SCT

Success College Team

Update

January 29, 2002

As we the new semester, Success College is still in the process of becoming.  Becoming what?  That depends on the contributions that we all make to this exploration of Brookhaven as it relates to student success.  Below is a rundown of the various team activities and a listing of some issues that the Success College Team is dealing with and would like input on.  We will all have multiple opportunities to give feedback, including responding to this update and attending Success Forums to be held later in the semester.  We will also continue with the Success Conversations via e-mail.

Team Activities

Thread I(college culture) and Thread VI (implementation) have not begun their work, but will begin soon to see how an Action Plan might be formulated to accomplish integration of student success thinking into the campus culture and to implement the suggestions generated by the other threads.

Thread II: Much of what Thread II -professional development-will do will depend on what the other threads identify as professional development needs, but the team is working on ideas for getting faculty involved in activities related to goal setting and helping students set and refine goals, other than the usual “in the box" methods of hiring a goal expert and getting faculty and staff to sign up for a one-time workshop.

Thread III is working on the results of a questionnaire about student goals given as part of the orientation for first time in college students.  A preliminary look at responses to a questions asking students to identify what would keep them from attaining their academic goals suggests that financial and work problems are viewed by students as the main culprits.  The team will explore ways of getting student help with financial aid and other problems like childcare.

Thread IV will focus this semester on assessing the results of questionnaires about class schedule design, advising, admissions, financial aid, and the cashier.  They will be looking at student satisfaction, suggestions for immediate improvement, and recommendations about projects to include in the Action Plan, including plans for improving data collection.

Thread V deals with communicating with students.  A district-wide committee is planning how to use Colleague to communicate with specific groups of students (such as those on probation).  Thread V will coordinate BHC efforts with the District communications.  The Success College Team as a whole has expressed concern about the difficulty of communicating with students who have part-time instructors who are often not on campus e-mail.  This issue will be passed on to Team V.

Current Issues

The following issues have been discussed or will be discussed in the Team.  Everyone on campus is invited respond via e-mail or in person to any SCT member.

1.      The role of faculty in advising:  If advising and orientation are to be expanded and deepened, faculty will have to have a greater role, especially at peak times.  This issue will be considered by the new faculty sub-team of Thread IV.

2.      What is the role of Continuing Education in Success College?

3.       Is there a role for students in advising and mentoring?

4.      How much faculty (decentralized) advising is already being done?

5.      How can we best gauge student expectations?  Global data like Noel-Levitz or our own data instruments?  Or both?

6.      Do we need to identify student risk factors via research?

7.      Are we looking at safety and security concerns?  Should we?

8.      What role will recruitment plan in Success College?

9.      Would it be wise/feasible to involve families?

10.  How helpful are exit interviews?

Please keep an eye out for an upcoming Success Forum and for the next e-mail Success Conversation, and feel free to join the discussion.

Ed Garcia, chair
Thomas Anderson
Joy Arndt
Nancy Barlow
Betty Brown
Hazel Carlos
Ann Coder
Sylvia Coffey
Brenda Dalton
Nita Drescher
Mike Hamm
Linda Lee
Marilyn K. Lynch
Lisa Meltzer
Jo Miller
David Newman
Beth Nikopoulos
Jamileh Stroman

- Ed Garcia