THE WORKFORCE CHAMPION AWARD

For 25 years, Capital IDEA has forged strong partnerships across the public, private, and community sectors, collaborating to expand access to education and opportunities for our neighbors seeking good careers. At this year’s Celebration of Achievements, Capital IDEA bestowed the Workforce Champion Award to honor and celebrate an exceptional ally who has played a pivotal role in enabling student-to-career outcomes that drive positive and lasting impact in our community.

Executive Director, Alyssia Palacios-Woods’ presented the award to ACC along with the following remarks.

IN RECOGNITION OF AUSTIN COMMUNITY COLLEGE

With so many wonderful partners, Capital IDEA wanted to find a way to recognize our work together. So, this year, I am proud to present our inaugural Workforce Champion Award. This award honors and celebrates an exceptional ally who has played a pivotal role in enabling college-to-career outcomes that drive positive and lasting impact.

Since Capital IDEA’s inception, Austin Community College has been our most steadfast partner in helping students sponsored by Capital IDEA progress from enrollment to completion to employment. Austin Community College’s commitment to meeting the needs of today’s students both inside and outside the classroom, coupled with Capital IDEA’s intensive career navigation and wrap-around support, offers a holistic approach to ensuring students from all backgrounds can succeed.

The strong partnership between Capital IDEA and Austin Community College can be attributed to our mutual passion to—and I’m borrowing from ACC here— “love students to success.” Today, I want to highlight one of the ways Austin Community College and Capital IDEA collaborated this past year.

Together, we introduced a new strategy to help Capital IDEA sponsored students achieve college readiness by fulfilling the Texas Success Initiative Assessment (TSIA) and earn early academic achievement at the same time.

Sometimes, students who enroll in our program need extra support to be ready for college-level coursework. Previously, these students were supported through our College Prep Academy to gain academic proficiency and retake the TSIA, which would then allow them to enroll in college-level courses. While our College Prep Academy served us well for over 20 years, we noticed TSIA pass rates were declining after COVID-19 – and we knew we had to do better for our students.

We began researching new models for college readiness, and that research led us to Amarillo College. When we shared our intention to visit with ACC, they were immediately supportive and came with us to learn together. When we came back, we knew this was a model we wanted to use and mold to fit our students.

We set a rigorous schedule. It was January 2024, and our goal was to launch the new pilot in Fall 2024. We spent the next few months co-creating a model, and Capital IDEA began identifying participants beginning May 2024.

The new model is an 8-week co-requisite pilot for TSI Completion. It is comprised of one 8-week session for co-requisite English courses, and one 8-week session for co-requisite math courses. It offers a holistic, intensive support approach that includes embedded tutors, open and mandatory success labs, and the ongoing support of a Capital IDEA Career Navigator. And the best thing is, students who successfully complete the courses become TSIA complete without having to retake the TSIA exam, complete 1st year English and Math courses, AND earn 12 credit hours in their first semester.

We met our goal of launching in Fall 2024, and the initial results were significant: 85% of students enrolled in reading and writing became TSI complete, and 74% of students enrolled in math became TSI complete!

Many individuals made this new project possible, starting with Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart, who embodied ACC’s value of “yes” when we came to him. He said that we were looking at trying something new. So many committed early on to making this project happen in record time—David Fonken, Elizabeth Knight, Ursula Parker, and all the incredible faculty and tutors who brought the program to life alongside our Capital IDEA team—Eva Rios-Lleverino, William Askew, Lori Johnson, and Lia Paschal.

We’re now in the second semester of this pilot with ACC and are excited to see this momentum continue and hopefully grow.

As partners for more than 26 years, Austin Community College and Capital IDEA have worked together on projects like this to meet the needs of today’s students and transform the lives of thousands of Central Texans.

Today, I am honored to present the inaugural Workforce Champion Award to our partners at Austin Community College, accepted by Chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart.