Amarillo College honored to receive a Texas Pathways RODEO Award

Amarillo College is pleased to announce that it is one of three recipients of a Recognition of Dedication to Educational Outcomes (RODEO) Award courtesy of the Texas Success Center.

The Texas Success Center (TSC) is housed at the Texas Association of Community Colleges and operated through the Texas Community College Education Initiative, a nonprofit. It supports the community college districts in Texas to redesign the student experience through Texas Pathways.

The RODEO award recognizes colleges for their exemplary work related to implementation and scaling of the Texas Pathways strategy. The award recipients, including AC, Houston Community College, and Kilgore College, were honored at the late-November Texas Pathway Institute, Teaching and Learning in a Texas Pathways Framework, in Dallas.

A TSC announcement about the award stated: “These colleges are deeply engaged with the network of Texas colleges, have CEOs who deeply support the guided pathways work at their campus, and show remarkable success in the growth of key performance metrics correlated with student completion.”

TSC’s announcement described AC’s accomplishments as follows:

Amarillo College has been selected as a recipient of the 2022 RODEO award in Recognition of their Dedication to Educational Outcomes. Amarillo College exhibits excellence in building a student-centered culture through the scaling of Texas Pathways.

As a student-centered institution, students feel a sense of belonging and connectedness early with staff and faculty. The responsiveness of the institution is demonstrated in key performance metrics associated with degree completion. Most notably, Amarillo College excels among its peers in student success for the first college-level courses in math, reading, and writing.

Notably, Amarillo College ranks in the top 15 colleges for incoming students who:

• complete math in Year 1,
• complete reading in Year 1, and also
• complete writing in Year 1.

The transformative work done at Amarillo College has resulted in improvement in first-year course completion and also persistence from Term 1 to Term 2, demonstrating the power of Guided Pathways for keeping students engaged in their program pathway.

“We are truly thrilled by this affirming recognition from the Texas Success Center,” AC President Russell Lowery-Hart said. “It validates the hard work and dedication of our faculty and staff who strive ceaselessly to eliminate barriers and love our students to success.”