SuccessNC

Last week, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) was featured in the Atlantic Cities series “The Next Metro Economy.” Bruce Katz of Brookings Institution and Judith Rodin, of the Rockefeller Foundation, lifted up ten innovative efforts to shape the post(?)-recession economy, among them was the NCCCS initiative SuccessNC.

SuccessNC “is working with all 58 community colleges in the state to strengthen the college and career pathways available to North Carolina students, with the ultimate goal of doubling the number of students completing career credentials by 2020.” Katz and Rodin applaud NCCCS efforts to increase collaboration across the system, pointing to the system-wide listening tour conducted from February to October of 2010. (You can read a bit about how the tour fit into a broader state policy strategy in this Accelerating Achievement post.)

Leaders of the tour collected best practices from colleges as they went; those best practices are now housed in a searchable, online innovations database. You can search by college, by category (access, quality, success) or issue (from accreditation to developmental education to human resources and professional development.) NCCCS will continue to update the database with new promising practices from across the system.

We add our applause for NCCCS! It’s great to see DEI states receiving well-deserved national recognition for their efforts to increase student completion. What’s happening in your state that is worthy of celebration? We’d love to hear about it!