Pandemic Presents Special Challenge to 2-Year College Built on a Cohort Model

In 2017 the University of St. Thomas started Dougherty Family College, a two-year institution on its downtown Minneapolis campus for youth from around the Twin Cities facing barriers to higher education.

The college admits about 150 mostly first-generation students a year, with the $15,000 tuition largely covered by financial aid, leaving the average student responsible for about $1,000. Tuition covers two meals a day, a laptop, the cost of textbooks and transportation, and a slew of counselors and advisers, including a “persistence coach.” The pedagogy is designed so students see and hear voices from their own rich cultures. But perhaps the most powerful tool for success are the 25 other students — the cohort — they take every class with until they graduate and transfer to a four-year program.

“There’s nothing as powerful as having your peers check on you and encourage you to come to class,” said Buffy Smith, associate dean of academics, in an interview conducted before the college changed to remote learning.

Alvin Abraham, the college’s dean, believes they were lucky that the shift to remote instruction happened toward the end of the academic year, after members of the cohorts had bonded and relationships with mentors had solidified. “They are able to lean on each other,” he said.

Abraham and his staff spend a lot of time now trying to envision what the program will look like if remote teaching is still required in the fall, when a new cohort arrives. “How will we replicate that same connection and feel and family mentality,” he said, “when we’re bringing in a class fully remotely and not actually having that in-person time to connect and do the team-building activities, breaking bread together and all those things that help aid in those connections?”