Institutional Development

Our team has aligned our work with our institution's four goals:

1. empower student success by providing opportunities and pathways to achieve their goals
2. integrate the College and Community through partnerships that achieve shared objectives
3. create operational and academic excellence through continuous improvement and
4. ensure the financial stability and long-term sustainability of the institution through a culture of innovation.

In support of the first goal we worked to improve retention, graduation and transfer rates. We are still working towards this goal and we have been tracking these outcomes. We have been implementing changes based on the findings such as changing schedules to meet the needs of more students. We are working with admission, advising, transfer staff, and other departments to improve our students' ability to successfully complete their classes and programs.

Goal 2 has been addressed by working toward an advisory committee for a program review that includes a diverse representation from our community. We have also incorporated the student learning outcomes of civic learning and civic engagement into the curriculum.

We have been participating in trainings and working with the teaching and learning center (TLC) towards implementing a sustainable plan to continuously meet goal 3. The workshops offered by SAGE 2YC and shared with us (COACH) have provided useful learning tools that we have implemented into our classrooms. Our lectures are more engaging and student centered. A few examples of how we have increased student engagement include the pair and share, classroom data collection with analyses, and scavenger hunts. We have emphasized the importance of the sense of belonging by reaching out to each student in several different ways. We have added exercises on recognizing the importance of metacognition. We hosted a "Science by the Sea" workshop that brought a dozen instructors out to the beach for a couple different activities that could later be used in our classes.

We have been participating in trainings and working with the teaching and learning center (TLC) towards implementing a sustainable plan to continuously meet goal 3. The workshops offered by SAGE 2YC and shared with us (COACH) have provided useful learning tools that we have implemented into our classrooms. Our lectures are more engaging and student centered. A few examples of how we have increased student engagement include think-pair-share, classroom data collection with analyses, and scavenger hunts. We have emphasized the importance of the sense of belonging by reaching out to each student in several different ways. We have added exercises on recognizing the importance of metacognition. We hosted a "Science by the Sea" workshop workshop that brought a dozen instructors out to the beach for a couple different activities that could later be used in our classes.

We have worked to achieve goal 4 by examining the enrollment and retention in our courses. We retired many courses that were not being offered on their scheduled semester due to low enrollment. We retired certificates that were not attracting students. We are now trying to offer the courses we retained during their scheduled semester. We have also reviewed and revised the curriculum for each of these courses. Our focus courses had full enrollment this semester (spring 2019) and have retained all their students. The student evaluations for the first semester we implemented many of these improvements were very positive.