Alamo Colleges District Wins National Award for Student Success

The Alamo Colleges District has earned national recognition from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) for its work of offering seamless pathways that lead to student success through its Transfer Advising Guides (TAGs). 

The Student Success award was announced on Monday, May 2, 2022, at the annual 2022 AACC Awards of Excellence Gala held in New York City. 

The coveted annual award recognizes a community college that has shown a sustained commitment to and proactively advances the cause of student success.

“We are elated that TAGs, a bold and strategic initiative for the Alamo Colleges, has been recognized on the national level,” said Alamo Colleges District Chancellor Dr. Mike Flores. “Time is the enemy of degree completion and this approach not only saves our students time but allows them to be job-ready when they graduate from one of the Alamo Colleges or to transfer to a university.”

As of the 2020-2021 academic year, the Alamo Colleges have developed a total of 1,380 TAGs. 

ACD organizes programs into career clusters called AlamoINSTITUTES. The clusters provide a starting point for the student, enrollment coach and assigned advisor to identify a career interest and begin to create a tailored individual pathway.

With clear and concise pathways through TAGs, students can transfer with courses that are degree applicable not only for the Alamo Colleges but the student’s university of choice. That saves students time and money and minimizes any loss of credit hours. 

TAGs provide a two-year, course-by-course crosswalk from the Alamo Colleges to the university of choice by reverse mapping all required university degree requirements for each university major to an Alamo Colleges pre-major. These seamless transfer pathways mean students don’t just transfer – they transfer with degree applicability.

Students who start at the Alamo Colleges now earn their degree, which requires 60 semester credit hours, in an average of 65.4 hours, compared to the Texas state average of 81 credit hours. 

On average, TAGs provide $40,215 savings at public universities and $65,435 at private universities. In 2020, the potential savings for the 8,324 students who transferred and followed an agreed upon TAGs for the university of their choice was $374 million.