College of the Desert is an associate degree and certificate-granting institution in the Coachella Valley of Southern California serving over 15,000 students across five campuses and through several off-campus academic opportunities.
The College is an important part of its community and proudly serves students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to achieve a college education. The college is the largest source of transfer students to California State University at San Bernardino’s Palm Desert Campus and continually focuses on increasing transfers to four-year institutions.
College of the Desert is dedicated to creating opportunities for the people of Coachella Valley, captured in Superintendent/President Laura Hope’s guiding motto, “Your Community. Your College.” Perhaps the program that best demonstrates this principle is the institution’s EDGE/plEDGE program, which exists to help close the gaps in student access, equity, and success.
EDGE/plEDGE Program
The EDGE/plEDGE program started taking shape when, in 2010, nearly 90% of new incoming students assessed below collegiate levels in math, 80% assessed below collegiate levels in English, and 73% assessed below collegiate levels in reading. Additionally, College of the Desert’s service area included many communities with bachelor or higher education attainment rates as low as 1%.
The foundational efforts of EDGE/plEDGE were launched in 2012 with two main goals: to aid the large number of students who entered the college underprepared to perform at the collegiate level and to provide counseling, advising, and academic support services in the lowest educational attainment communities to help more students, increase retention rates, and enable them to achieve their goals toward graduation and transfer.
Today, EDGE partners with local school districts, charter and private schools, and home-schooled students to introduce them to College of the Desert and the services available to them before they even enroll. Moreover, community outreach extends to the parents of potential students as well as to adult students.
Recent students who participated in the EDGE/plEDGE program speak to the difference the program made helping them to prepare for college and their time at COD:
“I really appreciate all the help that was given to me and made me feel welcomed, as well as it was okay to ask as many questions as needed.”
“The program is great for you to prepare for college-level English and Math, and getting tips on being a successful student at college.”
The plEDGE side of the program started in 2017, giving all incoming local high school graduates free tuition and fees for one year at College of the Desert. The program was so popular that it was renewed again and again and expanded to offer two years of tuition support, serving 8,706 students since its inception. Program requirements include full-time enrollment status, completion of the financial aid application, one career-focused workshop, and 10 hours of community service.
Together, EDGE and plEDGE tackle the most significant barriers faced by students from underrepresented communities: financial, college preparation, retention, persistence, and completion.
The outcomes are impressive.
Outcomes
Students completing the EDGE/plEDGE programs have comparable or higher success rates in college-level math and English/reading.
First-time college students who completed the EDGE/plEDGE program persisted from Fall 2021 to Spring 2022 at a higher rate than first-time students who did not participate: 81.7% vs. 58.5% – and had a higher fall to fall persistent rate, 62% vs. 40% for the 2020-2021 year compared to their non-EDGE/plEDGE counterparts.
Additionally, EDGE/plEDGE students complete more units in their first year (16.2) than their non-EDGE/plEDGE counterparts (10.3) for the 2021-22 academic year, and plEDGE students also have a higher 3-year completion rate than their non-plEDGE counterparts.
In the 2021-22 academic year, EDGE/plEDGE first-time college students were more successful (59.90%) in College-Level English than non-EDGE first-time students (48.49%). And, EDGE/pLEDGE first-time college students were more successful in College-Level Math compared to their non-EDGE first-time counterparts, 28.6% vs. 19.47% for the 2021-22 academic year.
The program’s impact is clear.
“This program it was a good start for me because it help me to prepare for my future college classes. The Professors were nice and caring, and this was a good program.”
“The Edge program really is a life saver for students such as myself who may have thought that college would be impossible.”
The EDGE/plEDGE program is locally and nationally recognized, receiving the 2016 California Community College Chancellor’s Office Student Success Award and the 2018 Bellwether Award. The Program was also a 2018 Excelencia in Education award finalist, a Futures Assembly Legacy award finalist in 2019, and was awarded the Innovations of the Year award in 2019. The Program has now become a best practice model for other colleges and universities and has helped many institutions replicate a program like EDGE/plEDGE at their institutions.
“We are honored to be a forerunner in this area,” said Hope. “And we are humbled by the opportunity to help not only our own community and students but also those served by colleges throughout the state that model programs after our EDGE/plEDGE program.”
To learn more about College of the Desert, visit their website at https://collegeofthedesert.edu/.
