A Proposal from - Columbus State Community College
Program CharterNovember 8, 2011Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \u Executive Summary PAGEREF _Toc307566539 \h 2Purpose Statement PAGEREF _Toc307566540 \h 4Background and History PAGEREF _Toc307566541 \h 5Objectives and Benefits PAGEREF _Toc307566542 \h 6Scope PAGEREF _Toc307566543 \h 7Project Milestones PAGEREF _Toc307566544 \h 10Program Organization and Governance PAGEREF _Toc307566545 \h 12Major assumptions PAGEREF _Toc307566546 \h 13Current Risks, Barriers or Constraints PAGEREF _Toc307566547 \h 13Critical Success Factors and Guiding Principles PAGEREF _Toc307566548 \h 14Roles and responsibilities PAGEREF _Toc307566549 \h 16Appendix A: Complete List of SS&A Initiative Team Members PAGEREF _Toc307566550 \h 17IntroductionThis Project Charter is for Columbus State’s Student Success & Attainment Program. The charter identifies the multiple deliverables required, the timing and inter-relationship among these deliverables, key milestones necessary for reporting and for the integration of deliverables, governance structure, teams and team members and both internal and external communications requirements. This charter serves as key communication vehicle for a wide range of program stakeholders. Executive SummaryStudent Success & Attainment is a top priority President/Cabinet/ level goal. Over the past few years, a number of initiatives and projects have already been implemented or are currently underway in support of this college wide goal including the Developmental Education Initiatives (DEI); Student Engagement/First Year Experience/Foundations of Excellence; Career Assistance for Undecided Students; the Title III grant, which includes a focus on academic success in gateway courses, tutoring, and supplemental instruction; and the Cougar Edge pilot with our ABLE (Adult Basic Literacy Education) partners. Previous initiatives already completed include the CCSSE survey, Adjunct Connectivity and Preparation, and a number of student success-related retreats and events. Additional initiatives that have recently been recommended by cross-college teams such as a required student orientation, improved advising model, student success courses, and “First Year Experience” programming, have been considered but not yet implemented. In order to coordinate and integrate all of these related initiatives, a Student Success & Attainment program was designed to bring some overall coordination and structure to many independent efforts which all contribute to improvements in student success and attainment. Organizing this as a program becomes an effective way to communicate with hundreds of college-wide stakeholders on how this is important, how all the activities are interrelated, and how program level goals and metrics will help everyone understand how overall student success is measured. A key aspect of this program will be to collect and use institution-specific data to guide the process of improving student success and attainment. One key objective of the program is to focus on developing evidence-based programs and interventions aimed directly at assisting students in the beginning of their college experience (i.e. “start right”) and continuing that support into the future, with the ultimate goal of assisting students with the attainment of a certificate or degree, or successful transfer to a four-year institution. This program helps to continue building a “culture of evidence” at the college. In order to get many people moving in the same direction, a program level governance structure has been established with a program Steering Committee and six subcommittees focused on the key aspects identified as part of this program. They include Title III Realignment, Dev Ed Initiatives, Career Assistance for Undecided Students, Cougar Edge, Data Gathering and Metrics, and Start Right initiatives. The timing of this program dates back two or three years with the completion of some key student success milestones. This Program brings all the history and planned efforts into one cohesive program. The program will continue over the next 3-5 years. Columbus State will confirm the “Achieving the Dream” framework for student success and its applicability to Columbus State. Once chosen as the framework, Achieving the Dream (ATD) will provide structure and consistency to the work and will inform the College of emerging or best practices from other ATD colleges and validate the initiatives already underway. Columbus State will take advantage of learning from the experiences and successes of these other institutions. As an ATD college, the overall goals are to improve student outcomes and reduce achievement gaps among subgroups of students based on five bottom line indicators of student success including:Completion of developmental courses and progression to credit-bearing (college level) courses;Completion of gatekeeper courses, particularly first college-level or degree-credit courses in math and English;Completion of attempted courses with a C or better;Persistence from term to term and year to year; andAttainment of credentials.Purpose StatementThis project is a top tier, Cabinet/President level initiative aimed at organizing efforts in the pursuit of improved student success and attainment. Because we are the front door to higher education for so many students and families in central Ohio, Columbus State has a moral imperative to ensure