Winter2016Meeting Minutes

February 4-5, 2016

Shoreline Community College

Thursday February 4

8:15: Optional Breakout: Newcomer’s Orientation Session (led by NainaEshwar)

9:00: Welcome from Shoreline Community College President Cheryl Roberts,

9:15: Plenary Session: Guided Pathways (Maureen Pettitt)

Maureen Pettitt, Skagit Valley, Introduction toGuided Pathways, provided definition and background for the topic

Part 1. Sheila Delquadri and Wilma Dulin, Yakima Valley: The Role of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness in Guided Pathways

Member from Yakima Valley presented their experience and work with guided pathways models, funded in part by a PRESS grant. They worked with the NACADA (National Academic Advising Association)and conducted an extensive literature review to develop key elements: Mandatory orientation, six pathways or “meta-majors,” re-organization of advising and counseling around those meta-majors, and mandatory advising up to 30 credits. The initial challenges to data gathering were described as well as the key metrics used in the evaluation plan (see presentation for details).

Questions/topics from discussion

The literature review will be made available on the e-list.

One change that occurred was the distinction between academic advising vs. curriculum advising. There was also a counselor assigned to each pathway; overall a change in what people think they are responsible for, with additional focus on wraparound services.

Identifying and method to capture information about pathways continues to be a challenge. Currently using advisor data portal, but it took three years to determine how that system fits with pathways. The first “real” cohort being evaluated is Fall 2015, will be conducting a matched-cohort analysis.

  • What counts as taking math and English early? Students who had taken 15 credits without any math would be late.
  • Where do students go if they are developmental out of the gate? They are still in a pathway. 85% of YVCC students are developmental.
  • What about the exploratory pathway? “Declare or prepare.” The goal of an exploratory pathway is to move into a pathway within one term.
  • How difficult is it to change a pathway? No way to know at this point.
  • Is it more difficult or easier to implement guided pathways? Not harder but more purposeful, more likely to change within the pathway
  • How do intent codes and EPC fit into the pathways, any student who are coded that way? We have our own coding issues. The pathways are independent of those codes, use those and pathways codes … right now it’s in its own database, where we capture the pathways. Faculty know the intent codes, so there are training issues.

Part 2: Marilyn Franklin, Skagit Valley, State-wide and national initiatives on pathways

This presentation summarized key features of the AACC Pathways project and the SBCTC Pathways to Success project (sponsored by College Spark). The timeline for the College Spark grant RFA and application deadline were reviewed.

Part 3: David Prince, SBCTC, Metrics to Measure Student Progress

The College Spark Grant will use common metrics for all participating colleges. This presentation included descriptions of the cohorts to be used as well as progress metrics (see presentation for details). At the time of presentation, outcome and post-college metrics were still under development. For the purposes of these metrics, a college-readiness status variable will be developed. These metrics will be provided in a usable dashboard by SBCTC for use by all colleges.

10:15 / Plenary Session:Excellent Practices Rubric (Maureen Pettitt)

Kelley Sadler presented framework for the Excellent Practices Rubric; WilmaDulin discussed the completion-by design model used, from entry, to engagement, to completion. Excellent practices were nominated from the CTC system or identified in external literature review, then placed within this framework. For college examples to be selected, there needed to be strong evidence of the effectiveness of the practice.

Each of the commissions needed to sign off on the document, which would be forwarded to the Presidents and used in various forums, primarily for the purposes of seeking funding to support those practices. Feedback from RPC was needed by February 16, when it would be forwarded (with passive consent as applicable). Approval of the rubric used to evaluate practices was also needed.

Questions:

Did you consider post-completion outcomes as part of the framework?

-Nothing was considered as a best practice, but it is feeding the Guided Pathways effort.

There are currently no plans to add a lot of data into the document but the data will be important to explain what you will get as the return on investment. The list of best practices was narrowed down to those with very clear evidence, but necessary that a particular model needs to be adopted

If we receive the question, “Why isn’t eh program we submitted in there?” How should we respond?

-In general, those selected had the most amounts of data. There might have also been many examples of one particular type of initiative, so had to narrow down to something more readable.

Also not losing sight of the importance of professional development, but hard to capture in terms of ROI, that is how it was prioritized. Additional questions, call Joe Holliday.

10:45 / Breakout Sessions: two options
  • Reporting in Tableau (details TBD)
  • Accreditation: Substantive Change Process (Jim Mulik)

Noon / Lunch [AGENDA REVISION] Presentation about Civitas

Colleges who had been working with Civitas ( a predictive analytics software company, shared their experiences.

Seattle colleges

Seattle Colleges have moved forward with the Illume tool only. Civitas is currently reviewing data, understanding the table structures, analyzing it and putting it into the algorithms, dashboards, validation process. Seattle Colleges are supporting the work in part through funding from the Gates Foundation

Pierce

Process of Civitas “ingesting” SMS data was delayed for two months because of “retraining” modules. Currently, have not realized the potential of the investment.

