Overview

Miami Dade College (MDC) is not only the largest U.S. community college, it is also the largest public college in the nation. Its size, however, has not distracted Miami Dade from focusing on achieving high levels of student success. Serving students from more than 100 countries—nearly three-quarters of whom are Hispanic—the college has worked hard to integrate student supports into classroom-based education so that all students receive what they need, whether their goal is four-year transfer or graduating directly into a career. In an economy with more than 12 percent unemployment, recent graduates of Miami Dade have exceptionally high employment rates and earn, on average, significantly more than other new hires. The college achieves this success while serving as a vital member of its community, running a nationally regarded arts school for high school and college students and hosting the city’s national book fair and film festival.

A strong foundation

Not only is South Florida thick with graduates from Miami Dade, but they often run the show. Miami’s mayor graduated from MDC, as did several of the area’s most influential CEOs, members of Congress, police and fire chiefs, judges, journalists, and most of the city’s public safety officers.

Another prominent alumnus is the president of MDC, Eduardo Padron, who, like many, came to the college when there were few other options open to newly arriving Cuban refugees. Since its start in 1960, the college has grown to nearly 100,000 credit students across eight campuses. Over time, the school’s reputation has grown too. People don’t always advertise their community college degrees, butt MDC they do, literally, on a billboard ad campaign. “There’s tremendous pride of saying you graduated from Miami Dade College,” said Helen Aguirre Ferre, a Univision journalist and chairman of the MDC board of trustees.

MDC parlays that reputation right back into opportunity for its new generation of students, nine in ten of whom are Hispanic or black, and who range from top performers enrolled in the prestigious Honors College to immigrants who require many layers of English language instruction before beginning academic studies. Its college foundation is the fourth-largest in the state, funding, among other initiatives, $18 million in scholarships annually for students from poor backgrounds. A new American Dream Scholarship promises two years free at MDC to academically qualified candidates.

MDC reaches out to students still in the K-12 system, offering dual-enrollment and summer enrichment programs, bringing them on campus for college placement test preparation, and working with their teachers. For example, MDC recently convened college faculty and teachers from several high schools to look at math placement test results and see how they can better align high school coursework to the skills needed in college.

Providing skills for success

MDC is one of the largest colleges in the country, a fact not lost on Nelson Bermudez. When the 20-year-old enrolled this fall, he didn’t know how he’d find the right buildings, much less navigate the system to get an associate degree in the most efficient way possible.

Bermudez, like 70 percent of all MDC students who place into developmental education, enrolled in a three-credit class called Student Life Skills (SLS), which has been found to double the graduation rate for the neediest students. MDC offers several versions of SLS: one required for students who place in developmental courses in at least two areas, another for students with less intense needs, a third for students returning from academic probation, and even a variation for honors students. SLS students learn how to make the most out of their education—like which seats in a classroom are susceptible to the least distraction or how to ask a professor for help.

Instructors guide students in evaluating prospective careers and developing the course-by-course education plans that will get them there. “Really quickly, I got comfortable with college life, because of that class,” Bermudez said. “My teacher, she’s on top of us.” She helped him devise an education plan in which every class moves Bermudez closer to his business administration degree and eventual transfer to a four-year college.

To improve student results in math and science, the college has adopted an approach called peer-led team learning (PLTL), which now runs in 65 courses at four campuses, and will be expanded campus-wide. Students who did well in a course and are deemed to be good mentor material are hired to return as PLTL tutors. At the beginning of the term, students can sign up for small study groups—about half do—that meet with the tutor several times weekly. The tutors are expected to meet regularly with the professors whose classes they’re assisting.

“It creates this feedback loop about what’s really happening in the classroom,” said science dean Heather Belmont. “Often, students are scared to tell the faculty what they don’t know.” PLTL tutors bridge that gap, and have made a measurable difference. Administrators note that students who participate in the study groups receive, on average, one letter grade higher than those who do not.

A group of three students at a recent PLTL session said they could see why. Their chemistry professor had told them to raise their hands in class if they had questions, but none did. Yet in a recent session with their tutor, engineering major Valeria Perez, 25, the students were fully engaged as she reviewed on a whiteboard how to balance chemical equations. You don’t feel as much pressure as you do in class, the students said, and Perez explains everything clearly. “This last test,” said Joseph Ghanime, 23, “is the first ‘A’ I ever got.”

In math, a search for solutions

“Mathematics is where most of our students get lost,” said Professor Rosany Alvarez.  So over several years, as part as an improvement plan tied to accreditation, MDC faculty made a number of changes aimed at improving outcomes in math.

This wasn’t a hastily assembled effort. The college identified four lower-level courses that enrolled 17,000 students and had pass rates hovering around 50 percent. For those classes, faculty implemented one or more interventions from a carefully curated toolkit of ten possible ways to improve outcomes.  Each set of interventions was then measured—through course completion data, grades, and survey results—to see whether it worked, for whom, and under what conditions.

None were an unqualified success, but some showed promise. Assessing students more frequently on smaller chunks of material seemed to discourage developmental math students, but students in college algebra benefited, so the practice continues in that class. Students were not necessarily following through on “prescriptions” their professors wrote urging them to seek tutoring on specific areas of weakness, but they liked online instruction in math study skills. 

School officials describe how the math initiative reflects the college’s systematic approach to continuous improvement and the faculty’s dedication to experimentation and growth.  Those attitudes laid the groundwork for the biggest intervention of all: a technology-based redesign of developmental math courses, which is being piloted on the 30,000-student Kendall campus and is expected to be expanded throughout the college. By continuing to search for the most effective strategies, MDC wants to ensure that its two millionth student—who is expected to enroll soon—and everyone who comes after will be provided with the best possible opportunity to succeed.