The Wachovia Foundation has donated $25,000 to Greenville Technical College to support students through the Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count initiative.

Achieving the Dream is a long-term national initiative to help more community college students succeed — particularly those students who traditionally face the most significant barriers to success, including students of color and low-income students.  The initiative is built on the belief that broad institutional change, informed by student achievement data, is critical to significantly improving student success rates. There are now 102 institutions in 22 states that are part of the effort.

“Achieving the Dream colleges have proven successful at ensuring that a student success agenda is a clear strategic focus at all levels of the campus community,” said Jamie P. Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation for Education, which has been the initiative’s primary funder since its inception in 2004. “We’re very pleased to help provide this opportunity to additional colleges and, more importantly, to the students they serve.”

Achieving the Dream helps participating colleges implement strategies designed to help more students earn degrees, complete certificates or transfer to other institutions to continue their studies. The initiative emphasizes building a culture of evidence, in which colleges use data to identify effective practices, improve student success rates and close achievement gaps.

“In my thirty years in education, I have seen few initiatives as impressive as this program,” says Steve Valand, vice president for education at Greenville Tech and part of the college’s core Achieving the Dream team. “Achieving the Dream will transform our college to an institution focused on a comprehensive student success agenda based on in-depth and continual data-driven decision making.”