Our partners at Vanderbilt have published three new papers related to TN-PEARL this year.
The first, Building Community and Technical College Capacity Through State Funding, is co-authored by Cara Deloach, Adela Soliz and Hidahas Mesa and was published in the April 2023 edition of Community College Review.
This article analyzes the implementation of two state grant programs in Tennessee aimed at improving the quality of in-demand postsecondary career and technical education (CTE) programming at community and technical colleges. The authors use insights from their findings to propose a conceptual framework for understanding how external funding can reduce institutional capacity constraints in similar contexts. The researchers found strong alignment of perceived grant goals between the state, which developed the program, and the practitioners who implemented it.
Delivering on the Promise: The Role of Supplemental Promise Programs in Reducing Barriers to College Success is co-authored by Adela Soliz, Cara DeLoach and Hidahis Mesa, and was published Jan. 27, 2023, in the Journal of Higher Education.
Federal and state policies increasingly call upon community and technical colleges to collaborate with industry and other outside stakeholders in order to improve career and technical education programs. In this article, the researchers apply a framework from the public administration literature to understand how these collaborations are built. Using data from in-depth interviews with 49 participants engaged in building collaborations to improve workforce education and training across Tennessee, the researchers find that productive networks rely on dynamic individuals who act as boundary spanners, facilitating communication across sectors. In addition, successful collaborations make use of meetings involving multiple interest groups to bridge, rather than reinforce, boundaries between stakeholders.
Finally, How Do Community and Technical Colleges Build Cross-Sector Collaborations?, co-authored by Christine N. Dickason, Carolyn Heinrich and Mary Smith, was published April 25, 2023, in the Journal of Higher Education.
As college promise programs proliferate across the country, supplemental promise programs are emerging to fill gaps in services and resources critical for student success, particularly for students with greater economic needs. This mixed-methods study examines the implementation and efficacy of two such programs in Tennessee, Nashville GRAD and Knox Promise, which are distinct in their approaches to providing financial and advising supports to community college students. Findings from interviews with students and program staff suggest that students saw the additional financial supports and interactions with advisers as critical to their continued success. Using administrative data, the researchers further explored the pathways to improved outcomes — college progression (credits earned) and persistence to the next term or academic year — and found that the intensity of student engagement with their advisors and use of program benefits (e.g. textbook and transportation supports) were positively associated with these college outcomes.
To read more, our Reports and Publications page has links to the full papers and other research related to TN-PEARL.