Giving College a Welcoming Front Door

By Maria S. Moten. The sequence of steps that an incoming student must complete in order to enroll in courses at Harper College is known as our “new-student flow.” Research suggests that the lack of structure in how community colleges first enroll students may cause barriers that confuse and overwhelm them. As the researcher Judith Scott-Clayton so aptly put it, by creating many options and opportunities for new students as they enter, we may be unintentionally sending them down a “shapeless river” that we expect them to understand and navigate. More...