Stories @ TCAT

“I am excited about our partnership with Achieving the Dream,” said Dr. Arrita Summers, President of TCAT Dickson.  “With the help of our mentor, we will be reviewing our enrollment numbers from the past few years and setting goals with strategies to ensure that students from a wide range of backgrounds succeed in enrolling, completing and going to work in their chosen occupations.”

Achieving the Dream (ATD) is a national nonprofit organization with a growing network of 277 community and technical colleges committed to helping their students, particularly low-income and students of color, achieve their goals for academic success, personal growth and economic opportunity. ATD helps colleges close equity gaps and accelerate student success through a change process to strengthen such key institutional capacities as teaching and learning, engagement and communication, leadership and vision, data and technology, and others.

Colleges work intensively in Achieving the Dream for three years, establishing ATD teams on their campuses who work closely with a leadership coach and a data coach assigned to them to help them set and achieve goals related to student success. In addition to the coaches, many of whom are retired college presidents, ATD provides a platform for scaling up evidence-based effective practices and policies, a set of peers to share knowledge, and other expert sources of innovation. 

The TCAT Dickson team launched in September 2020 and continues to work with ATD coaches in planning for the integration and alignment of student success initiatives.  

TCAT Dickson is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution and complies with non-discrimination laws: Title VI, Title IX, Section 504, and ADA. Located on Highway 46 in Dickson, the technical college has additional campuses in Clarksville and Franklin. For information about national and programmatic accreditations, contact the institution. Please visit www.tcatdickson.edu for more information.