The AZ HSI Consortium is pleased to announce the EXCEL Program as an AZ HSI Evidence Based Practice. After careful review from colleagues across the state of AZ, EXCEL Program was shown to be an effective program in moving the needle towards greater college access, persistence, retention, transfer, and degree attainment for Latinx students in Arizona.
Please read below to learn more about the EXCEL Program at the Maricopa Community Colleges.
Overview of Institution
Maricopa Community Colleges is a district with 10 colleges, all Hispanic Serving Institutions, and 31 satellite locations the county and Metro Phoenix Area, offering students over 600 degree and certificate programs. Maricopa Economic 2023 Impact reflect fiscal year (FY) 2021–22. Maricopa contributes to the economy in three key ways:
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The District adds economic value to Maricopa County as an employer of county residents and a large-scale buyer of goods and services.
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Maricopa Community Colleges fully prepares students to enter the job market in their chosen field so they can immediately contribute to their local economy.
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The Colleges draw out-of-state and out-of-county students, whose living expenses contribute to the Maricopa County economy.
These three economic channels allowed the Maricopa County Community Colleges District to add $7.9 billion to the Maricopa County economy, supporting 108,295 jobs across the county.
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MCCCD employed 10,826 full-time and part-time faculty and staff
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Around 94% of MCCCD’s students are from Maricopa County
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Enrolls nearly 140,000 students annually across all colleges
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Number one provider of undergraduate education to students of color in the state
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48% of our students are first generation
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1 out of 27 jobs in Maricopa is supported by our system
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38% of our students identify as Hispanic
Overview of Program
The EXCEL program was funded by Helios Education Foundation and the Arizona Community Foundation. The evidence provided in this submission includes cohort data funded by Helios. EXCEL began in the fall 2015 at Estrella Mountain and Glendale Community Colleges and concluded summer 2022, with a cohort of 800 throughout the duration of the program at each college.
The EXCEL program was modeled after a program at three of the City University of New York’s campuses called Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (“ASAP”). The ASAP program employs strong requirements for student program participants, comprehensive advisement and student services, course enrollment support and an ASAP seminar, and financial supports to result in substantial improvement to students’ academic outcomes and graduation rates.
The EXCEL program was funded by Helios Education Foundation and the Arizona Community Foundation. Staffing consisted the program director, two program coordinator, each located at one college, and a team of peer mentors.
MCCCD’s two west-valley colleges, GCC and EMCC, serve a population that is well over one-third Hispanic. Within this population, the program targeted first generation college students and low-income college students. EXCEL was an intensive success program for first generation and low-income students. The program assisted students with academic preparation, encouragement of familial involvement, practices peer academic advising, peer mentoring, assists with academic planning, and provides holistic support services. The EXCEL program employed five high-level goals: 1) Sustain and institutionalize EXCEL evidence based best practices throughout MCCCD that increase persistence and graduation rates of first generation and/or low-income students within Maricopa County, AZ, 2) Align the role and work of the EXCEL coordinators to Maricopa’s GPS/ISS Transformation efforts, 3) MCCCD will sustain and implement district-wide Parent/Family Advocacy Workshops to address the cultural and educational challenges impacting first generation and/or low-income student success, 4) MCCCD will develop a transfer experience for EXCEL students that provides support, guidance, and transition as identified by the student’s chosen career pathway as prescribed through Guided Pathways, 5) MCCCD will continue to develop community partnerships and identify new partnerships in order to align services, resources, and collaborations that provide educational, human services, and social support for first generation and/or low-income students.
EXCEL Cohort and Academic Year
Cohort 1 2015-2016
Cohort 2 2016-2017
Cohort 3 2017-2018
2018 (no new cohort, continued program support during funding gap year)
Cohort 4 2019-2020
Cohort 5 2020-2021
Cohort 6 2021-2022
FirstEval became engaged as the external evaluator of the EXCEL program
as of August, 2016.
Areas program seeks to make an impact and how
*Data and report findings provided by FirstEval, September 2021 (last data pull)
Retention:
Fall 2015 - Spring 2016
Cohort 1
GCC EXCEL 93.4% Comparison 90.2%
EMCC EXCEL 94.8% Comparison 93.8%
Fall 2016 - Spring 2017
Cohort 1
GCC EXCEL 82.9% Comparison 87.6%
EMCC EXCEL 76.5% Comparison 85.5%
Cohort 2
GCC EXCEL 88.4% Comparison 86.8%
EMCC EXCEL 91.7% Comparison 90.7%
Fall 2017 - Spring 2018
Cohort 2
GCC EXCEL 86.7% Comparison 86.3%
Cohort 3
GCC EXCEL 88.1% Comparison 83%
EMCC EXCEL 87.7% Comparison 86.4%
Fall 2018 - Spring 2019
Cohort 3
GCC EXCEL 71.4% Comparison 84.4%
EMCC EXCEL 83.1% Comparison 81.9%
Fall 2019 - Spring 2020
Cohort 4
GCC EXCEL 90.9% Comparison 75.5%
EMCC EXCEL 95% Comparison 79.2%
(Peer Mentors)
For some students, their peer mentor is the reason they are still in school, and their primary connection to EXCEL. Throughout the life of EXCEL, the roles and responsibilities of peer mentors have increased, and even more so with Covid-19. Peer mentors have devised their own innovative ways of bettering EXCEL, through their implementation of trainings, shared calendars, and text message reminder systems. EXCEL provides students with numerous opportunities to meet with a program peer who is further along in college and can provide advice and an ear to students. Year after year, both students and the Program Coordinators consistently tout the importance of Peer Mentors to the success of the EXCEL program. In 2020, all interviewed students mentioned their peer mentor as critical to their success in college. In 2017, only eight students surveyed stated that they had not taken advantage of this resource, and 12 students stated the same in 2018. Seven students in 2020 stated that they had not spoken to their peer mentor. In 2017, students rated the importance of their peer mentor to their success in school at 8.7 on a 0 to 10 scale, with 10 being extremely important. This rating slightly increased in 2018 to 8.9 and increased further in 2020 to a 9.3.
