The AZ HSI Consortium is pleased to announce the Peer Success Coach Program as an AZ HSI Evidence Based Practice. After careful review from colleagues across the state of AZ, the Peer Success Coach 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 Peer Success Coach Program at Glendale Community College.
Overview of Institution
Glendale Community College (GCC) is a thriving higher education institution located in the West Valley of the Phoenix Metropolitan area in Arizona. As a public, associate degree-granting institution, GCC is one of the oldest and largest of the 10 colleges in the Maricopa County Community College District. The mission of GCC is [to prepare] students for further higher education, employment, advancement, and successful participation in a global society. GCC services more than 21,000 students during an academic year. Approximately 500,000 students have completed associate degrees, certification programs, industry specific training, university transfer programs, or credit classes since GCC opened in 1965. GCC offers over 60 academic and career and technical education programs comprising over 200 degrees and certificates. GCC holds a deep commitment to its comprehensive mission as evident in its strong transfer, career and technical education programs, non-credit and customizable training programs and community partnerships with K-12, business and industry, municipalities, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.
Known for its academic excellence and a commitment to hiring professional, dedicated, and well-trained faculty and staff, GCC provides a haven for a diverse student body that thrives with support services, small class sizes, and engaged faculty. Recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, GCC’s student body reflects the diverse area in which GCC campuses are located. In Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 41% of the student body declared Hispanic, 39% White, 6% African American, 5% Asian and 8% Other. GCC strives to enable and promote upward mobility within the population it serves.
Community college students are disproportionately impacted by socioeconomic barriers and challenges; three out of five students experienced a basic needs insecurity, 39% experienced food insecurity, 48% experienced housing insecurity, 14% experienced homelessness, and 35% experienced anxiety. At GCC, 56% of students identify as first generation and 69% of students attend part time taking an average of 8.3 credits. GCC distributed over 2 million in scholarships to students in Fall 2022. The average age of a student at GCC is 24 and 55% of students identify as women and 44% of students identify as male.
Overview of Program
The Glendale Community College (GCC) Peer Success Coach (PSC) program was launched in Spring 2022 to provide all incoming and continuing students with one-on-one holistic support as an effort to increase retention and develop a stronger sense of belonging at GCC. By identifying the best practices of the EXCEL Program, a previous student success program at GCC funded by Helios Education Foundation, we built our program’s mission off three pillars of support: connect to engage, refer to retain, and coach to achieve. The goals of the Peer Success Coach Program are to increase engagement through connection to Fields of Interest (FOI), provide specific opportunities and resources, facilitate referrals to critical personnel in response to financial and academic needs, and coach in areas of academic success, time management and self advocacy to increase persistence and retention. We have not only created and facilitated meaningful matches between Peer Success Coaches and students based on the students’ preferences but have also discovered that students who are matched in our coaching program demonstrate higher retention rates than those who are not.
Coaches are tasked with facilitating connections between students and on or off-campus communities to help them build a sense of belonging and self-efficacy. Coaches provide one-on-one coaching in areas that the students choose; whether that relates to academic success, professional development, or personal growth, students are supported in reaching both short and long term goals. Peer Success Coaches are paired with students based on important shared qualities directly identified by the students. These qualities include similarity in age, race/ethnicity, background, and major. Once matched, Coaches are invested in their students' success and serve as a person ready to listen, inspire, and help navigate challenges. Our initial goal was to match a total of 500 students with a Coach within the academic year. We’ve had a lot of interest in our program, matching and supporting over 848 students in the first year and a half of our program’s existence.
Each Coach is actively engaged with their students throughout the semester through one-on-one meetings, texts, and emails. A variety of topics are discussed and documented during our conversations with students. Certain concerns raised by students are reported by Coaches for additional support from campus services and leadership, examples include academic struggles, mental health concerns, housing or food insecurity, and financial concerns. Resources are shared to connect students with the help they need, and the Program Coordinator follows up as needed.
For some, talking to peers about challenges is easier than talking to faculty or family members. Whether it is letting a student vent, helping a student create a plan for success, or finding resources and opportunities for students, Coaches are there to help. We know making sure our students feel connected and supported is crucial to their success and we are looking forward to continuing to see how these support efforts increase the students’ overall sense of belonging as well as their rates of retention and completion.
Areas program seeks to make an impact and how
Retention: the proportions of the Fall 2022 cohort that were retained to the Spring 2023 semester (fall-to-spring retention) and to the Fall 2023 semester (fall-to-fall retention) were compared with those measures for the overall college. For the Fall 2022-to-Spring 2023 retention rate, 78% of the students that had a Peer Success Coach persisted. This was 14 percentage points higher than the GCC average persistence rates for Fall-to-Spring. For the Fall 2022-to-Fall 2023 retention rate, 53% of the students who had a peer coach in Fall 2022 are enrolled in Fall 2023. This is 11 percentage points higher than the overall college fall-to-fall persistence rate of 42%.
How does this program center servingness?
The data shared within this application helps tell our story of servingness. We support students holistically through our three pillars of support: connect to engage, refer to retain, and coach to achieve. We have ensured that our coach and student demographics represent the student body. We have facilitated events that highlight the challenges of entering higher education, including featuring a student panel that addressed overcoming imposter syndrome, establishing communities and support systems, and finding resources to ease the college transition. Each Peer Success Coach has the strong desire to give back to their campus community and contribute to the success of their fellow students in a meaningful way. They meet students where they are by providing 1-on-1 appointments to answer general questions, set goals for success, create action plans, improve time-management skills, and provide referrals to essential resources provided by our campus community. Students are encouraged to share details about their academic and personal life so that best-fit opportunities can be found. The service is accessible to all students regardless of their program, age, ethnicity, gender, admission status or any further defining attribute. We are focused on both academic success and nonacademic outcomes including connection and belongingness. In an effort to address the intersectionality of our student’s complex lives, we have created a direct link to the resources on campus that support the 60% of students that experience at least one of the following: food insecurity, housing insecurity, or homelessness.
The Peer Success Coach Program is one way that GCC is supporting a culture of servingness for students. More than half of our student participants in this program identify as Latinx, in our short existence we have exceeded our goals of retention and persistence positively impacting the students we are intending to support to completion.