that our students are extraordinarily successful. We must have a bold vision for student success for all of our students and strive to close the achievement gaps among different student groups. One of the most critical factors in overall student success is helping them to “start right” so that they are successful throughout their college experience, persist term-to-term, and then graduate.A key aspect of this program will be to collect and use institution-specific data to guide the process of improving student success. Our goal is to focus on developing evidence-based programs and interventions aimed directly at assisting students in the beginning of their college experience and continuing that support into the future, with the ultimate goal of assisting students with the attainment of a certificate or degree, or successful transfer to a four-year institution. National data and best practices for improving student success and attainment suggest that resources and proactive support must be heavily front-loaded during the course of a student’s lifecycle. Increasing new student success and closing the equity gap in achievement among student sub-groups will increase the success rates of all of our students overall.We must develop our own Columbus State student success data metrics and outcomes framework to guide our work. We must also follow a process of continuous quality improvement using ongoing assessment data to determine “what’s working” and “what’s not working” to improve student success.Use of a “data coach” to facilitate the development of this data framework and guide data analysis and use will increase our chances of being successful with the program. This will also assist us with building our internal capacity to collect, analyze and use data going forward.Achieving the Dream (ATD) provides a useful framework and overarching structure for accomplishing our vision of Student Success and Attainment at Columbus State. It will assist us with integrating the current project work and developing a practice of using evidence to design interventions or make institutional changes needed to improve student success.We can look to other ATD schools for emerging or best practices for improving student success, benchmarking, and an inventory of “lessons learned” so that we can build on the success of other institutions that are more advanced in the work.Background and HistoryNot only is it important that Columbus State provides the “open door” to higher education for learners in Central Ohio, but we want all of our students be successful and achieve their educational goals, including certificate or degree completion or successful transfer and completion of a Bachelors degree. Several college-wide student success projects and efforts have been underway that need to be brought into the scope of this program. Most of them are now completing their first or second year. They include:Comprehensive Student Engagement Model/First Year Experience (FYE)Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), Spring 2010; results received and distributed college-wide; AQIP Action Project on target for completion by December 31, 2011; data results used for Foundations of Excellence in the First College Year (FoE) self-study evidence library Current Practices Inventory (CPI) Spring 2011. Review and revision of ASC 190, First Year Experience Seminar for AA/AS transfer-bound students completed 2009-2010; exploration of additional freshman survey or student success courses underway 2010-11. Revised Prospect Communication Track using Hobson’s Customer Relations Management (CRM) software in production 2009-10 and implemented for Delaware Campus 2010-11.Evaluation of applicability of FoE institutional self-assessment for First College Year for CSCC completed 2009-10; implementation of FoE for both First College Year and Transfer Student Experience in progress 2010-11; FYE Action Recommendations completed and presented July 15,2011; Transfer Student results and Action Recommendations on target for completion by November 30, 2011 and Comprehensive Final Report by December 31, 2011.Review and revision of current orientation program which is on hold pending FoE Final Report and disposition of Action Recommendations. Year three of project will be re-focused and redirected with the development of “Version Two”, Student Success and Attainment Program, outlined in this Charter.Developmental Education InitiativesA series of innovative approaches designed for learners who are not yet prepared for college level work or need “refreshers” in mathematics, reading and writing:Student Success Course Revisions and DevelopmentBoth the Arts and Sciences division and Career and Technical Programs are engaged in revising the curriculum and/or developing new versions of student success courses, e.g. ASC 190. In addition, we offer a pre-college student success course, DEV 090. Recent discussions have explored the potential of forming a cross-disciplinary team of faculty and advisors to develop jointly a college-wide student success course.Career Assistance for Undecided StudentsDesign and implementation of “intrusive advising” intervention for students who are undecided in their majors; and development of web-based tool for students and advisors on career pathways.Realignment of Title IIIRealignment of grant with other student success work; includes focus on building college tutoring infrastructure, especially for “gateway” courses in mathematics and writing; articulation and transfer database and advising tools; web portal for students.Going ForwardIn order to advance strategically as an institution, we are combining and reorganizing the current project work into a comprehensive and coordinated program that will integrate the work, leverage our project strengths, and facilitate college-wide communication, understanding and support of the Student Success and Attainment agenda.As a college community of faculty, staff and administrators who teach and serve students, we are in need of a common language on what it means to be successful with student success. We are also in need of an overarching conceptual framework or set of guiding principles, in conjunction with institutional research and data on student success, to focus our work and provide evidence for designing intentional “solutions” or interventions for continuously improving student success and the Columbus State student experience.The scope and direction of this program has received strong guidance, validation and support from the results of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE); the Foundations of Excellence in the First College Year (FoE) self-assessment and action recommendations (final report forthcoming); and from the respective cross-functional, cross-representative Steering Committees who implemented these assessments. We have observed a number of similarities of purpose and effort among the current student success projects and overlap of faculty, staff and administrators participating on these projects.Institution-specific, disaggregated data on student success, that drives policy changes, business processes, and student success interventions or programs designed to remedy identified problems, is a key driver of the need for this program. Objectives and BenefitsThe overall goals and objectives of this program are to improve student outcomes and reduce achievement gaps among subgroups of students based on five indicators:Completion of developmental courses and progression to credit-bearing (college level) courses;Completion of gatekeeper courses, particularly first college-level or degree-credit courses in math and English;Completion of attempted courses with a C or better;Persistence from term to term and year to year; andAttainment of credentialsOne of our indirect program objectives is to build a “culture of evidence” related to student success & attainment. What this means is that we seek to implement the pilots, projects, action recommendations and grant activities of the current work, collaborate on how do to prioritize the work, allocate resources thoughtfully, and use data to further refine or develop future “versions” of the work. Further, how do we intentionally and based on evidence, implement the “Start Right” principle for new student success? How do we measure the impact of current and future projects, programs and activities on student success? How will we know when we are successful?ScopeThe scope of the Student Success & Attainment program includes a few important and interrelated projects, some of which are already underway and will be incorporated into this overall program. Additional projects have been identified. We also anticipate that additional projects and/or phases will be defined based on our initial efforts in talking to other ‘Achieving the Dream’ schools. Achieving the Dream (ATD) and Student Success Metrics/DataThis project includes exploring ATD requirements and applying to ATD. It also includes developing a data framework and metrics using ATD. Other leading ATD colleges would be visited and CSCC would look to leverage their goals, metrics, data, and activities in support of improved student success and attainment. This project would also look to integrate with other assessments and benchmarking (i.e. Foundations of Excellence). This project would also look to develop an assessment strategy based on student success metrics. Reasons for joining ATD also include: ATD provides a framework that defines and measures SS&A for 160+ community colleges (+20-30 more annually) and is built on 8+ years of experience. Joining ATD provides CSCC:An assigned Coach (usually retired college president) and Data Coach (usually IR expert with deep community college experience) that will guide and support CSCC through a multi-year planning and execution cycle. The Data Coach will guide and assist CSCC with identifying and gathering data needed for ATD and provide expertise and guidance on disaggregating and mining the data to identify opportunities and track progress. Access to a sophisticated and established data warehouse tool to analyze disaggregated CSCC student success data and the capability to compare to peer colleges. To acquire and implement a data warehouse tool typically costs more than $500,000 for an organization of CSCC’s size. The college will need to establish and implement a?process that approves, then communicates?what measures and reports it wishes to use for institutional effectiveness, scorecards, dashboards, and/or benchmarks.?This will be done during the planning process. The cost of joining ATD is $75,000/year (due annually on March 1) plus CSCC staff time and travel costs to a one-time Kick Off Institute and annual Strategy Institute. The revenue of a 1% retention increase for a year would exceed the 3 year cost. The ATD framework and planning process facilitates monitoring