Spokane:

Pre-ctcLink, had taken nine months to build something off of ODS, suggested HP Staging Area (which feed college’s ODS) would be a better common layer.

Tacoma

On the verge of purchasing, to use with the INSPIRE tool, because the transition to ctcLink might lead to losses in the Advisor Data Portal. The plan would be to import data from Golden Gate.

Anyone using anything but Illume?

At least one college looking at college scheduler (recently purchased by Civitas). Spokane had rolled out to a small group of faculty; noted it had been as low process getting people one board, and then the process was on hold with ctcLink transition.

Anyone found difficult accessing Canvas data?

One college indicating a political challenge in accessing data. Several others noted that faculty are not consistent Canvas users, so unclear how valuable the data would be. To date, most of the schools who had used Civitas (even preliminarily), had looked at retention and used SMS data through HP. There was some discussion about the need to unleash the potential of the real-time data captured in Canvas for the purpose of intervention (though perhaps not analysis).

Does Civitasshare the algorithm they use to predict student success?

They will reveal factors contributing to the model, but not the actual algorithm, unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Is there any move toward a system-wide purchase?

Not at this point.

Additional discussion

Several colleges discussed modeling options they have already tried. Walla Walla brought on a consultant to help build a model from the ground up. IN discussions with stakeholders about issues and with IR about data availability, began iterative modeling. The model is written in R and sits on the server. Edmonds indicating using predictive analytics and incorporating data from card swiping data collection from different services. Another suggestion was to look into SPSS modeler.

One college described a straight-forward “early intervention view,” built using SSRS, for advisors to pull GPA and key demographic variables. Users had been happy with it and using it to help identify students for intervention.

Another question was raised about whether, when you identify a target group, a college can rapidly respond, and can quickly assess whether an intervention is effective, to intervene to the target group

1:15 / RPC Committee Meetings
  • Campus Climate Survey – lead: Alec Campbell
  • Excellent Practices – lead: Kelly Sadler
  • Math Strategic Plan – lead: Cherisa Yarkin
  • IPEDS – lead: Jennifer Tuia
  • Accreditation – lead: Jim Mulik
  • Newcomer’s – lead: Juliet Scarpa

Individual committees met, see business meeting minutes for committee reports

3:15 / [New Agenda Item] Enrollment Counting

Summer Kenesson, Olympic College, RPC representative on enrollment counting work group

Enrollment Counting – New Agenda item

The Enrollment Counting task force emerged with questions not easily resolved – particularly from IR and Data Management Perspective, next meeting February 22nd. Scheduled: Task force meetings Feb. 22 and March 17,in April/May, recommendations to WACTC. Commissions and colleges need to ask questions and provide feedback to the task force.

Credit Hours

Task force has been thinking about the different components, how they were translated and calculated into credits. The conversion is built on the notion of 1 credit hour to 3 hours of student effort, how we have been thinking about it and how it correlates to student effort.

Question about whether credit hour is based on as time frame, such as 10 weeks. “equivalent amount of effort over a different of time” accommodating split-quarter. Possibly a total number of hours instead of “per week.” Also does it matter – why not just three hours of work? Or is it based on learning outcomes?

“When do students count?”

Language has been altered to take out a great deal of legacy terminology.

Funding sources

-Question about state funding, counting students in courses where the instructor is paid for off of grants

-Students on waivers should count as FTE, as incentive for colleges to support those learners.

Enrollment Counting Data

-Created with an eye towards future auditing, a report that will reveal patterns that “look funny.”

Can we forward questions to others if they can’t be answered by RPC reps? RPC reps can forward comments along to committee or other SBCTC staff.

4:30 / Civitas/Predictive Analytics – [Moved to earlier in agenda]

Friday February 5

8:30 / State Board report and Updates

SBCTC updates

DevinDuPree

Enrollment: Enrollment monitoring reports, soliciting feedback on format

Fall reports will be delayed due to ctcLink

DarbyKaikkonen

  1. New research analyst, Sarah Delaney, will be catching up with colleges with efficient reporting processes, replacing archaic methods, also working with David on metrics for guided pathways. Hopefully addressing the delays.
  1. IPEDS items
    - Monica is out of the office next week. Please lock as soon as possible.
    - Financial aid survey; on-campus housing item – comes from the ICRC report, students self-report if they want to live on campus, have to report that. For those who have on-campus housing, how do you capture that information? Dory at Olympic – no impact on ipeds we were worried about. Are there different aid amounts for on and off campus – more of a financial aid question. This is not an element in PeopleSoft –not an element if there is we did not buy that module.
  1. RPC got a request from Multicultural Student Services Directors Council
  1. Disaggregated data
  2. Reporting Asian and Pacific Islander separately, have heard the message multiple times from multiple groups. For all research reports going forward will be separating Asian and Pacific Islander
  1. Aspen award – doing the employment analysis piece – only for top ten.
  2. Last time worked with SBCTC to pull those data
  1. GUIDED PATHWAYS

Awards in two areas:

5 implementation grants this year , 5 next year

State Boardalso received a grant

Progress metrics will be developing a data visualization tool for those metrics

Process:

SBCTC has staff members who have been working on the implementation of the entire grant initiative, and another grant for a Student Success Center. SBCTC has hired a Student Success Center Director. The goal behind the center grant is to aid in the implementation of guided pathway sand change management going with this initiative, as it is intentionally disruptive.

