Greenhouse Grants for the Middle States Region
2012-2013 Greenhouse Award Winner, Middle States Region
The Public Service Outreach Greenhouse program provides seed money for the start-up or piloting of innovative public service outreach programs by College Board member institutions. Such programs help these institutions reach low-income and disadvantaged student populations, attend to unmet educational needs and identify new service opportunities that are consistent with their missions as well as with the mission of the College Board.
We received a favorable response to our request for proposals and awarded the following recipient:
Onandaga Community College, Syracuse, N.Y.
Onondaga Community College is the second-largest undergraduate college in Central New York, with approximately 13,000 students, and is one of the nation's fastest growing community colleges. Founded in 1961, it is a comprehensive, two-year college operating under the State University of New York (SUNY) and is locally sponsored by Onondaga County.
The mission of Onondaga Community College is to create "high quality educational programs and services accessible to our diverse citizenry, empowering individuals to explore and discover their inherent potential and to transform themselves to live, work and thrive in our global community." The college's vision is to be recognized as a dynamic leader in higher education and to be one of the nation's most innovative community colleges.
Onandaga offers approximately 50 associate degree and certificate programs of study, with the ability to pursue bachelor's and master's degrees on campus.
The leadership at Onandaga Community College believes that removing educational barriers faced by students is critical in supporting student success. Their research has indicated that more than 60 percent of students entering Onondaga require at least one noncredit developmental course. This requirement has a negative impact on students' ability to achieve their educational goals in a reasonable timeframe, which is discouraging to students at the onset of their college career. Onandaga Community College is interested in piloting a project to better prepare these students for success in college.
The goal of this project is to develop a student assessment and intervention model that can be implemented at the high school level to increase the percentage of college-ready students who attend Onondaga Community College. Onondaga will partner with five area high schools in the LaFayette, Syracuse, East Syracuse Minoa, Westhill and Hannibal school districts to identify approximately 200 educationally at-risk students to participate in the project.
ACCUPLACER testing will be used to determine students' college readiness. ACCUPLACER Diagnostic will be administered to students who place into remedial courses in order to identify areas needing improvement. My Foundations Lab will be used as the academic intervention.
Onandaga was named the "Model of Efficiency" honoree for 2010 by University Business magazine and a "Military Friendly School" in 2012 by G.I. Jobs magazine and was rated among the top 10 percent of community colleges in the nation by the Aspen Institute in 2011.