September 27, 2012 Planning Committee Meeting

The Planning Committee of the Board of Trustees of Illinois Valley Community College District No. 513 met at 6 p.m. on Thursday, September 27, 2012 in the Board Room-C307 at Illinois Valley Community College.

COMMUNITY COLLEGE SURVEY OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT (CCSSE)

This survey is designed to provide information on student engagement as a measure of institutional quality.  Research indicates the more a student is engaged in educational activities, the more likely the student will reach his/her educational goals.  There are five benchmark categories.  Only one category (Student Effort) increased significantly, while the others are seeing declines.  IVCC is average on many of the categories, but previously it was above average.  The College is trending in the wrong direction and plans to fix the problems so that it is not below average.  The most prominent declines are in the Academic Challenge and Student-Faculty Interaction benchmarks.  Bob Mattson has already shared the questions in the Student-Faculty Interaction category with the faculty.  The results of this survey will be disseminated within the College to committees and teams, including Strategic Leadership & Planning and Teaching and Learning, to both celebrate successes and work towards remedying poor or currently declining results.  The results have been discussed in depth with the deans and Bob Mattson has begun to present them to the instructors in each division at their division meetings.  The in-service in the spring semester will be devoted to the sum of the feedback from the separate divisions.  Themes and issues will be identified and prioritized.  From this discussion, the College may need to provide faculty professional development and look at student support services.  Dr. Driscoll suggested generating Key Performance Indicators for the categories of Academic Challenge and Student-Faculty Interaction.

NATIONAL COMMUNITY COLLEGE BENCHMARKING PROJECT REPORT

The National Community College Benchmarking Project allows the 267 participating colleges an opportunity to compare themselves with others on over 140 measures.  At IVCC, comparisons are made between its recent history and comparisons with its cohort.  Form 1 is institutional information.  Unemployment for the IVCC district continues to be higher than others, which partially explains the shift in credits away from transfer courses towards technical/career and developmental.  Form 2 is the proportion of students that completed a degree or certificate or transferred within three years.  IVCC should tout the percentage of students who have completed, transferred, or completed or transferred in both three- and six-year timeframes.  IVCC sits in the top 15 percent in this category.  Enrollment success rates, persistence and completion are other big issues.  Bob Mattson is gathering information on the percentage of students who attend college after completing high school.  IVCC receives over 30 percent of the high school graduates in the district.  Next month there will be a new high school-to-college success report by ACT and ICCB.  Along with this, IVCC has initiated a high school-to-college report.  It provides how well students did on placement tests and ACT and how well they did on certain IVCC courses.  These reports were passed out to high school faculty to discuss how the scores could improve.  Institutional Research is trying to gather information for the last five years to see how many students graduated from high school and how far they went with their education.  The goal is to submit the list of names so that all high schools will participate.  A lot of them do not want to share this information.  They feel they are sending a lot more students to college, but only 50 percent are receiving a degree.  One high school is adding this information to their key performance indicators.  Dr. Driscoll noted that Form 8 – Credit Developmental/Remedial Course Retention and Success Rates is one of the biggest focus areas for IVCC.  Enrollee success rates are all between 60-70 percent.  If the College passes too many students before they are ready, then the completer-rate decreases.  The College is trying to balance both and enrollee success rates and the completer-success rates.  The goal is to keep the bar high so that the students have a greater chance in subsequent courses.  Marianne Dzik has a few initiatives to improve the numbers – MyMathLab and MyMathTest.  The College is hoping to initiative another pilot program of MyMathTest in a larger or smaller private school.  It was tried in a public school, but the motivation was not there to follow through.  A lab instructor was available at Marquette Academy and that may be one reason why it was successful.  Two of IVCC’s part-time instructors decided to do a flex classroom for developmental math.  Instead of the typical lecture class where the professor lectures and then assigns homework, the students will be assigned homework online and then when they come to class, they will complete the problems with the instructor.  The students are responding positively.  If it is successful, the instructors will share their techniques.  Form 14A – Market Penetration:  Credit and Non-credit Students – This continues to remain high.  IVCC’s enrollments are decreasing.  The high school population is decreasing and the Dislocated Workers Center funding is less. In comparison with other community colleges, the average decrease in enrollments is around eight percent and IVCC is at ten percent.   IVCC is at the lower end of the percentage of the district served.  IVCC’s cost per credit hour is the lowest in the State.

PROGRAM REVIEW REPORT

The Program Review Report was submitted to the Illinois Community College Board.  Programs are reviewed and evaluated on a five-year cycle.  The program coordinator is the writer and the administration is the editor.  There were no programs that were revisited this year.  In the area of best practices, the Natural Science Lab was highlighted for its major renovation and how the changes impacted the learning environment and curriculum in this area.  Dr. Driscoll noted that some programs identified opportunities for improvement while others did not.  From an administrative standpoint, Dr. Driscoll suggested that each program have at least one mandatory reason for improvement.  It was noted the yearly review with the deans includes input from advisory committees and what their action plan is for the next year.  The program coordinators did not include this in their report.  Dr. Driscoll specifically pointed out the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) program.  The College is building a Community Technology Center and soon to have state-of-the art manufacturing equipment donated and the high school students probably have no knowledge of this.  An action plan for this program would have been marketing the new Center and the new equipment.  This is a great opportunity for the College to reach out and recruit students interested in this program.  It was noted that the Program Review Report was submitted in the beginning or middle of May and written before the College knew of the donation but his point was well taken and there will be plans to act on this.  Each year the College must select an academic discipline, a cross-disciplinary program area, and look at an academic service.  This year the academic discipline was oral and written communication.  The narrative was written by two deans since English is in one division and speech in another.  They talked about their disciplines and what has been done and what is being pursued to address the developmental issues.  The speech department talks about the changes made in the pedagogy of teaching speech.  There is not a lot of change in the content but change in how it is taught to achieve better outcomes.  The cross-disciplinary program area was in general education.  Rick Pearce was the writer and was very involved in the projects related to the Illinois Articulation Initiative state-wide.  The report looks at general education assessment and the struggles associated with this because is it a qualitative assessment vs. quantitative assessment.  Grades are a measurement of performance and the College needs to have measures in regard to students actually learning – a system of action research in the classroom based on a pre-test, pro-test situation or putting together a portfolio and assessing the students from the beginning of the course to the end.  Faculty have some freedom in how they choose to assess.  Themes have evolved that faculty may need development regarding assessment and changes may be needed in the curriculum.  Some of this led to the alternative semester which is being piloted for students who do not place in college-level courses.  There is a nation-wide push for assessment.  The academic service that was reviewed was the admissions, records, and registration area.  Mark Grzybowski put together a number of improvements to actually measure the success of their services.  He initiated some restructuring and cross training so staff have increased availability to take on different tasks for better customer service and better outcomes.  This area is looking at what kind of information needs to be posted on the website, and security and student records, all issues of concern.  They are also looking at their department goals to make them more measurable.

At the recent strategy forum the more the College has these discussions and the more the Institutional Research department meets with different groups, it helps to enhance communication across the College.  An earnest effort is being made for people to receive more information.