Achieving the Dream

Lansing Community College joined Achieving the Dream (ATD) to provide a high-quality, accessible education in an inclusive environment by creating partnerships between academic and student affairs, and providing exceptional quality academic and student services to improve student success while focusing on removing barriers for low-income students and students of color.

Adopt unifying student development theory

Student development theories seek to understand how students grow and develop in higher education. Adopting a single theory allows employees from around the college to have a common framework or context when working with students.

After careful research of various student development theories, the Achieving the Dream steering committee selected appreciative advising, also called appreciative education. Learn more about appreciative advising here. 

Develop coordinated communication plan

Students are inundated with communication – often email – from departments across the college, making it difficult to navigate college systems and processes. Currently, there is no coordinated communication plan across departments, and there is often redundancy in communications. In addition to the volume of messages students receive, the content of the messages might not be inclusive or provide a clear and compelling takeaway.

The Achieving the Dream steering committee is working on:

• Conducting an audit of current communications students receive through each stage of the student lifecycle (prospect, applicant, oriented, learner and graduate/transfer).
• Conducting a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (or SWOT) analysis, and using results from the audit to look for redundancies.
• Gathering student feedback on college communications.
• Researching best practices used at other colleges.
• Designing a coordinated communications plan.
• Creating an annual calendar of regular communications sent to students by department and method.
• Documenting the coordinated communication plan, developing a centralized location to house communication and developing associated FAQs.

The Achieving the Dream steering committee began work on this project in November 2021 and plans to implement the new communication plan for the fall 2023 semester.

Meeting Notes

• Sally Welch, Co-Chair, Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs
• Stephanie Bogard Trapp, Co-Chair, Senior Director of Financial Aid and Title IV Compliance
• Kristen Buttigieg, Co-Chair, Center for Data Science's Director of Institutional Effectiveness
• Alyssa Andrews, Associate Dean of Strategic Enrollment Management
• Kevin Brown, History Faculty
• Stephanie Decator, Director of Admission/Registrar
• Paige Dunckel, Theatre Faculty
• Sarah Garcia-Linz, Success Coach Director
• Toni Glasscoe, Associate Vice President for External Affairs, Development & K-12 Operations
• Melinda Hernandez, English Faculty
• Barbara Line, Coordinator of the Livingston County Center
• Rafeeq McGiveron, Academic Affairs Project Manager
• Laura Medina, Executive Assistant to the Provost
• Ronda Miller, Dean of Student Affairs
• Catharyn Palomino, Communications Faculty
• Duane Portee, Academic Success Coach
• Shawn Smith, Mathematics Faculty
• Allison Snyder, Technical Careers Secondary to Post-Secondary Coordinator
• Jon Ten Brink, Music Program Faculty Chair and President of the Academic Senate
• Karen Tommasulo, Internal Communications Coordinator
• Simone Turnbull, Student
• Dominique Vaughn, Academic Success Coach
• Greg Vondett, Student Affairs Senior Business Analyst

• Becoming a Student-Ready College, by Tia Brown McNair, Michelle Asha Cooper, Nicole McDonald and Thomas Major, Jr.
• From Equity Talk to Equity Walk, by Tia Brown McNair, Estela Mara Bensimon, Lindsey Malcom-Piqueux
• Shared Equity Leadership: Transforming Campus Communities Is a Collective Responsibility, by Darsella Vigil, Elizabeth Holcombe, and Adrianna Kezar
• Personal Statement documentary, depicting first-generation students' struggle to reach college
• Knowing Our Students: Understanding & Designing for Success, from Achieving the Dream
• Coaching for student success and educational equity, by Jennifer Dubin
• How to Achieve More Equitable Community College Student Outcomes: Lessons From Six Years of CCRC Research on Guided Pathways, by Davis Jenkins, Hana Lahr and Amy Mazzariello
• Community College Research Center's "Mixed Methods" Blog, by multiple authors