Supporting Students Across the Lifespan

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) recently hosted its annual conference in Seattle.

Aligned with its theme — Pioneering Minds: Shaping the Future of Education — the conference featured sessions highlighting how community college professionals are shaping their own institutions and paving the way for other institutions.

Throughout the conference, one theme became clear: community colleges are not looking at their work with students as a single moment in time. They’re looking holistically at supporting and engaging students well before they ever arrive on campus and beyond graduation.

Here is a snapshot of a few sessions — just a small sampling of the innovative work taking place across community colleges:

• Palo Alto College is leading the way in engaging families and future students as early as birth. By gifting baby baskets to expectant mothers, hosting egg hunts, leading Adopt-a-School initiatives, offering STEM summer camps, and offering the Alamo Promise Program, they’re planting seeds about going to college early and weaving the narrative that “college is for everyone” into the fabric of the community.

• Hartnell College, part of the Caring Campus network, is intentionally building belonging and a sense of safety for students through connection-centered practices. These include warm handoffs, name badges to help students identify and access staff, encouraging faculty to use students’ names in class, and transparency with interviewees about the Caring Campus commitment.

• Laramie County Community College (LCCC), in turn, is pioneering a Transition Experience course (TREX) to better prepare students for their post-graduate journey. Joseph Schaffer, president of the college, explained that many institutions have shifted mindsets from being ‘access institutions’ to ‘completion institutions.’ Yet now, we must ask tougher questions: Are students actually finding success when they leave us? How can we bookend the great first-year experience so many of us now offer? LCCC’s TREX course is cracking the code on career and transfer readiness. One student even called it “a superpower class.”

• Long Beach City College has made a transformation in the last several years, expanding belonging and success for student parents. When President Mike Munoz came to the college in 2018, children were largely unwelcome on campus. While not entirely intentional, the school was alienating parenting students. Over time, under Munoz’s leadership, the institution has flipped the script. They now offer free childcare through a Boys & Girls Club on campus, lactation rooms, a children’s corner in the library, and more.

What emerged in Seattle was a reminder that community colleges are extending their work beyond the years students are on campus. They are building cultures within their communities that help underserved students believe in their ability to attend and complete college, and that they can find a place in college and thrive beyond it. Through a sustained commitment to belonging, safety, and post-graduation success, community colleges are reshaping what it means to support students across the lifespan.