Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Implementation Evaluation Report Through July 2020

ACC hopes to demonstrate that the activities of ACC-OSMM would be linked to improvements in measures of student success such as: graduation rate, time to completion, retention/persistence, and cohort loan default rate (CDR). ACC will partner with the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) to perform an evaluation, both formative and summative, on the effectiveness of these efforts on the student outcome measures of interest. Both types of evaluations provide actionable information about the success of the intervention while each successive cohort of recipients is in the process of receiving services, allowing for relatively rapid reflection and program modification as needed by ACC staff. Both evaluations are intended to measure the implementation, aggregate outcomes, and the impact of these efforts on Full Time First Time in College (FTFIC) loan or Pell grant receiving students’ graduation rates, 3-year Cohort Default Rates (CDR), retention rates, and fall to fall persistence for those who are Pell eligible. A host of intermediate steps related to these outcomes will also be measured.