The Connected College Model: A Framework for Institutional Alignment and Student Success in Community Colleges

Community colleges have implemented numerous student success reforms designed to improve persistence, progression, completion, and equitable outcomes. Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM), Guided Pathways, academic momentum, student-ready college frameworks, and institution-wide reform initiatives have each contributed important insights regarding student success and institutional effectiveness. However, these approaches have often developed along parallel trajectories, resulting in limited attention to how enrollment functions as a foundational component of the broader student success ecosystem. This conceptual article examines the Connected College Model in the community college context, emphasizing how enrollment and entry systems connect with academic pathways, advising and student support, data and institutional intelligence, and leadership and institutional alignment. Drawing upon scholarship related to strategic enrollment management, student persistence, academic momentum, advising, Guided Pathways, student-ready colleges, and institutional transformation, the model was developed through an integrative conceptual review methodology designed to identify common themes, points of convergence, and conceptual gaps across multiple bodies of literature. The Connected College Model identifies five interdependent domains that collectively shape student experiences and outcomes: (1) Enrollment & Entry Systems, (2) Academic Pathways, (3) Advising & Student Support, (4) Data & Institutional Intelligence, and (5) Leadership & Institutional Alignment. Unlike existing frameworks that often focus on specific dimensions of student success, the Connected College Model conceptualizes these domains as interconnected institutional systems that influence persistence, progression, completion, belonging, and equitable outcomes. The model contributes to the student success literature by extending traditional strategic enrollment management scholarship, integrating multiple strands of student success research, and providing a systems-based framework for understanding institutional alignment. By positioning enrollment as a foundational component of the student success ecosystem, the Connected College Model offers researchers and practitioners a new lens through which to examine institutional effectiveness and student success in community colleges.