and measuring existing SS&A initiatives. A list of SS&A milestones and Gantt chart on page 11 provide details. For example, Bruce McComb, the external evaluator for CSCC Title III initiatives and an ATD Data Coach, indicated that the Title III initiatives are consistent with his experience of other college’s ATD initiatives. This is also similar for our other success initiatives, which are modeled after national and state best practices.Start RightPursue implementation of “Start Right” initiatives focused on major design principles or (“planks”) identified including: Mandatory testing and placement (includes Dev Ed/ABLE sort); completion of Dev Ed course sequence;Learning centered Orientation program/curriculum;Success course(S) for all students; this would include the current CTS student success course currently underwayLearning communities; Tutoring / Supplemental instruction;Advising model that is retention and success-driven (Advising to a plan for all students).Start right initiatives would be implemented for identified groups of students over time. Initially, a pilot cohort of students based on a cross section of the student population that would benefit from these activities and the results of the pilot would be monitored closely to inform the success of these activities and for future groups of students. Future cohorts of students to benefit from start right activities will be determined based on the data analysis completed on the ATD/Metrics project. Title III This project is already underway and will be coordinated closely with other Student Success projects identified in the scope of this program. The realignment of Title III includes college wide tutoring infrastructure, transfer and articulation database, and implementation of a web portal for students. Developmental Education InitiativesThis project is already underway and will be coordinated closely with other Student Success projects identified in the scope of this program. This project includes Math 099 summer bridge/modular math course development and will continue as planned. The Block program will continue as well as college prep math for HS seniors, which has begun with a pilot at Reynoldsburg and which will expand to 14 schools over time. Career Assistance for Undecided StudentsThis project is already underway and will be coordinated closely with other Student Success projects identified in the scope of this program. The scope includes development and implementation of a career pathways website, the introduction of the career coach, and intrusive advising intervention. Cougar Edge “Cougar Edge” was developed in response to a request form the Ohio Board of Regents to create a pilot project as part of the Ohio Developmental Education Initiative funded by the Gates and Lumina Educational Foundation. An invitation to participate was sent to all community colleges and Adult Basic Literacy Education (ABLE) programs in June 2010. ABLE programs, also administered by the Ohio Board of Regents (OBOR), provide basic literacy education to adults 18 years or older. All 23 Ohio community colleges have submitted agreements and are partnering with ABLE programs in their local areas to implement similar pilot programs. The purpose of these pilot programs is to:Align remediation services for students who are not college-readySave dollars for students and the stateFind better instructional options for students who need considerable remediationHelp colleges concentrate on serving high achieving studentsColumbus State and five local ABLE programs have partnered to offer the “Cougar Edge” classes, which have been presented as an option to students who place into Dev 030, Dev 040, and/or Dev 041. Referrals have also been accepted from the Developmental Education office for students who were doing poorly in credit developmental education courses. The pilot classes were first offered Spring Quarter 2011 with 26 students enrolled. Out of ScopeWhile some of these activities may be come part of later student success initiatives, this Student Success & Attainment program will NOT include activities such as: Developing non-credit training programs for pre-college learners or displaced workersImproving Colleague systems and processingDeveloping programs that impact small numbers of studentsProject Milestones Milestones are major accomplishments over the course of the project, impact most subcommittees work efforts and are well understood by all subcommittee and project team members. They are significant points in time, tangible achievements, key meetings, key decisions made, key communications, etc. Milestones serve as foundation for project planning, progress reporting and help ensure focus on most important events. This aids in “milestone driven work planning”. The following is the most current list of project milestones and due dates. Program Organization and GovernanceSubcommittee ChairTeddi Lewis-Hotopp(A)Kelly Hogan(F)Renee Hampton(A)Marty Maliwesky(A)Wayne Cocchi(A)Marty Maliwesky(A)Nancy Case(A)SubcommitteeAA / SA DeansTutoring Advisory Committee (~30)Early Alert committee (~20) Evolving working committeesTywan Banks(S)Beth Barnett(F)Sue Hargrove(F)James Kimnach(F)Cameron Kishel(F)Jessica Lickeri(F)Brenna Michelis(F)Kristin Montgomery(F)Ellen Stadler(F)Kathy Struve(F)Dann Marketos(F)Lee Wayand(F)Karen Muir(A)Polly Owen(A)Marty Maliwesky(A)Kelly Hogan(F)Jennifer Anderson(A)Karen Muir(A)Polly Owen(A)Kelly Hogan(F)Debra Bertsch(F)Sue