EGCC sets goals for more graduates

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Laura Meeks, president of Eastern Gateway Community College, joined President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden along with hundreds of college presidents and other higher-education leaders to announce new actions to help more students prepare for and graduate from college.

The White House College Opportunity Day of Action last week in Washington, D.C., supports the president’s commitment to partner with colleges and universities, business leaders and nonprofits to support students across the country to help the nation reach its goal of leading the world in college attainment.

Meeks was among 140 college and university presidents invited to the White House event.

She announced that Eastern Gateway commits to producing an additional 100 graduates by 2020 and 170 graduates by 2025 above its record-setting class of 2014 that numbered 358.

Meeks said the college’s action plan to reach these goals includes:

Using analytics to gather data on at-risk students and using the data to design interventions to keep students on track to graduate.

Leveraging new technologies to improve student learning such as new advancements in adaptive learning that use computer-based instruction to adapt to individual student needs.

Focusing on targeting, testing and scaling student supports and interventions that are tailored to the needs of specific student subpopulations at risk of failing to complete coursework.

Through intrusive academic advising, the college will provide more interventions and academic planning for all students, Meeks said. Advisers will monitor success and failure rates of students with the objective of increasing term-to-term and year-to-year retention.

The goal is to increase term-to-term retention by 2 percent and increase year-to-year retention 1 percent annually.

Additionally, the college is committed to expanding students’ technical knowledge before entering the workforce by creating additional internship and apprenticeship opportunities within technical degree and certificate programs, she said.

“Finally, the college is reviewing all degree programs to revise programs requiring courses/hours in excess of higher education standards for degree attainment,” Meeks said in a news release. “The review will also determine where developmental education needs can be incorporated into college-level entry courses in order to shorten a student’s time to graduation. Degree programs are being reviewed to determine if any industry-recognized certificates are embedded within the degree. If so, the graduate would earn an associate’s degree and an industry-recognized certificate. The goal is to increase the number of graduates by 5 percent each year.”

Event participants were asked to commit to new action in one of four areas: building networks of colleges around promoting completion, creating K-16 partnerships around college readiness, investing in high-school counselors as part of the first lady’s Reach Higher initiative, and increasing the number of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

President Obama announced new steps on how his administration is helping to support these actions, including announcing $10 million to help promote college completion and a $30 million AmeriCorps program that will improve low-income students’ access to college. This event is the second College Opportunity Day of Action and included a progress report on the commitments made at the first day of action Jan. 14.

The administration believes that expanding opportunity for more students to enroll and succeed in college, especially low-income and underrepresented students, is vital to building a strong economy and a strong middle class.

In an effort to expand college access, the Obama administration has increased Pell scholarships by $1,000 a year, created the new American Opportunity Tax Credit worth up to $10,000 over four years of college, limited student-loan payments to 10 percent of income, and laid out an agenda to reduce college costs and promote innovation and competition.