Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" was delivered on September 18, 2007, at Carnegie Mellon University's McConomy Auditorium. Over 450 Carnegie Mellon students, staff members, and friends of Pausch attended the lecture, leaving only standing room as this was more than the auditorium could hold. Pausch later commented about this in an interview, saying "A couple of hundred people in a room, looking and listening and laughing and applauding – hopefully at the appropriate times – that gives a lot of validation to my kids that a lot of people believe in this, and a lot of people who knew me believe that I did my best to try to live this way." The first introduction of the speech as well as the series of lectures was given by Indira Nair, the Vice Provost for Education at Carnegie Mellon. Nair first explained the university's aforementioned lecture series called "Journeys", in which eight more professors from Carnegie Mellon would share their insights on their professional and personal experiences over the years.
Remedial education
Originally an initiative led by the Lumina Foundation, Achieving the Dream focuses on increasing the success of college students – particularly students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. Starting in 2004 the project funded promising, data driven approaches to strengthening remedial education coursework. Today, Achieving the Dream is its own, national organization with the same driving mission: "Achieving the Dream is a national reform network dedicated to community college student success and completion; focused primarily on helping low-income students and students of color complete their education and obtain market-valued credentials." The organization continues to fund positive interventions that move underprepared students through remediation with greater success and features a list of best practices and exemplary colleges from which other higher education administrators can learn. Achieving the Dream promotes many different promising interventions that can increase the success of students including: first-year student success courses that provide students with the skills to navigate college expectations/academics more effectively, accelerated remedial courses in math and English, student mentoring and coaching, mandatory orientations for new students and supplementary computer tutoring for remedial students. Achieving the Dream also takes an active role in state policy advocacy and is currently working in 15 states to strengthen student remedial success.