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Connect2Complete
A Campus Compact program with funding
from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

BACKGROUND
As community colleges experience increases in enrollment and significant budget shortfalls, they seek innovative ways to increase graduation rates while impacting the quality of student learning. Connect2Complete (C2C) is a program that leverages the most underutilized college resource – students themselves – in a new model for true student success.

WHAT
Campus Compact has funded nine community colleges in Florida, Ohio, and Washington along with their related Compact state affiliates to support Connect2Complete (C2C) pilot programs. Over the course of the two-year pilot, these programs are engaging more than 4,500 low-income, underprepared students enrolled in developmental education courses designed to get them ready for college level coursework. Through peer-to-peer advocacy and peer assisted community-engaged learning, C2C supports the most vulnerable students to achieve academic success and credential completion and to actively engage with their peers, the college, and the broader community. These two strategies encourage academic development, social integration, and personal development – all key factors for student persistence.

Campus Compact, together with the pilot sites and our partner evaluators at Brandeis University, is using data and evidence from the pilot projects to support identification of promising practices in order to codify C2C models. Statewide learning communities coordinated by the Florida, Ohio, and Washington state affiliates and a national faculty fellows learning community organized by Campus Compact are supporting the development and dissemination of this knowledge. 

HOW
Each community college is testing unique peer-to-peer advocacy models that reflect the culture of their campus while incentivizing participation by peer advocates through one of the following mechanisms:
A. Federal work-study funds
B. Credited or non-credited leadership development training

Peer advocates work alongside faculty in developmental education classes, individually, in cohorts, and through social media platforms to support students in setting goals, making connections to college life, achieving academic success, navigating college systems, and linking to college services designed to help students be successful. Students participate in community-engaged learning activities in conjunction with developmental education courses, credit-bearing leadership development courses, and through projects coordinated by peer advocates and campus community engagement offices.

WHO
Florida
Florida Campus Compact
Broward College
Miami Dade College
Tallahassee Community College

Ohio
Ohio Campus Compact
Cuyahoga Community College
Lorain County Community College
Owens State Community College

Washington
Washington Campus Compact
Big Bend Community College
Edmonds Community College
Green River Community College

WHY
Peer advocacy:  Students themselves are an incredibly under-utilized community college resource, and there exists an opportunity and a need to engage them.  Mobilizing successful students in support of other students who face obstacles to completion helps peer advocates and mentees integrate academically and socially through key relationships and support networks, thereby influencing students’ intentions to persist in college.[1]

Community-engaged learning:  Community-engaged learning provides a high quality learning experience that promotes academic integration and performance, bolsters social competence, and empowers students to develop self-efficacy and autonomy.  Together these outcomes combine to improve retention and the likelihood of completing a degree.[2]

Equally important, students who participate in these activities show increased interest in becoming personally and professionally involved in community change work.  The ultimate result is helping students become critically, civically and globally minded graduates who can advocate for change in their communities and contribute to building a healthy democracy.[3]

WHEN 
The pilot phase of the program began January 1, 2012 and ends June 30, 2014. For growing the model on the pilot campuses beyond the pilot phase, and for adoption at additional community college campuses across the country, state affiliates will work in partnership with the national Campus Compact office to identify a financing model for C2C, with an emphasis on securing new funding sources and leveraging and repurposing existing revenue streams such as work-study.

For additional information contact:  
Shana Berger, C2C Project Director, sberger {at} compact(.)org 617.357.1881 x 209
45 Temple Place, Boston, MA 02111 
www.compact.org/initiatives/connect2complete/