Donohue(F)Nancy Case(A)Desiree Polk-Bland(A)Chandra Bell(S)Tari Blaney(A)Stacey Rogers(A)Susan Norris-Berry(A)Dick Bickerstaff(A)Tari Blaney(A)David Fields(A)Tony Goins(S)Marcy Leeds(S)Desiree Polk-Bland(A)Jack Popovich(F)Rebecca Safa(F)Julie Sullivan(S)Liz Wyles-Smith(S)Nancy Case(A)Tywan Banks(S)Tari Blaney(A)Celeste Bland(A)Stacy Drake(S)Holly Finnegan(F)James Kimnach(F)Pat Fabrisi(A)Kelly Hogan(F)Tiffany McClain(A)Susan Norris-Berry(A)Desiree Polk-Bland(A)Jamie Lyn Smith(S)Jessica Tomasek(S)Suzanne Vonahn(A)Lisa Biggum(S)Thelma Bucy(S)Doreece Dandridge(S)Ellen Neutzling(S)Michelle Teasley(A)Project Manager(S)Teddi Lewis-Hotopp(A)Kelly Hogan(F)Lisa Carpenter(S)Jeff McCullough(C)Stephanie Albrecht(A)Jeff McCullough(C)Chandra Bell(S)Nancy Case(A)Core Implementation TeamDavid Reedy(S)Sarah Lathrop(S)Adam Feldhaus(S)Angela Robinson(S)None *Brian Seeger(A)ATD Coach-TBD ATD Data Coach-TBDNone **None *None *(F)-Faculty(S)-Staff(A)-Administration(C)-Contractor* Project is well down the path to completion with existing committees/resources and therefore, additional core implementation team resources are not needed. ** This effort is purposely defined to be a small and nimble group of people executing the work activities. Additional core implementation team is not needed at this time. *** for this project/subcommittee, the PM has also been in the role of Subcommittee chair and these projects have been ongoing so we would not look to change that as part of this overall SS&A program.Major assumptionsThis project is “top tier”, President agenda level project. Throughout the course of the project, other important college projects/efforts will be occurring in parallel and management of multiple simultaneous projects is critical for success. The project timeline is not driven by external mandate or requirements. Rather, milestone dates will be driven by the speed at which the college wants to improve student success and attainment metrics over the course of the next few years. Program level metrics will be determined as early activities in this overall programGoals against metrics should be established so that they are reasonably attainable in the next 2-3 years. Otherwise, there is the risk of defining a timeline for completion too far out in the future which tends to be overwhelming for stakeholders. Prioritization of other “top tier” efforts must be done in order to be prepared in the event of a key resource constraint. It is understood that over the next couple years, Switch to Semesters and Reaffirmation of Accreditation are highest project priorities of the college. Current Risks, Barriers or ConstraintsProject risks and mitigating actions will be tracked using Risk Register that provides a point-in-time snapshot of the project risks, owners and mitigating actions throughout the project. What follows is an initial list of project risks although we expect this list to grow as well as this list to mitigate effectively many of the identified risks. Project resource availability.Program has several interrelated projects that require close coordination.Confusion on how historical student success projects fit into this overall program.The total cost for the program is unknown to date. Failure to understand the overall work effort across the college may result in misappropriating adequate budget for the project. Many times students need full load of courses to get Financial Aid, so Dev Ed students mix in college level course (i.e. PSY100) when they are not ready.Don’t expand tutoring until other “Start Right” programs are in place. Critical Success Factors and Guiding PrinciplesEmpowered governance structure. Having the empowered committee structure in place to address the many areas impacted by this project is critical. Governance includes effective representation across the many departments/units/campus/etc. and also governance processes in place. Learn from other Colleges. Student success and attainment frameworks exist and have proven to be successful at other colleges. This Program must tap into that collective knowledge and experience and bring to CSCC. Broadbased involvement of college administrators, faculty, and staff. In a report on the first five years’ results of Achieving the Dream, engagement of and leadership from faculty, staff and administrators was cited as a differentiator between colleges with successful student success results and those that were not as successful. Establish program goals/metrics such that completion timeframe is reasonable. Continuously improving student success and attainment goes on forever. However, this program as aimed at “step improvements” and therefore is organized as a program focused at achieving higher degrees of student success and attainment when compared to historical data. Early in this program, reasonable yet “step change” goals must be established in order to understand a reasonable end to the program. Stakeholders must be able to envision a logical end to the program within a manageable timeframe (i.e. 3 years). Cross College Perspective. Committee and core team members need to represent the collective college interests and NOT just their specific area. “Benefits led” organizational change management. This project has wide-spread organizational change management implications given how many people and different stakeholder groups are impacted. While there will be much work to do to support the Student Success and Attainment