Check out our latest Tool releases: CTC's Academic Standing Toolkit and the Classroom Practices Library are now available on the Tools & Resources menu!
The College Transition Collaborative
CTC bridges research and practice to help colleges create learning environments that foster equitable student engagement and success. Our work helps schools understand how their students experience moments of transition or difficulty, and how psychologically attuned practices–messages, policies, behaviors, and programs–can convey to all students they are valued, respected, and can excel.
What's new with CTC?
Announcements
Now Live! Academic Standing Toolkit:
CTC has launched the online course 'How You Say It Matters: A Toolkit for Improving Communications about Academic Standing’ to help administrators write their own psychologically attuned academic standing notification. Click here to learn more and register for the course.
CTC received a two-year grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct an early phase assessment of faculty and counselor mindset beliefs in community colleges, and how they predict faculty attitudes and teaching practices, counselor communications, and student experiences and outcomes. CTC will utilize these findings to adapt and expand its existing professional development resources and tools for community college faculty and counselors.
Millions of students begin college but never graduate.
Completion rates are especially low for students from structurally disadvantaged backgrounds, including students of color, low-income students, and first-generation college-goers. Research shows that the disparity in outcomes is partially attributable to how students make meaning of challenges and setbacks, based on many factors including lived experiences of inequity, the visible under-representation of others like them, and the messages sent by their environment.
CTC bridges research and practice to help more students reach their fullest potential.
How We Work
Rigorous R&D
We select areas of research based on school and student needs, ground our work in scientific theory, and rigorously assess everything we create across diverse contexts.
Collaborative Partnerships
We partner with researchers, administrators, educators, and practitioners across the higher education community to ensure the greatest potential for positive student impact.
Accessible Resources
We create evidence-based, cost-effective, and user-friendly tools and resources supporting practitioners to implement more psychologically attuned practices across the college journey.
Where We Focus
Sample Moments of Psychological Uncertainty Throughout College
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Before College
Do admissions messages convey to students that diverse students are valued on campus and that students can grow to belong in the college community and succeed?
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Transition Into College
Do welcome messages communicate that diverse kinds of students belong? Do messages around placement tests lead students to feel like they can succeed?
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"Sophomore Slump"
How do gateway courses impact students' feelings of belonging or academic potential?
How do psychological factors during college influence student success, persistence and degree completion?
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Throughout College
How can schools help to foster positive intergroup relationships? How can schools foster the development of more diverse social networks?
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Points of Difficulty
Do communications about remedial coursework lead students to feel "dumb"? Do communications about academic setbacks communicate that faculty and the college care about their success and believe they can improve? Do communications about discipline infractions lead students feel like they don’t belong in college or can’t succeed?
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Transition Out of College
Do messages from career centers help students identify normal challenges in navigating the job market post college and finding a career path? Do messages about financial aid in and after college communicate warmth and support to low-income students?
Our Impact
110,000+
students reached by CTC-designed programs and practices
350+
colleges and universities implementing CTC-designed programs and practices
up to 40%
reduction in achievement gap
One of the things that’s really difficult when you’re on the ground in an institution is to do this work and know it’s working. To know what we’re doing has solid research behind it is priceless.
- Administrator at CTC Partner School
I know that maybe there will be rough patches in my transition to college life, but like with all newly introduced things, I will adjust and become comfortable. I'll learn from my mistakes and focus on the positive opportunities and experiences college life brings...I am confident I will eventually feel at home like many of the other college students and alumni before me.
- Student Response from CTC Program