Keynote speaker Luzelma Canales, Interim Associate Dean of Community Engagement & Corporate Training at South Texas College, shared how the College has grown from 1,038 to over 22,000 students in just 15 years. Serving a 95% Hispanic Student body, the College has taken bold steps to balance student access with student success. This session will focus on how an institution can positively impact student success by implementing a ‘culture of evidence’ to drive strategy development, assessment, and resource allocation/re-allocation. The session will demonstrate how one community college has utilized a culture of evidence to transform how the institution addresses student success issues.

View presentations:
Preparing the Dream: Data Driven … Student Focused
Achieving the Dream as a Vehicle for Systemic Institutional Improvement

 

In addition, 15 breakout sessions offered research and best practices from national, state and local speakers. Conference themes and sessions were specifically designed to help Preparing to Dream districts advance their unique new projects to increase college access and success among all students.

 

Ethan Yazzie-Mintz, Assistant Research Scientist at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University, presented research from the High School Survey of Student Engagement, a research and professional development project designed to help high schools explore, understand, and strengthen student engagement. The central component of the project is the survey instrument, which has been completed by nearly 300,000 students in high schools across the United States over the last three years.

 

Kate Cushing, Director of Operations for the Roads to Success program, explained methods and challenges of integrating career and college awareness and planning activities into the school day as a regular part of every student's middle and high school experience. Issues of scheduling, curriculum, staffing, parent involvement, and technology were discussed.

 

Tom Mortenson, Senior Scholar at The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, DC., illustrated the use of national and Texas data – both demographic and economic – to frame issues of opportunity for higher education. His presentation distinguished between faith-based ideologies and empirically-based data driven policy making, and concluded that for nearly three decades ideology has failed to sustain the nation’s historic commitment to broadening opportunity for higher education.

 

Victor Ruiz,Assistant Vice President of Advisory Services for the Cleveland Scholarship Programs (the nation’s largest and oldest college access organization), provided advising strategies to help parents and students get through the college application, admissions and financial aid process, drawing attention to roadblocks and barriers. Also spotlighted were resources, online and in print, available to advisors and counselors.

What You Need to Know About Financial Aid (National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators)

More resources: Print and Online | Student Timeline for College Applications

 

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