CCRC Awarded Major Grant to Support Five Research Projects

CCRC has been awarded $7 million to support five projects that will allow the center to build on current research, expand into new areas, and share our knowledge with the field.

The grant from Ascendium Education Group will be used to fund research on a systemwide adoption of corequisite developmental instruction in New York City; a pathbreaking study of how community college students choose programs of study; continued research into policies and practices affecting English learners enrolled in adult education courses in Chicago; an investigation into colleges' decision-making about whether to participate in institutional improvement activities; and a synthesis of CCRC’s research on guided pathways since the publication of the landmark 2015 book, Redesigning America's Community Colleges.

The projects are designed to fill gaps in knowledge and address key implementation challenges we have observed in our research on guided pathways, developmental education reforms, and English learners, while also advancing our understanding of how to increase community college participation in applied learning activities.

“This grant gives us an unusual amount of flexibility to pursue important questions and carry out a suite of projects that are priorities for us and for the field,” said CCRC Director Thomas Brock. “It will also enable us to ‘connect the dots’ between projects. We deeply appreciate Ascendium’s generous investment in CCRC and in knowledge building for community colleges.”

CCRC senior researchers Nikki Edgecombe, Davis Jenkins, Hana Lahr, and Maggie P. Fay will lead the projects, collaborating with partners at the City University of New York (CUNY) and City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), among others. The research projects are:

Implementing Corequisite Developmental Instruction at Scale

In this study, CAPR is partnering with the City University of New York (CUNY) to study CUNY’s
system-wide shift to corequisite remediation beginning in fall 2022. The study will examine how
individual campuses are implementing corequisite instruction and how assessment, advising,
course structure, pedagogy, and support services vary between campuses. It will also look at
the experiences of students, staff, and instructors within a range of corequisite models and the
costs associated with the transition from prerequisite remediation to fully scaled corequisite
remediation.

How Community College Students Choose Programs of Study

Choosing a program of study is a fraught decision for many community college students, with long-term consequences for employment and earnings. This three-year research project will explore what factors influence students’ decisions to pursue specific degree programs, with the goal of ensuring that all students have the resources and information needed to develop personalized plans they can use to get on and stay on a rewarding academic and career path.

Improving Policy and Practice for Adult English Learners

English learners (ELs) enrolled in adult education courses are an understudied population in community colleges. In this study, researchers will analyze federal and state policy and examine the experiences and goals of ELs at CCC to inform college reforms. The project aims to increase our understanding of ELs and their experiences and identify opportunities for future research and policy development.

Increasing Community College Participation in Applied Learning Activities

What leads some colleges to seek out and engage in improvement activities while others do not? And how can providers design and deliver effective applied learning opportunities to colleges that are not currently engaged in statewide or national reform networks? With this study, researchers aim to identify what topics colleges most want to learn about and what they see as their most pressing challenges. The findings will be used to make recommendations regarding what applied research organizations, intermediaries, technical assistance providers, and funders can do to design and implement applied learning activities that will do a better job of attracting and addressing the needs of underserved colleges.

Research Synthesis

A detailed synthesis of ten years of research on guided pathways will be developed, with practitioners and policymakers as the primary audiences. It will pull together what CCRC and other leaders in the field have learned across multiple studies about how to improve student outcomes and advance economic and racial equity at scale. Using examples from states and colleges, the synthesis will demonstrate why further transformation of postsecondary education policies and practices is needed, what it should look like, and how it can be achieved.

Ascendium’s award advances CCRC’s commitment to helping community colleges improve outcomes and equity for students, particularly those from low-income populations and other underserved populations.