Columbus State Community College selected to participate in year-long initiative to improve racial equity

Columbus State Community College is one of ten community colleges across the country selected to take part in a year-long initiative led by Achieving the Dream (ATD) and the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center. The Racial Equity Leadership Academy will take place over the course of the next year and will feature a facilitated study of strategies to reduce institutional barriers to student success most often encountered by minority students and communities. When CSCC concludes the year-long project, administrators will have a detailed plan of action to implement and will share the plan at a national conference in 2022.

The Racial Equity Leadership Academy (RELA) selected 10 U.S. community colleges through an application process that included a submission from each school detailing their current plans and goals. With funding from the Kresge Foundation and the Greater Texas Foundation, RELA will provide mentorship to CSCC and the other community colleges to develop comprehensive strategies for delivering equitable education and effective community outreach. Teams from the colleges will consist of administrators, faculty members, student affairs professionals, and diversity officers. Jade Agua, chief learning officer at the USC Race and Equity Center spoke with Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, an online news publication, about the work to be done, "We look forward to rolling up our sleeves and working alongside these college teams. This program will be an opportunity for us to bolster and propel the institutional transformation required to center racially minoritized students in the march toward racial equity."

Columbus State Community College has been working with the ATD network since 2012, and in that time has received recognition for its double-digit improvement in rates of student completion, particularly among African-American and low income students. In a release about CSCC's participation in RELA, President David T. Harrison said, "Columbus State is ready to make our next leap forward in racial equity change work as a leading Achieving the Dream member college. We are honored at ATD's selection of our team to build upon our organizational commitment and progress advancing racially equitable student success outcomes, and intend to leverage this experience as a key means of our integrated efforts to measurably improve diversity, equity and inclusion in everything that we do."