Systems Advocacy

TCASN advocates to sustain, expand, and scale the Nashville GRAD and Nashville Flex programs. These nationally-recognized CUNY ASAP replication sites are producing outstanding results and changing student lives.

Local Advocacy

Through Nashville’s New Skills Ready Grant, the Network creates annual policy scans, which provide a review of local, state, and federal policies and programs that create direct and indirect barriers to higher education success for students in the Metro Nashville Area.

Point of Departure: Navigating Nashville as a College Commuter, also funded through Nashville’s New Skills Ready Grant, focuses on college accessibility as it relates to Nashville’s public transit system, with a specific focus on college students who commute.

State-Level Advocacy 

TCASN serves as a resource to members of Tennessee's General Assembly who serve on education committees and works with state government agencies to provide input on policy implementation. Our focus with our state-wide advocacy efforts is on illuminating policy-related barriers that underrepresented students face in accessing and succeeding in postsecondary and elevating practices that increase college completion, particularly for low-income and first generation students.

Some of our priorities include:

• Refine TN Promise

• Support Programs for Part-time Students

• Access to Transportation

• College Support Services

• Combating Summer Melt

• Dedicated College Counselors for Every Student

• Expanded Access to Dual Enrollment

• Food Insecurity on College Campuses

• Preventing Undermatching

• Understanding the True Cost of College

Federal Advocacy

The Network serves as a resource to Tennessee's congressional delegation on federal college access and success policy issues, particularly as they affect low-income and first generation students. Our foci with federal advocacy efforts are around the areas of FAFSA simplification, sustaining the purchasing power of federal need-based financial aid, and ensuring continued availability of federal college access and success programs.