This page will orient you to Breakthrough's college access and success resources, events, and opportunities to collaborate with colleagues.
We use this form to update our affiliate staff rosters, listservs, and Google Spaces. Once you complete this form you will be able to receive all relevant and upcoming communications from the National Office and affiliate colleagues. You may have already filled this out, so if so, move on to the next step :).
Sam Geary is the College Access & Success Manager at Breakthrough's National Office. Sam meets with all new affiliate college access and success staff members to orient them to the Collaborative, existing resources, events, and opportunities to connect with colleagues. Onboarding meetings are held twice each month on the first and third Thursday afternoons (2PM ET/ 11AM PT). You can add upcoming onboarding sessions to your calendar via this link, and can view the full Training/Support calendar here.
At Breakthrough, we use Google Spaces to quickly and informally connect across our 25 affiliate sites. Our Breakthrough College Access and Success Google Space can be used to share resources and opportunities, ask questions, thought-partner, and individually chat with one another. New to Google Spaces? You can refer to this user guide to learn more about how the platform works. All new staff members who complete the New Staff Form will receive invitations to join the Google Space via email.
Once you join, please introduce yourself by messaging the Google Space and including the following:
Your name
Title/role
Affiliate
A response to one (or both!) of the following prompts:
What is something you are hoping to collaborate on with your Breakthrough colleagues?
What is something you are hoping to learn from our College Access and Success Community?
You can use this calendar to invite affiliate colleagues and their students to virtual events that may be happening at your site, and to view events hosted by other affiliates and share them with your students. Feel free to add events to the calendar directly :). Colllege Access and Success events hosted by the National Office are also included on this calendar.
Here is a quick video that explains how to access the calendar and add events to it.
College Access/Success Office Hours with Sam are held on Wednesdays from 1:30-2:30 PM ET, (10:30 - 11:30 AM PT). This is an optional, informal, drop-in space, so feel free to hop in to chat, ask questions, share resources, etc.
Community of Practice calls are held 2x/month, one call is for HS/college access program staff, the other is for postsecondary success/college program staff. HS calls are on the 1st Thursday each month, and college calls are on the 3rd Thursday each month, both at 3PM ET/ 12 PM PT. These calls are an opportunity to connect with colleagues, discuss updates in the college access and success spaces, hear from partners, and share resources and ideas.
Once you fill out the new staff form you will receive invitations to these events. You can also manually add them to your calendar by clicking on the event links above.
You can also subscribe to the Affiliate Training and Support Google calendar for access and invites. Here is a tutorial on how to subscribe. The calendar includes regularly scheduled office hours, training, communities of practice, and onboarding opportunities for new staff. This ensures timely support for all staff, and critical information is available to new staff within the first month of their hire.
Want to connect with Breakthrough college access and success colleagues from other affiliates? Check out the "BT Directory" tab in the Affiliate Portal. You can search by affiliate or role type, and can access rosters and contact information for colleagues.
To learn about similar work happening at other affiliates, you can reach out to colleagues at other sites in similar roles to yours. Feel free to contact folks directly via email!
College Bound in a Box is Breakthrough's college access curriculum and resources. It includes a variety of workshops, lesson plans, and resources that can be integrated into your site's college access/high school programming.
The College Success Toolkit is the Collaborative's first college success resource, and contains resources and user guides to support sites in establishing or expanding college success programs.
Both of these are extensive collections of resources, so it can be helpful to dedicate a few days or blocks of time to reviewing them.
Click the "Affiliate Portal" tab at the top right of this page. This will take you to BTHQ/the Affiliate Portal where you can click on the "Resource Site" tab to access all of them.