(Degree Audits and Outreach)
EXCEL program Cohorts 2 and 3 received personalized degree audits during their time
with their peer mentor and the program coordinator. This was coupled with outreach to all students – even those who are inactive or appear to have dropped out of school.
Experience has shown the program coordinators that this combination of degree audit and outreach is EXCEL’s “special sauce.” This certainly contributes to EXCEL participants’ high award completion rates.
(Staff Communication and Institutional Support)
The strong communication and incredible dedication of EXCEL’s Program Coordinators and Program Manager are likely the most crucial component to EXCEL’s success. EXCEL, with its complexities and two locations, requires immense dedication, skill, and internal communications to implement successfully. The EXCEL team does just this, and it may be that the success of EXCEL lies within the dedication of its staff. EXCEL program staff also enjoy strong institutional support from their district administration and their Financial Aid and Career Services offices, as mentioned in interviews.
Transfer: For almost all cohorts, EXCEL participants are more likely to transfer to continue their education than their non-participant counterparts and are more likely to transfer to a 4-year institution than their non-participant counterparts.
EMCC Cohort 1 - 42% Comparison 33%
GCC Cohort 1 - 42% Comparison 34%
EMCC Cohort 2 - 36% Comparison 23%
GCC Cohort 2 - 29% Comparison 30%
EMCC Cohort 3 - 21% Comparison 17%
GCC Cohort 3 - 14% Comparison 17%
GPA:
Consistently, the average term GPA for EXCEL students is greater than the comparison group’s GPAs, and greater than the district-wide average, for all measured semesters.
Fall 2015 - EXCEL 3.25, Comparison 2.89
Spring 2016 - EXCEL 3.0, Comparison 2.83
Fall 2016 - EXCEL 2.95, Comparison 2.83
Spring 2017 - EXCEL 2.87, Comparison 2.78
Fall 2017 - EXCEL 2.82, Comparison 2.82
Spring 2018 - EXCEL 2.76, Comparison 2.82
Fall 2018 - EXCEL 2.67, Comparison 2.90
Spring 2019 - EXCEL 2.78, Comparison 2.86
Fall 2019 - EXCEL 2.82, Comparison 2.77
Spring 2020 - EXCEL 2.86, Comparison 2.71
Degree Awards:
EXCEL participants consistently have a statistically significantly higher rate of award receipt than the comparison group’s award receipt. The National Student Clearinghouse data show that nationally, the 6-year community college completion rate is 40.3%, whereas EXCEL is at 88%. Participants consistently exceed this degree-earning rate. New to this report, MCCCD provided four-year graduation rates for the first three EXCEL cohorts and their comparison groups. Except for EMCC Cohort 2, EXCEL students have consistently higher four-year graduation rates than their comparison group counterparts. Specifically, for the first cohort, EXCEL participants have four-year graduation rates between 6 and 9 percentage points higher than their comparison group counterparts. While these differences are not statistically significant, likely due to small sample sizes, they are notable.
4-Year Graduation Rates
Cohort 1 EMCC: EXCEL 27% MCCCD Comparison Group 18%
Cohort 1 GCC EXCEL 24% Comparison 18%
Cohort 2 EMCC EXCEL 9.8% Comparison 10%
Cohort 2 GCC EXCEL 16% Comparison 12%
Cohort 3 EMCC EXCEL 7.3% Comparison 4%
Cohort 3 GCC EXCEL 9.4% Comparison 6%
How does this program center servingness?
When a student joined EXCEL they received genuine authentic care (cariño), had access to supportive network of coaches, peers, and coordinators who supported the, (community/communidad), direct outreach by email, calls, chat, text, we check in with the student, an environment that valued family commitments and education (Family/Familia), and support by being ready to support students with a variety resources. We created innovative and scalable practices that worked to close the achievement gap among Latino/a/x students while minimizing the risk of withdrawal and alienation from critical resources and support services offered by their college and community.