Our Focus Areas

Our Focus Areas

Across our portfolio, we help community colleges strengthen the systems, practices, partnerships, and implementation strategies that support students and build institutional capacity. We also share practical lessons with the broader field. 

Our work is organized around three primary focus areas

Student Supports and Success
Student success is at the heart of the Center’s work. Through projects focused on access, basic needs, parenting students, financial aid, completion, re-engagement, whole student support, and key student populations, we help colleges strengthen the systems and practices that support students at every stage of their journey.
 

Career Connected Learning & Workforce Pathways
Community colleges play a critical role in connecting students to economic mobility pathways and responding to changing workforce needs. Through our work, we help our members build and enhance career pathways, employer engagement, apprenticeships, internships, competency-based learning, AI-skilling and readiness, future-of-work strategies and other career-connected learning opportunities.
 

Institutional Impact & Sustainable Solutions
Our work helps colleges create lasting impact for their learners and communities by creating or identifying promising practices, putting them into action, and sustaining them over time. The Center focuses on project design, technical assistance, implementation support, sustainability planning, capacity-building, and adaptive models that help institutions move through the lifecycle of an impactful project, from initial concept to meaningful action and transformational outcomes.

What Grounds Our Work

Across these focus areas, several commitments shape how the Center approaches its work and creates value for colleges, members, partners, funders, and the broader field.

Our work is grounded in student success, but the Center’s primary role is to support colleges and systems rather than provide direct student services. 

By working through institutions, the Center helps strengthen the conditions, practices, and structures that shape students’ experiences and outcomes.

The Center’s project portfolio creates opportunities to learn alongside colleges and partners, identify promising and best practices, and share those lessons learned across the sector. 

Key features of our projects include impact storytelling, evaluation, reports, toolkits, case studies, and other resources that position the Center as a source of practical guidance.

ACCT members, trustees, and other college leaders are important partners in understanding, championing, and sustaining institutional change. 

Through trustee education, board-level conversations, member engagement, and shared learning, we connect project work to broader institutional, community, and economic priorities.

Strong partnerships with colleges, funders, national partners, members, and other stakeholders help shape the Center’s work. 

These relationships support project design, strengthen implementation, surface field needs, and help sustain change beyond a single project or funding cycle

 

See how the Center is working with community colleges and partners to put these focus areas into practice

Explore Our Work

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