program, there are clear benefits to improving student success. The most effective way to effect change at the person-by-person level is to be very clear and proactive in communicating the key benefits often and to the wide range of stakeholder groups. Transparency. Information and decisions need to be widely shared through our organized governance process (steering, subcommittees, websites, etc.). The more broadly shared the decisions, activities, issues, risks, etc., the higher likelihood that we will uncover issues to address as early as possible. Clear program and project level status. Need to understand project level status at all times, good or bad, and the ability to communicate status across a wide range of stakeholdersEarly risk/issue identification. Uncover risks/issues as soon as possible and proactively communicate to get the right people helping to address the issues/risks. Risks need to include corresponding risk mitigation ideas/actions. Estimate project workload early. Scope and size the entire effort as early as possible in order to get the right resources assigned/aligned to the project. Milestone-driven work planning. The cross subcommittees need to work closely together to understand the major milestones and key milestone dependencies. Once that common understanding exists, each subcommittee can build their more detailed task/activity list around those milestones. Use a balance of milestone driven work planning (top down) and detailed work planning (bottom up). This approach helps keep an eye on the big milestones yet understanding at the resource level how each resource is contributing to the overall project milestones. Estimate workload independent of resource availability. As each project plans out the work required to complete the scope of the Student Success & Attainment program, we must estimate the workload independent of resource availability. Given that we anticipate resource availability challenges, we cannot let this impact our workload estimates. This will enable us to understand the true “gap” (issue) between workload and resources and therefore, can address the issue directly. Top tier project. It must be widely communicated that the Student Success & Attainment program is one of the highest priority cross-campus projects being planned and executed over the next few years. This will help if resource constraints ever become a question or issue. This project is a “President’s agenda” project. No heroes. A successful project will rely on many people, committees and project resources to all work together to achieve the project objectives rather than a smaller group of people doing “heroic” work toward the end. Silence equals consent. People need to be forthright with their points of view on key decisions and activities. If there is no disagreement with a particular decision, then we assume consent and move forward. Promote healthy debate. We want people to challenge ideas and decisions because it helps get to the best answer and helps validate the answer. Documentation is critical. What gets documented gets done. Built into our project management processes is the notion that key information needs to be documented. Given the wide range of stakeholders impacted by this project, the most effective way to communicate broadly is by clearly written documentation. Baseline data is critical in order to measure the impact of the initiatives.?Roles and responsibilitiesMany roles and responsibilities have been identified for this project. The following table summarizes the roles and associated key responsibilities along with general level of involvement. Key RoleDescriptionInvolvementProgram Steering Committee members Overall oversight and governance for the SS&A program. Provide knowledge of key integration points across the multiple projects and subcommittees within the scope of this program. Help make key program level decisions, help resolve major issues, help mitigate major risks, track progress against program project milestones, effectively represent cross section of many program stakeholders. Part time throughout the projectProgram DirectorOversee projects and coordinate efforts between projects, but not manage the projects— the project managers manage the projects. Maintain a broad knowledge of all the project work going on. Facilitate Steering Committee activities. Part time throughout the projectSubcommittee chairsManage the work of each project subcommittee and manage the involvement of the subcommittee members, facilitate recommendations on decisions owned by subcommittee. In some cases, participate in specific work activities in support of project goals. Part time throughout the projectSubcommittee membersParticipate in subcommittee work including: initial assessment, remediation, recommendations, key decisions, policy change recommendations, task groups as needed, and issue resolutionPart time throughout the projectProject manager Manage overall project, work with subcommittees and steering committee to address project level risks/issues, manager project wide milestones. Own the planning and execution of their portion of the overall program master work plan. Full or part timeOther core team roles TBDThese people would be dedicated to the efforts of a specific project within the overall SS&A program. Full or part timeAppendix A: Complete List of SS&A Initiative Team Members ................
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