MDC focuses on education as a critical part of its mission is to create pathways to opportunity. MDC uses the following strategies to help young people succeed in school and in finding careers:
- increasing institutional capacity to better serve disadvantaged students and their communities
- reforming public policies and systems to increase the quality and availability of higher education
- promoting the critical link between postsecondary education and economic well-being for people and communities
On January 13th, 2010, over 40
Southeastern Council on Foundations (SECF) members and affiliates participated
in a phone call about investing in postsecondary education in the South.
Co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MDC, the call was a
follow-up to an information session held at the 2009 Annual meeting of SECF.
MDC president David Dodson and MDC Senior Program Director Bonnie Gordon shared
MDC's preliminary thinking about a community partnerships proposal to address
the Gates Foundation's goal to double the numbers of low-income young adults
who earn a postsecondary credential by the age of 26. Participants were invited
to share their questions, advice, and reactions to the ideas presented.
Read a summary or
listen to an audio file of the call.
Projects
Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count
- is a multiple-year national initiative to help more community college students succeed, particularly students of color and low-income students who have traditionally faced significant barriers to success. Achieving the Dream emphasizes the use of data to drive change and focuses on measurable outcomes, especially closing achievement gaps.
More than 100 institutions in 22 states participate in Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, which is funded by more than 20 organizations across the country. MDC is the managing partner in this initiative, which includes seven national partner organizations.
Achieving the Dream is based on the premise that to improve student success on a significant scale, colleges need to fundamentally change the way they operate. Successful institutions adhere to four principles in their institutional change work: Committed Leadership, a Culture of Evidence, Broad Engagement, and Systemic Institutional Improvement. The initiative has achieved tangible results over the past five years, including driving student success to the top of the community college change agenda; identifying strategies that improve student success; helping community colleges scale effective pilot programs; and aligning state policies to help underserved community college students succeed.
For more information, please visit www.achievingthedream.org.
Project Director: Carol Lincoln
Disconnected Youth
- is a report, commissioned by the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, about the status of young people, ages 16-24, who are neither in school nor employed.
Research has shown that the problem of disconnected youth is particularly acute in the South, where disproportionate numbers of young people have dropped out of school and are essentially unemployable and without resources to better themselves.
To generate a community discussion about the report, in November 2008, MDC convened a group of concerned citizens for a learning tour of Portland, Oregon, a city nationally recognized for its efforts to prevent disconnection and reconnect disconnected youth. This group has grown into Durham Connected by 25, a collaboration of community leaders that is creating an integrated system of research-based initiatives to reconnect Durham's youth. Future work includes a conversation throughout the Triangle region of North Carolina about the implications of the research and a plan to broaden the work into a "call to action" for the Southeast region.
Read an interview with David Dodson about what MDC has discovered in its research on disconnected youth in North Carolina's Research Triangle area and the gravity of the problem.
Project Director: David Dodson
Developmental Education Initiative
- This initiative helps 15 Round I and Round II Achieving the Dream colleges build on demonstrated results in developmental education innovations at their institutions. The aim of the initiative is to expand groundbreaking remedial education programs that experts say are
key to dramatically boosting the college completion rates of low-income
students and students of color. Additionally, six states are committed to further advancement of their Achieving the Dream state policy work in the developmental education realm.
A recent report from
Jobs for the Future
found that that nearly 60 percent of students enrolling in community college must take remedial classes to build their basic
academic skills. For low-income students and students of color, the
figure topped 90 percent at some colleges. Though remedial classes cost
taxpayers more than $2 billion a year, many of these students do not complete remedial classes or continue on to
graduate.
The innovations developed by the colleges participating in the Developmental Education Initiative will help community colleges understand what programs are effective in helping students needing developmental education to succeed. At the 15 colleges selected for DEI, more than 133,000 students take remedial education classes. Each selected program has increased the number of students moving from remedial to college-level courses by 16 to
20 percent.
For more information, please visit
http://www.deionline.org.
Project Director: Carol LincolnInvesting in Postsecondary Outcomes in the South
On January 13th, 2010, over 40
Southeastern Council on Foundations (SECF) members and affiliates participated
in a phone call about investing in postsecondary education in the South.
Co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MDC, the call was a
follow-up to an information session held at the 2009 Annual meeting of SECF.
MDC president David Dodson and MDC Senior Program Director Bonnie Gordon shared
MDC's preliminary thinking about a community partnerships proposal to address
the Gates Foundation's goal to double the numbers of low-income young adults
who earn a postsecondary credential by the age of 26. Participants were invited
to share their questions, advice, and reactions to the ideas presented.
Read a summary or
listen to an audio file of the call.
Past Projects
Rural Leadership for Community Change
- was a program to develop leadership courses for students to become leaders and change agents in their own communities
Faculty at six rural community and tribal colleges are developing a
leadership curriculum that will prepare students to become leaders for
community change. The new curriculum will combine classroom learning
with hands-on community projects and will serve as a model for other
rural community and tribal colleges across the United States. This
program is funded by the federal Department of Education's Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), which supports
innovative educational reform projects that can serve as national
models for the improvement of postsecondary education.
Project Director: Verna LalbeharieFor more information: Carol Lincoln
Vision to Action in Africa
- was a program to help the University of Namibia develop a new community college campus in Northern Namibia.
Northern Namibia, following generations of colonial rule, economic distress, and political instability, now faces the challenge of building a future for its people. In the spring of 1998, the Ford Foundation invited MDC to assist with applying learnings from the Rural Community College Initiative to the development of a new community-college-style campus in Northern Namibia for the University of Namibia. Through the RCCI's "Vision to Action" strategic planning process, a team of community, university, civic, and government leaders has developed a vision for the future of the region's people. The team, with assistance from MDC and support from the Ford Foundation, is in the process of developing and implementing a long-term strategic plan to achieve this vision.
Project Director: Carol Lincoln
Rural Community College Initiative
- was a demonstration program designed and managed by MDC to strengthen rural community colleges and enhance their ability to build community prosperity
The Rural Community College Initiative (RCCI) demonstration, funded by the Ford Foundation from 1994 to 2001, helped 24 community and tribal colleges in the nation's most economically distressed regions to move their people and communities toward prosperity. It supported aggressive and creative efforts to increase jobs, income, and access to education in rural communities. To sustain and expand the work begun by the RCCI demonstration, MDC and the college presidents created the Rural Community College Alliance, a membership organization that supports peer learning and provides a national voice for rural colleges and the communities they serve.
A follow-up RCCI program, managed by the Southern Rural Development Center and North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, is currently introducing RCCI philosophy and practice to additional colleges.
During RCCI's demonstration phase, MDC produced video and print materials to document the colleges' experiences and help other rural colleges become engaged in community development work. These materials are available from MDC.
Project Director: Carol Lincoln