Acceleration Team

On August 22, I met with faculty to talk candidly about student success. I asked faculty for input related to the following four questions:

• What are the top three challenges you face as faculty members in trying to pursue student success?
• How do we best measure student performance?
• If you were on my board, what criteria would you use to measure my performance?
• How do you believe your performance should be measured?

I want to thank all of the faculty for participating in the faculty meeting. As a follow-up, a 90-day Acceleration Team will be created whose goal will be to gain a deeper understanding of the feedback received and to identify value-added actionable and sustainable strategies that maximize classroom time and directly impact student success. Classroom instruction is the most influential time we have with our students. We must have an unrelenting focus on maximizing every moment of instructional time. The Acceleration Team will research and make recommendations to address the following research questions: How can we (as an institution) accelerate student success through the classroom experience without adding additional work to faculty? The Acceleration Team’s outcomes will be presented to the Executive Committee and Council for Academic and Student Affairs (CASA). The Team will consist of faculty (teaching) from the BCAS, CCE, HHS, and IET divisions. The Student Services and Center for Teaching and Learning staff are a vital part of supporting our student success efforts in the classroom and will be involved as well. However, this will be a faculty driven Team.  Faculty from each division will appoint one faculty member from their respective division (BCAS, CCE, HHS, and IET) by November 29. Additional faculty may be appointed at a later time to further represent the divisions.

Team members must exhibit a high level of maturity and critical thinking and must be able to exemplify the following principles:

• Be proactive versus reactive
• Focus on responsibility versus blame
• Listen first to understand before being understood
• Focus on growing circle of influence, not circle of concern
• Agree to disagree and seek win/win agreement
• Apply the abundance mentality versus scarcity
• Be innovative
• Build meaningful professional relationships

Team members will be asked to seek and gain understanding of their own perspectives, perspectives of the workplace, and the community of practice through specific readings, viewings, and other data points relevant to the discovery process. Team members will be required to develop and deliver powerful and concise presentations to solicit feedback regarding the proposed recommendations/outcomes. The Acceleration Team will begin meeting the first week of December and will meet at various times over the 90-day period which will conclude in late February or early March.

I look forward to working with the Team through the discovery process to learn what strategies and tools we can use to further our goal of Maximizing Student Success.

Student Success and Financial Goals

As you review our Student Success Rates graph, notice that we are making progress towards achieving our stretch goal of 70 percent fall to fall retention. Our new goal for next year is 62 percent for fall to fall. We all have a part in achieving this goal - from the employees that help beautify our campus, to the employees that provide student support services, to the faculty that engage our students every day in the classroom. We have achieved so much since our planning sessions in 2007-2008. If you look at your input from those sessions, you can really see the progress we have made. However, there is much to be done and I know we can achieve even greater things together.

I am excited to have Dr. Julie Phelps, mathematics instructor and project director for Achieve the Dream at Valencia College, to speak to us at our annual employee recognition luncheon on December 20. Dr. Phelps has studied ways to increase student engagement, learning, retention, and graduation among developmental education students. The December 20 meeting will begin at 10 a.m. for all faculty and staff and a special faculty session will be held after lunch. More information about her visit will be sent via e-mail. Please save the date – December 20!

I previously mentioned a financial goal too. As we create greater efficiencies and effectiveness, we should improve our financials too. We have set a goal of $1.5 million in addition to net assets by June 30, 2012. We have developed a financial model that projects the College will need $76 million over the next five years in order to meet our future programming needs, IT infrastructure, deferred maintenance, and phase I and II of the Campus Master Plan. We must continue to reevaluate our business processes and work smarter in order to achieve greater efficiencies to meet our financial goals.

Job placement rates are becoming increasingly important for us to use as a measure of success. For the past three years, we have scored below the system average. This year, we will evaluate our current tracking mechanisms and will set a goal next year.

Again, I am grateful for all your hard work and ask you to Be Real, Be Bold, and Be Better! Remember, organizations do nothing, plans do nothing, technology does nothing, people do everything!