“We’re looking for big ideas.”

That’s the task Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), gave to members of a blue-ribbon steering committee that will explore tangible ways for community college campuses to implement recommendations presented in a high-profile report AACC released this spring.

The initial meeting last week of AACC's 21st-Century Initiative-Implementation Team Steering Committee set the tone for the committee’s work. Each of the committee’s 34 members will work in at least one of nine teams that will address key areas pegged for redesign in the AACC report:

• Community college completion commitment
• Re-imagining pathways for students
• Community college/K-12 collaboration for college readiness
• Developmental education re-design—resources for community colleges
• Closing the skills gaps
• Policy and advocacy agenda for reclaiming the American Dream
• Redefining institutional roles and functions
• Accountability
• Faculty engagement and leadership development

Effect of the report

Last Friday’s steering committee meeting kicked off with reports from the co-chairs of the committee that produced the 21st-Century report. Co-chair Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement, provided an overview of the commission’s work, followed by co-chair Jerry Sue Thornton, president of Cuyahoga Community College in Ohio, who told committee members that they will now take the commission’s recommendation and “make it more granular.”

Download AACC's "Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation's Future

To date, 75 community colleges across the country are using the 21st-Century report for college-wide activities such as academic year kick-offs, professional development and re-examining of goals and missions. The commission co-chairs noted that the report has not only captured the attention of community colleges and their partners, but it appears to have sparked an interest among some four-year institutions to do a similar examination of what their goals should be for the coming decade.

“Universities are interested in the substance of what community colleges are doing to assess how effective they are,” said Augustine Gallego, commission co-chair and chancellor emeritus of the San Diego Community College District in California. He noted that he’s even been invited by universities in California and Arizona to speak about the report with administrators and students in their education programs.

State leaders will also likely be interested in the work forwarded by the 21st-Century implementation team as they “look for answers” to improve college completion while facing tighter budgets, Thornton said. It’s an especially important time to present ideas to governors and other lawmakers as more states are moving toward performance-based funding, she added.

Diving Into Phase Two

Following the passing of the baton from the commission co-chairs, the co-chairs of each of the nine implementation teams provided an overview of their charge and briefly discussed some of the opportunities and challenges they will face in their work. A common thread among each of the presentations was embedding a “culture of completion” on college campuses. That won’t necessarily be easy, but it is imperative, they said.

Photos from Friday's steering committee meeting

“Community colleges must be more aggressive and intentional,” said Alex Johnson, president of the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania, who serves as a co-chair of the steering committee as well as co-chair of the completion commitment team. “Our work is to design a framework that institutions can implement almost immediately. It must be embraced by every community college in the nation.”

During discussions around each of the nine key areas, steering committee members noted various programs, projects and reports that could be reviewed by the teams when they begin their in-depth discussions. Programs such as AACC’s Voluntary Framework of Accountability, Achieving the Dream, Completion by Design, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation scholarships,Phi Theta Kappa’s Community College Completion Corps, Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence and Texas’ New Mathways Project were among the mentioned programs.

Bumphus, who serves as chair of the steering committee, noted that the challenge will be to weave these various approaches into a comprehensive, campus-wide approach. The individual teams will craft their recommendations and forward them to the steering committee, which will then provide its report to Bumphus.

“From the moment the commission report was released, we started working toward making its recommendations actionable and focused,” Bumphus said after last week's meeting. “I am tremendously encouraged by the way community college leaders have stepped forward to help implement the commission’s key recommendations. Despite the very difficult challenges the recommendations present, these leaders are positive, insightful, and, most importantly, ready to take action.”