OUR PROGRAM
Catch the Next was founded by John Siceloff in 2009 with the mission of increasing success rates among Latino students in Texas. John partnered with Dr. Maria Martha Chavez to identify promising practices and devise strategies to bring them to scale. In 2012, CTN brought together three key stakeholders: the Puente Project in California, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Public Broadcasting Service to begin to implement and adapt a community college model that successfully transitioned students from developmental coursework to graduation and transfer. Catch the Next’s program combines holistic student services and a comprehensive academic pathway that ensures student and institutional success.
Catch the Next empowers Latino and other underrepresented students to catch their college and career dreams.
Ascender
The Ascender Program provides academic, emotional-social, and community supports for Latino and other under served community college students to increase the number of students who successfully complete developmental coursework, increase the number of students who successfully complete first-year college-level coursework in gatekeeper courses such as English and Math, and increase the number of students who graduate from the community college and transfer to a four-year college or university. Faculty and administrators participating in our program participate in 3 professional development seminars earning a total of 5 graduate credits from the University of Texas at Austin, Department of Educational Leadership and Policy.
2018 Motivational Conference
The Catch the Next Ascender Transfer Motivational Conference is designed to introduce community college students to experience university life and to motivate them to transfer to a four-year University. Only fifteen percent of Latinos in the US have a Bachelor’s degree and four percent have an advanced degree. When looking at African Americans, only twenty-two percent have a Bachelor’s degree and six percent have an advanced degree. For these figures to improve, transferring to a four-year University is crucial to the Latino and African American communities. The same urgency applies to other first generation underserved students in Texas. Participating in the summer conference will offer a unique opportunity for our Catch the Next Ascender students to have an on-campus dormitory experience at Texas’s flagship university.
