Overview

Many community college presidents look at student outcomes and direct action based on what they find. For Regina Peruggi, the president of Kingsborough Community College, that’s not enough. Each year, Peruggi visits each academic department to give faculty a customized book of outcomes data. The message: You, and I, will do whatever it takes to achieve student success.

Unafraid to Experiment

With that drive, Kingsborough is unafraid to experiment, in broad and sustained ways. For instance, while at many colleges remedial students face only a narrow range of (often intimidating) options, Kingsborough students have a variety of pathways to college-level work: There are one-week, two-week, and eight-week classes; classes during winter and summer breaks; “flipped” classrooms, where students digest the material outside of class and spend class time working out problems with the assistance of instructors; and even, for some students, extra tutoring and immersion workshops that enable them to skip remedial classes altogether.

Another Kingsborough experiment--which is now a way of life there-- is the college’s 50 learning communities, which link three courses, and their instructors, together. The professors receive training and resources, create cross-disciplinary assignments, and are paid extra for those efforts. In one set of learning communities, 600 students, primarily low-income, have mandatory appointments with advisers who are in their classes weekly. A recent independent study demonstrated that Kingsborough’s learning communities notably improve student success, with increases in retention rates more than offsetting the cost.

Doing Whatever-It-Takes

Kingsborough’s whatever-it-takes approach is also reflected in a center called Single Stop, which connects Kingsborough students, three-fifths of whom are low-income, with services: transportation aid, food stamp and welfare applications, legal aid, assistance in filing taxes, and more. Recent data show that compared to others in their economic bracket, students who use Single Stop are more likely to stay in school. “There’s a tenacity about keeping these kids enrolled that's amazing,” says Joan Bartolomeo, a trustee of the college’s foundation. “It’s like, ‘We’re not letting you go without a fight.’”