Signifying a commitment to student success and institutional improvement, St. Clair County Community College in Port Huron has joined Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count.

With support from the Kresge Foundation, SC4 joins 25 other community colleges from around the country in becoming members of Achieving the Dream and identifying strategies to improve student success, close achievement gaps and increase retention, persistence and completion rates.

Conceived in 2004 by Lumina Foundation for Education and seven national partner organizations, Achieving the Dream is focused on creating a “culture of evidence” on community college campuses in which data collection and analysis drive efforts to identify problems that prevent students from succeeding and develop programs to help them stay in school and receive a certificate or degree.

With the new institutions, Achieving the Dream’s network includes more than 130 institutions in 24 states and Washington, D.C., reaching more than 1 million students.

“Achieving the Dream is the perfect fit for SC4 as we recommit ourselves to student success,” said Dr. Kevin A. Pollock, college president. “SC4 and education play a critical role in our community’s revitalization, so our students’ success is our community’s success.”

Each new Achieving the Dream college has made an initial two-year commitment to focus its efforts on closing performance gaps among student subgroups. SC4 not only will learn from those that are already a part of Achieving the Dream, it will receive assistance from experienced practitioners in building a culture of evidence campus-wide, using data to identify problems, setting priorities and measuring progress toward increasing student success.

For more information about Achieving the Dream, visit www.achievingthedream.org.