Success College Interim Report

August 2002

The job of the team which has been at work on the “strategic focus” for the non-traditional SACS study has been to explore what it means for Brookhaven College to call itself “The Success College.” To do so, the team has pursued six “threads” of inquiry, based on the purposes set forth in the original proposal to SACS. Each thread constitutes an area of College life about which members of the Success College Team have asked, “What can Brookhaven do in this area to further student success?” And a collateral question was also being asked: “What is the best way for effective and long-lasting change to take place?” We will cover below how the individual teams have fared, but even more interesting and instructive is the way “Success College” has affected the campus as a whole.

In a sense, “Success College” has become the name for every good initiative and innovation at Brookhaven College. For example, a number of projects which have been funded through a Title III grant are now being talked of and thought of as aspects of or examples of the Success College, even though the grant began years before this strategic focus was undertaken. Similarly, the fact that the Thread IV team was conducting an examination of College processes and services, led to innovations and improvements by (especially) student services offices in advance of any Thread IV recommendations. It is as if “Success College” is in the air, and it is energizing at least part of the College community to work toward student success.

The report from the Success College Team to the consultant team and to SACS will catalog those initiatives undertaken across the campus which the Team has, in effect, coopted. The greater task will be to present to the campus a coherent picture of what we are all doing to make Brookhaven the Success College. We think that the Success Directions which will be discussed below will help to make the confusing array of initiatives more understandable to ourselves and to our communities.

The job of the next nine months for the Success College Team is to implement and institutionalize Success College and to work toward affecting all aspects of the College culture, so that Success College becomes nothing less than the way we do business at Brookhaven.

The Threads

The Success College Team organized itself into teams following these lines of inquiry:

I. Overall college culture (A in Success College proposal)

II. Professional development of BHC employees (B)

III. Student Goal Setting (C, D, E, F, G)

IV. Examination and improvement of College process and services (H)

V. Communication with students about their success (I)

VI. Implementation and institutionalization of success initiatives (J, K)

The major work of the last year has been in threads II, III, and IV. Threads I and VI were determined to be the business of the coming year and Thread V (Communication with students) has been largely superseded by a District effort to ensure uniform, consistent communication with students, the IT Communications General Design committee.

Thread II (professional development): Since professional development activities must be predicated on specific content needed by employees, Thread II to some extent must wait for other threads to suggest directions for its activities. Nevertheless, some very significant activities have been undertaken by the Faculty and Staff Instructional Development Office, under the direction of a Thread II team member. Of particular note are:

· The instructional development workshops provided to (primarily) adjunct faculty beginning Fall 2001.

· The development of a new employee orientation procedure, through discussions and meetings during summer 2001. This new orientation procedure will be the basis for a significant means of introducing new employees to the campus culture in general and to Success College in particular.

· The ongoing operations of the TLC, providing training that addresses a variety of staff and faculty needs.

Though these activities were not undertaken specifically as “Success College” projects, they are typical of the kinds of activities which have student success as their ultimate purpose and will be subsumed under the “Success College” banner.

A Thread II activity which is a more direct response to Success College is a series of workshops planned for fall 2002 on goals and goal setting, with one track for faculty and another for administrative/support staff who work directly with students. The workshops will use the core information in Surprised by Serenity, co-written by Communications/Social Science Dean Zack Miller.

Thread III worked with the results of a questionnaire about student goals given as part of the orientation for first time in college students and to students in selected ESOL classes (since those students do not attend the new student orientation). When students were asked to identify what would keep them from attaining their academic goals, they indicated financial problems and work issues were the main culprits along with (to a lesser extent) test-taking problems.

In examining ways of dealing with these results, the team came to these findings:

· Financial Problems—Many students choose not to apply for financial aid because they do not think they would qualify when in fact many would. It is critical to get information about financial aid (grants, work-study, scholarships) to the College community. This could be done by having information tables and Financial Aid staff actively going after students to apply for financial aid, rather than waiting for the student to find them. Faculty could put a sentence in their syllabus about financial aid. Class presentations to core courses were suggested. New student orientation could include financial aid information. SPAR is going to work with Financial Aid on a brochure about where to go for scholarship information.

· Testing Problems—A counselor is available to work individually with students who have test anxiety. LifeLine and NiteLine Workshops and another counselor’s evening sessions could address this topic. The College Learning Skills course also has this component.

· Students with Undecided Major—Advisors play a key role. One option would be to have a shorter version of the Strong Interest Survey available in the J-lab. (Students would need to follow up with an advisor regarding results.) The Career Center works with students on career choices using the Myers-Briggs and Strong Interest Survey.

Thread IV focused on surveys they conducted on the class schedule and on various other aspects of the registration process—cashier, admissions, advising, and financial aid. They met with the Director of Public Information to share the results of their survey on the class schedule. The Director has also initiated a survey of the schedule by another college. Because of early deadlines for the class schedule, changes in the schedule based on either of these surveys were necessarily delayed.

This semester has been a learning opportunity for the team. It is clear to them that it would be helpful to have assistance from a professional in designing and administering surveys, and that suggestions for improvement that come from outside are harder to accept that those generated from within.

Thread IV will continue to work with survey results and will review the entire registration process to determine what portions to focus on for further study or investigation.

A sub-team of Thread IV will focus on instructional issues in the fall.

Two problems faced by both Threads III and IV are the lack of personnel to process and input data from student surveys and technical problems in getting access to data in Colleague. Brookhaven’s own Student Success Information System (SSIS) developed under the Title III grant has not always communicated effectively and in a timely manner with Colleague.

