Achieving the Dream

Through our strategic partnership with Achieving the Dream (ATD), we are committed to implementing bold, large-scale improvements to our existing success strategies. Recognizing the unique challenges faced by many of our students, we are dedicated to fostering an environment of equitable support that enables them to reach their educational and personal goals.

Due to high poverty rates in our service area, the College’s equity work focuses on reducing student enrollment and success gaps for underserved populations experiencing significant life challenges. As mentioned earlier, poverty rates across our four-county service area are higher than state and national rates, with the highest being 29% in one county. Students from that county are usually first-generation students who are unprepared for college. The population of historically underserved residents in our four-county area are disproportionately Black or African American. We are addressing inequities related to poverty and underservice in several ways.

• First, strengthening our teaching and learning practices is a goal of our new teaching and learning center, which provides support to all faculty and staff.
• We focus on supporting adult learners in achieving their goals by addressing stressors outside of the classroom that affect their success. For example, our student assistance program provides mental health support and a food pantry helps with food insecurity.
• We help our increasing early college and dual enrollment populations make progress toward a college degree at no cost.
• Additionally, we engage middle and high school students in summer camps designed to provide them with career exploration and access to STEM programs on a college campus. In addition to providing young students with fun summer activities, camps expose them and their families to VGCC.
• We offer professional development opportunities to all faculty and staff throughout the year. In 2023, the keynote session for our college-wide professional development day focused on the effects of poverty on the brain. Faculty and staff learned from an area expert that for individuals living in poverty, the brain is consistently engaged in threat response activities which leads to hypersensitivity to any type of stress. Prolonged toxic stress alters the brain structure, which shuts down areas of the brain associated with socially acceptable behavior. Learning about the biological response to poverty helped the employees of the College better understand the importance of empathy in the service we provide to students. In turn, we expect this understanding to translate into increased support for students working to improve their lives through education.

By implementing the goals and strategies we have developed and continually assessing and refining their approaches, we are leveraging our institutional capacity for teaching and learning while advancing equity. This holistic approach ensures that students receive a quality education and personalized support in an inclusive environment that prepares them for success in their academic and professional pursuits. We support and provide ongoing professional development; make data-informed decisions; provide support services; develop and implement equity-minded policies and practices; encourage cultural competency among faculty and staff; and collaborate and form partnerships with community organizations, businesses and other educational institutions.

VGCC is leveraging Equity in Teaching & Learning to support our student success goals in the following ways:

1. Created a Center for Teaching and Learning staffed with former VGCC instructors with advanced knowledge and skills in all aspects of the teaching and learning process.
2. Drafted a rubric to use in evaluating the Board of Trustees’ policies through an equity lens. The rubric includes themes and aspects specific to Staffing and Personnel, Curriculum and Student Services, Procurement, and Facilities. It will soon be adopted for formal policy evaluation by the full Board
3. Formed a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Council whose mission and purpose is to ensure that ALL of our students are recognized, represented, and respected. Our definition of diversity includes (but is not limited to) ability, age, culture, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion, political perspective, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. The DEIB Council cares deeply about creating an inclusive campus environment where students, faculty, and staff are able to thrive. Their work focuses on identifying challenges to this goal, developing strategies to address problems, advocating for necessary changes, and implementing initiatives that will sustain an equitable educational experience and sense of belonging for every member of our community.
4. Developed master course outlines for all general education classes to assist faculty with preparing courses and achieve consistency in outcomes across sections of the same course.

At VGCC, we employ a framework adapted from the concept of being a “student-ready college” (McNair, Albertine, Cooper, McDonald, & Major, 2016). The framework includes discovering data about our current and future students, understanding the context of our environments, fostering collaborative leadership and accountability at all levels, maintaining a laser focus on building student readiness, and creating a culture of belief in students. This framework weaves in intentionality for equity at all levels and prioritizes learning over efficiency. This framework seeks to adjust and align culture to support our mission.

Within this overarching framework, we employ other frameworks to support our work. One framework we employ that has proven effective is the guided pathways approach. While we are still maturing in our adoption of guided pathways, we feel that we have made great strides in a couple of areas: non-credit to credit pathways and program alignment to service area livable wage jobs/careers.

In addition to guided pathways, another framework we use to support institutional change is the focus on equity, which prioritizes identifying and addressing inequities in student outcomes, especially for those students who experience poverty. First, we adopted Ruby Payne’s Framework for Understanding Poverty to address our own ideas and biases about poverty. We engaged in a poverty simulation and learned how the brain is affected by poverty. We embraced a practice of examining institutional data, implementing targeted interventions and fostering a campus culture that promotes equity and inclusivity.

Finally, we embrace a data-informed decision-making framework where we use data analytics and assessment tools to drive our transformation efforts. This approach allows us to identify areas of improvement, track progress, and make evidence-based decisions to optimize student success and institutional effectiveness.