In February 2023, Monroe Community College (MCC) was invited to join a cohort of nine other two-year institutions to participate in the Aspen Institute’s Unlocking Opportunity: The Post-Graduation Success and Equity Network.[i] More than a student success initiative, Unlocking Opportunity (UO) was designed to help participating colleges usher in sweeping reforms at their respective campuses. This endeavor would subsist at the intersection of academic and student-support services and focus on boosting post-completion outcomes, making possible more streamlined transfer in higher opportunity pathways and greater socioeconomic mobility for our students.

Today, as a direct consequence of its UO participation—which has focused on redesigning its advising model, improving success outcomes in gateway mathematics and English courses, and enhancing academic program mapping to ensure seamless transfer and gainful employment after completion—MCC is a transformed institution, both operationally and culturally. Our achievements embody the League’s role as a catalyst for sustaining “deep, transformational innovation” in the name of enriching the lives of our students and the culture of our institution. Of course, such progress did not occur overnight—or even within the three years since MCC began its UO reform efforts. The innovative work that has transformed MCC’s approach to holistic advising, teaching and learning, and curricular mapping traces its lineage back to 2021, when the college, under the leadership of its new President, Dr. DeAnna R. Burt-Nanna, committed unequivocally to mission-driven change in the form of an expansive institutional reorganization. This development effected a sea change that created the conditions by which the amalgamated academic and support-based reforms central to MCC’s strategic priorities could emerge and thrive.

Creating an Integrated Division for Student Success

Decades of research and reform have taught us that to advance the access-oriented, equity-driven mission of our institutions, community college educators must work to assist and empower the whole student through integrated, holistic support. Put more plainly, when a student struggles academically, it is often a consequence of broader challenges that extend beyond the classroom. Issues such as financial stress, family responsibilities, mental health concerns, or a lack of access to basic resources can deeply impact a student's ability to succeed academically.

Prior to 2021, this understanding was not represented in the siloed structure of MCC, where academic and student support functions were divided among two divisions: Academic Services and Student Services. On one side, Academic Services focused largely on the delivery of education and academic support—with a faculty-centered advising model by which teaching faculty, principally focused on helping students choose the right classes for degree completion and transfer, delivered the lion’s share of continuing student advising. Ultimately, Academic Services was concerned with the classroom experience, ensuring that students were equipped with the knowledge and skills to succeed academically.

Structurally, Student Services operated independently from the academic side, without institutionalized integration. Offices dedicated to functions and services such as admissions, new student advising, and counseling were organizationally distinct and, therefore, often imbued with a set of strategic priorities separate from those governing Academic Services. To truly support students, these functions needed to be integrated and aligned, ensuring a comprehensive approach to student success to address both academic and nonacademic factors simultaneously.

Consequently, the college enacted an institutional reorganization that merged the two units into one division under the leadership of a newly designed executive position: Provost and Vice President, Academic and Student Affairs. This engagement in systemic transformation, grounded in our commitment to shared governance—as typified in the reorganization processes developed by our Faculty Senate—would create the conditions by which our UO goals could be realized.

Advising the Whole Student

Internal data consistently reveal that students who attend at least one advising appointment per semester experience about a 12.5 percent increase in fall-to-spring persistence rates (Dixon, 2022). And while this figure nearly doubles for the college’s most academically at-risk student populations, these students utilize advising the least—accounting for just 16 percent of all advising engagement. The newly created Division of Academic and Student Affairs (ASA), which allowed for the centralization of advising, made possible the creation of an enhanced advising model to cultivate exponentially greater engagement for all student populations, particularly those who need it the most. This would be MCC’s signature UO undertaking.

Before the merger, advising was decentralized, predominantly practiced by teaching faculty, professional advisors, and school specialists, all of whom operated under the purview of a different supervisor across two divisions. Now, nearly all advising occurs within ASA, under the leadership of a single associate vice president and delivered by 21 Student Success Coaches. Such organizational streamlining and specialization have facilitated a model by which Student Success Coaches practice proactive and intentional caseload advising informed by expansive internal research and nationally recognized best practices in holistic student support. Moreover, the amalgamation of academics and student support services provides a foundation on which holistic advising, which guides students according to their academic, personal, and social needs, can thrive. To this end, individual success coaches are integrated in one of the college’s seven academic schools, reflecting and strengthening the inextricably intertwined relationship between academics and student supports. And in a more comprehensive context, in consolidating various pockets of academic, career, and transfer advising, we have created a seamless connection between completion and post-completion success efforts.