Thread I (college culture) and Thread VI (implementation) will be the focus of our work during the fall. The two threads are, of course, intertwined because the success of our implementation of Success College will depend mightily on how we are able to make the culture of Brookhaven a culture of success. Thread VI will pretty much be a committee of the whole, with the entire Success College Team participating in deliberations.

A key Thread VI activity this summer was a joint meeting on June 11 of the SCT with the Extended President’s Cabinet and Division Deans to talk about a process for coming up with the “new threads” for Success College in the future—which we are calling “Success Directions.” In a process analogous to the one we used to decide on “Success College” as our emphasis for the alternative Self Study, we will be coming to consensus about strategic directions related to success for the next few years. Another topic discussed in the joint meeting was the need for (or lack of need for) a structure for managing Success College starting in fall of 2003. Based on feedback from the leadership group and our own deliberations, the Success College Team will be making recommendations to the president and the College about the administration of Success College.

The first step in designing the implementation of Success College will begin with a presentation on the “first day back” convocation which will introduce the Success Directions process to be carried on during the fall semester. It has become clear to the Success College Team that the way Success College can become more than a passing fad is for it to become part of the processes we as a college have developed to make plans, to budget implementation of those plans, and to evaluate how well we’ve carried them out. In other words, if “Success College” doesn’t show up in our workgroup plans and our individual action plans, then it not really a part of Brookhaven College. We are also convinced that student success is inseparable from employee success. Unless we all have a stake in Success College and feel our efforts make a difference, it will be impossible to sustain the effort that this enterprise will require from us.

These Success Directions will be general statements broad enough to subsume a rich variety of initiative, but narrow enough to be useful to the individuals doing the planning.

They will be used in a number of ways: First, the process of coming to consensus about them will be an opportunity for Brookhaven to reconsider what it wants to be in the future. If the process is as open and real as we intend to make it, it will provide a projection of our collective best hopes for the College.

Second, they will suggest to workgroups and to individuals initiatives which they might undertake.

Third, the Success Directions will provide us a clear means of articulating to our various communities what Brookhaven is about.

The goals of the Success Direction process are:

A list of Success Directions agreed upon by January 2003

A list which is realistic, helpful, and challenging

A general understanding of what Success Directions are and how they will be used

A sense that everyone feels listened to and heard

A generally positive attitude about the process among the College community

The steps in the proposed process are as follows:

Give a rationale and overview of the process
Solicit possible Success Directions from the campus at large and from work groups and other groups on campus including adjunct faculty and students and members of the community
Present a list to the campus of possible Success Directions
Hold meeting, forums etc. for discussion and feedback
Present a revised list to work groups for voting and ratification
Publish to the community
Evaluate the process and make recommendations for revision of Success Directions in 3 to 5 years.

The list of Success Directions which the College comes to consensus on will form the basis for planning and evaluation at Brookhaven.

Another Thread VI project for the fall is to organize a clearinghouse for sharing and celebrating success initiatives. So much is going on related to student success in offices and classrooms all over the campus, but the initiatives are not always well publicized. The clearinghouse function might be part of the structure recommended for managing Success College in fall of 2003 and after.

One of the observations from a number of members of the Success College Team, as well as from colleagues outside the committee, has been that there is a lot of confusion about just what Success College is. With that in mind, we have prepared a draft of a statement which attempts to encapsulate the concepts behind Success College. It follows on the next page.

Brookhaven: The Success College

What does Brookhaven College want to be in 5-10 years?

The short answer is “The Success College.”

That means being a college which focuses on the success of its students, which looks honestly at how well it is doing, and which goes through a systematic planning process to keep improving.

What does “success” mean in “The Success College”?

Success can be looked at in a number of ways including the tradition measures of success like retention and completion rates, and non-traditional measures such as the sense that individual students might have that they have accomplished their own goals. One of the jobs of Brookhaven as it becomes “The Success College” will be to explore and broaden our understanding of what constitutes a successful outcome for our students, our employees, and our community. Such an exploration will involve individual initiative, a shared, College-wide vision, and a willingness to look at what we do in a new way.

How will we know if we are the Success College?

In a number of ways:

Traditional measures should show improvement.
We will also have an array of anecdotal and other non-traditional measures which show our students are being successful.
More and more of our students will take opportunities to set and refine realistic goals for themselves.
Our employees will be aware of and buy into Brookhaven’s mission, goals, and strategic directions.
Our employees will participate in a safe, open process of planning, budgeting, and evaluation which encourages honest self-assessment and accountability.
Each Brookhaven employee will understand the importance of his/her role in student success.

How can we cause that to happen?

We can:

Go though a process (with periodic updates) of having the College decide on its strategic (success) directions.
Maintain an open planning process which encourages all employees to put student success first.
Create an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect, so that each employee—PSS, administration, and faculty—is free to take chances and to look honestly at outcomes.
Maintain open and honest communication—internal and external—about what we are doing which celebrates our success and acknowledges our failures.
Make Brookhaven a place to work where each of us is prized and is allowed to grow and develop as an employee and as a person.

The Calendar:

Success College is essentially on schedule according to the calendar in the Self Study Manual. The work of the thread teams has been less linear than was envisioned originally, so the teams will continue their work in the fall and submit their reports later. However, we expect no difficulty in assembling the final report on time.

The Threads

Brookhaven: The Success College

The Brookhaven College Success College Team