If you’re not feeling OK, if you’re not feeling safe, you can’t learn. It’s an essential element that a college has to be equipped to address and support. It goes along with food and housing.”
Ultimately, Johnson says, Green River is trying to build a community where everyone is there for one another.
“Students come to us with different needs and wants,” she says. “What does that mean for us? They’re coming to us with hopes and dreams, and a certain amount of educational preparation. They’re saying, ‘This is where we want to go next.’ What does it mean for us, in terms of our responsibilities to help them get there?”
If every student who entered Green River stayed through until completion, Johnson adds, “We wouldn’t have an enrollment problem. No college would. It starts with us. People talk about the college culture; they’re talking about people. If a college has a culture problem, they’ve got a people problem.”
With an overall completion rate of 38%, Green River probably fares better than most, but it could be doing considerably better, she notes.
“We’ve got to listen to students telling us what they need,” she says. “Sometimes we’re the barrier; that’s easy [to address]. Sometimes, it’s food or housing insecurity; we can help fix that.”
That philosophy is another fundamental shift over the past 30 years, Ramirez Robson believes.
“In the ’90s, the responsibility for being college-ready was placed on the shoulders of the student,” she says. “We have shared responsibility for student success. That does take a shift [in thinking].”