There are deeper goals: Diversity and equity, closing achieving gap, huge role for student success center; bringing together success initiatives into a cohesive whole. There will also be an advisory committee

Next step is a Request for Applications (RFA), which was drafted last week. Using AACC Guided Pathways as a framework, the application gauges a college’s readiness to implement guided pathways.

Comments/Questions:

Will there be a question on the RFA about faculty buy in?

There WILL BE a requirement to have a letter of support from faculty leadership and Board of Trustees.

Questions about things that are more recent, not in the past five years?

Need to demonstrate your college is willing to make major reform. Meta-majors will be one of those things, could be a requirement to choose a meta-major then choose a more specific major within 1 – 2 quarters.

Question about alternative math pathway: There will be major dev ed. reform; the co-requisite model in dev ed, research has shown to work best. In the co-requisite model, instead of dev ed that stands alone, it’s embedded within the course work. You are going to embed the math with the course work. Really have to think about the course and major

Representatives from Yakima Valley stressed the importance of paying attention to Developmental Education and ensuring efforts do not under-mine equity and access. In addition, when considering guided pathways, there is a need to be cognizant that the research comes out of states with no unions and no minority serving institutions were involved.

There was additional discussion about questions from the Request for Applications, specifying definitions of questions. The RFA is on agendas of all commissions. The SBCTC student success center director will be a project manager. The Guided Pathways project will be a significant commitment for the college.

Are there restrictions on budget or allowable costs?

This grant will be done differently, College Spark awards colleges directly. The funding range is $100K per year for five years.

RPC Business meeting
  • Approval of Spring & Fall 2015 meeting minutes
  • Treasurer’s Report
  • President’s Report
  • Charges for RPC liaisons and guests
  • By-laws
  • Committee Business [Moved from previous day]
  • Task Force reports
  • Ethics Guidelines
  • Work Plan updates

RPC Business meeting called to order at 9:12am

Roll – Member colleges present (28). Quorum met

Bellingham Technical College

Bellevue College

Big Bend Community College

Cascadia Community College

Columbia Basin College

Community Colleges of Spokane

Edmonds Community College

Everett Community College

Grays Harbor College

Green River Community College

Highline College

Lake Washington Institute of Technology

Lower Columbia College

North Seattle College

Olympic College

Peninsula College

Renton Technical College

Seattle District

Seattle Central College

Shoreline Community College

Skagit Valley College

South Puget Sound Community College

South Seattle College

Tacoma Community College

Walla Walla Community College

Wenatchee Valley College

Whatcom Community College

Yakima Valley Community College

Member colleges not present (7)

Bates Technical College

Centralia College

Clark College

Clover Park Technical College

Pierce College

Spokane Community College

Spokane Falls Community College

Approval of Spring 2015 meeting minutes

Move to approve seconded , unanimously approved by vocal vote

Approval of Fall 2015

-Note that there was an error in net change cell of Fall 2015 treasurer’s, erroneously reported, changed to $88.

Moved to approve meeting minutes as amended. Unanimously approved by vocal votes.

Treasurer Report

Net change $720 for Winter Conference, no questions were raised about preliminary numbers:

Final treasurer’s report attached here to be approved with these minutes

President’s Report (from WACTC)

ctcLink

-Wave 1 has been officially postponed

-Cost estimate increased from 100 million to 110 million

Guided Pathways

Sheila and Wendy appointed to the task force, had one meeting to plan the conferences, also working on student success leadership institutes coming up. IT will be a system approach – meetings will be open to all colleges, including the trainings. Wendy part of hiring committee for student success center director.

There is a very heavy data component to guided pathways and all members were encouraged to read the book (Redesigning America’s Community Colleges). The math initiative is being incorporated (somewhat) into the Guided Pathways.

Waive fees for RPC guests/liaisons: Approved via consensus

Bylaws

New amended version distributed prior to meeting, summary of changed:

-Changed Data Governance presence on Exec Team

-Will incorporate anything from WACTC into workplan

-Workplan development needs within committee leads

Floor opened to discussion, no discussion

Motion to approve amendments to bylaws, approved by unanimous vocal votes

Committee Reports