Strategies for Accelerating Gateway Mathematics and English Success

Informed by the clear connection between first-year completion of gateway math and English and increased rates of student success, faculty, staff, and administrators have worked collaboratively to actualize our strategic plan’s goals for academic momentum. A significant step toward this outcome has been the scaled increase in corequisite offerings for our highest-enrolled gateway math courses, Survey of Mathematics and Statistics I. Concomitantly, the mathematics faculty have engaged in professional development to imbue their course design and pedagogy with equity-minded best practices. Moreover, key stakeholders have been making strides to streamline math pathways while implementing a self-directed placement model to complement our multiple-measures placement process. These combined efforts serve to increase significantly the number and percentage of students attempting and completing college-level math in their first year.

Much of the efforts to scale gateway math corequisite courses were predicated on the success of the English department’s implementation of the Freshman Composition corequisite model, Accelerated Learning Program (ALP), which was fully implemented in 2019 and has yielded a significant increase in Freshman Composition success rates, with fall 2025 marking the college’s highest C or better rate since 2013. Moreover, the English Department’s 2024 Summer Professional Learning Institute and ongoing communities of practice served as the inspiration for the Mathematics Department’s recent professional development efforts. English faculty also developed—and are now piloting—a one-credit Freshman Composition lab to provide additional support to our students.

Complementing these curricular and pedagogical reforms have been the joint efforts of faculty and Learning Support Systems staff to increase tutoring and course-based support engagement in our Tutoring and Academic Assistance Center (TAAC). Through the integration of TAAC-focused assignments, the holding of faculty office hours in the TAAC, and faculty provision of onsite tutoring, TAAC engagement for math support in fall 2024 increased more than 80 percent compared to the previous year, and for English, the increase was more than 300 percent (Revello, 2024).

Program Mapping for Student Momentum

MCC’s UO priorities include ensuring that every student can navigate a clear, efficient path to a high-value career or seamless transfer. Curricular program mapping is a cornerstone of this effort and includes building upon our existing semester-by-semester program guides with integrated program requirements that show transfer destinations and earnings potential through infographics and links to transfer partners and labor market resources. This approach clarifies course sequencing, minimizes excess credits, and accelerates time to completion—all key factors in improving equity and student success (Abele, 2021).

As part of strengthening its academic program mapping processes, MCC is redesigning its program assessment model. The current six-year assessment cycle hinders our ability to make timely adjustments to curriculum design and delivery, course sequencing, and other critical facets essential to program mapping. The redesigned process, which features annual reviews embedded within a three-year assessment cycle, will engage faculty, advisory board members, and Career and Transfer Services staff in a more responsive, collaborative examination of program health metrics informed by completion trends, labor market needs, and credit transferability. Program mapping also serves as a foundation for coordinated onboarding, proactive advising, and master schedule management to ensure that required courses are available when students need them, in formats that support their success. This intentional scheduling reduces bottlenecks, supports on-time completion, and makes it easier for students to balance academic, work, and family commitments.

From Merger to Measurable Impact

These reform initiatives did not emerge as isolated projects; they were made practical and achievable because MCC unified Academic and Student Affairs into a single, integrated division. That merger provided strategic leadership, aligned priorities, and the operational backbone needed to coordinate functions across the college.

References

Abele, L. (2021). Why academic maps may be the single most important action in improving student success. Complete College America. https://completecollege.org/resource/why-academic-maps-may-be-the-single-most-important-action-in-improving-student-success

Dixon, W. (2022). Illume impact advising fall 2021. Institutional Research. Monroe Community College.

Revello, S. (2024). Math and English tutoring sessions since fall 2023. TutorTrac. Monroe Community College.

Michael Jacobs is Provost and Vice President, Academic and Student Affairs, and Kelsey Bright is Associate Vice President, Academic Affairs, at Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York.

Opinions expressed in Learning Abstracts are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.