SACS Visit

As part of our Fifth-Year Interim Report with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS COC), new off-campus sites that have been reported to SACS COC since our last reaffirmation will be visited next week.  A committee of six peer evaluators from community colleges in the southeast will visit Rock Hill High, Northwestern, South Pointe, Lancaster, and York Comprehensive to validate that the resources and services offered through our dual-enrollment offerings are adequate.  The Committee arrives on Monday, May 16 and will begin their high school tours on Tuesday morning.  The visits at the high schools will entail interviews with the high school dual-enrollment coordinator, media specialists, faculty, and students.  On Tuesday afternoon, they will visit our campus to interview additional personnel.  If you see them touring our campus, please make them feel welcome.  If you have questions about the visit, please contact our Accreditation Liaison, Jacquelyn Nesbitt (jnesbitt@yorktech.edu).

One Week to the 2011 Graduation!

Next week, 404 students will participate in the York Technical College Commencement. Michael Brezillac will represent the 2011 graduating class by providing a welcome at the ceremony. Recipients of the President’s Award for Students, being recognized during the ceremony, include:

Michael Thomas Brezillac, Arts and Sciences
Jodi Lynn Turner, Business and Computer Technology
Olga Krasnov, Health and Human Services
Richard Thomas Childers, Industrial and Engineering Technologies

In addition, the following nominees for the President’s Award for Instructional Excellence will be recognized:

John McGill, Arts and Sciences
Gwen Wilson, Business and Computer Technology
Sandra Farley, Health and Human Services
Mike Zavinski, Industrial and Engineering Technologies

I urge all of you to make plans to attend the ceremony on Tuesday, May 10 at 7 p.m. at the Winthrop Coliseum. Watching our students walk across the stage is our greatest reward; knowing that we played a part in helping them achieve their goal.

Students Test Their Skills

Students in the Engineering Graphics Technology program tested their skills and knowledge on Wednesday, April 27 by competing in the Ninth Annual Marshmallow Catapult Competition. Design teams built custom catapults, based on their own design drawings, that tossed marshmallows as far as 50 feet. The team with the highest total distance after three tosses was declared the winner. CN2’s news video shows the students and their catapults in action!

Susan Sherlock is to be commended for her initiative and innovation to engage students. Many thanks to Ginger Dewey, Frank Caldwell, Lee Craig, David LeGrande, Nora Othman, Cree Stout and Tom Dickerson for volunteering at the event.

Welding Program Receives AWS SENSE Certification

The College’s welding program has just received two important designations through the American Welding Society (AWS). The College is now a designated AWS Educational Institution Member. In recognition of this status, the AWS has provided two plaques for the main campus and the Chester Center. Most importantly, our welding programs (main campus and Chester Center) are now AWS SENSE Certified for Level I and Level II Welders. SENSE stands for Schools Excelling through National Skills Standards Education.

Our next step is to become an AWS Accredited Testing Facility. This will allow us to test our students to American Welding Society (AWS) criteria and certify the student upon successful completion of the exam. The student could then market themselves as an AWS Certified Welder.

I appreciate the hard work of Rich Santoro (pictured right), Hezekiah Barnette (pictured left), and Mike Brumbach for receiving these designations for the College’s welding program.

JRCERT ACCREDITATION

Congratulations to our Radiologic Technology program on the continuation of accreditation granted by the Joint Review Committee on Education in Radiologic Technology (JRCERT). The JRCERT is the only agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for the accreditation of traditional and distance delivery educational programs in radiography, radiation therapy, magnetic resonance, and medical dosimetry. The program was evaluated according to the Standards for an Accredited Educational Program in Radiography. The program received full accreditation in 2007, with no recommendations, for the maximum term of eight years. The recent site visit was an interim, self-study report, for which they again received no recommendations. Radiologic Technology is scheduled for a full study again in 2015.

I’m proud of the efforts displayed by our faculty, in particular Michele Wells and Kim Ford, to provide a quality educational program for our students. Thank you for all you do.

Parking Lot A Expansion

Soon, you will begin to hear the sound of backhoes and cement trucks. This is the exciting and long-anticipated sound of parking expansion! It is no secret that our campus has had a deficit in parking space. With overflow parking housed at the Hood Center, having students, faculty and staff shuttled back and forth during peak times has not been an easy process. I want to thank you all for your cooperation and patience. I’m happy to say, the wait is almost over!

J.E. Dunn Construction Company will begin work on Monday morning, April 4. We anticipate the project will be substantially complete on July 3, with final completion scheduled for August 2, just in time for our fall 2011 students.

The new parking lot, containing an additional 165 parking spaces, will be located on the south end of the main campus, where the Lineworker Program was formerly located. The Lineworker Program has been moved to the Heavy Equipment Operations site in Chester County. I am proud of our College personnel and the students who pitched in to make this move happen smoothly and in less than four weeks. That was quite an accomplishment.

As can be expected with any construction project, traffic and pedestrian flow may need to be rerouted at various times. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience. As we begin new construction projects in the future, some parking will be used for those facilities. The goal will be to plan for additional parking as we build.

YTC SENSE 2010 Findings

I am very pleased to share with you the results of our latest administration of the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE). This past fall semester was the second time we administered the survey and the results are very encouraging. The SENSE items focus on entering students’ experiences during the first three weeks of their first semester.

The SENSE data are organized around six benchmarks: Early Connections, High Expectations/Aspirations, Clear Academic Plan, Effective Track to Readiness, Engaged Learning, and Academic/Student Support. Each benchmark is then comprised of individual survey items related to that benchmark. I am encouraged that York Tech students rated the College higher than its peer colleges for all six benchmarks. York Tech benchmark scores ranged from a high of 63.2 to 50.8, where the average score for all participating colleges is 50.0. We also increased our scores for four of the six benchmarks from last year.

In 2010, York Tech students reported higher levels of engagement from last year based on their responses to many of the individual survey items. Although two years of data is not enough to consider a trend, the data seem to suggest that some of our recent changes in institutional policies and practices may indeed be positively influencing our students’ experiences, and hopefully, their eventual success. For example, the percentage of students who reported never skipping a class increased almost seven percent. It seems reasonable to conclude that this may be related to our change in attendance policy. We set higher expectations of our students by reducing the allowable number of absences, and the students have responded in a positive manner.

We need to use some caution, however, in interpreting changes from one year to another. This is especially true given all of the policy and practice changes we have implemented specific to the ‘front door’ of the College. Nonetheless, I encourage you to review the College’s benchmark scores and related survey items and to discuss their possible meanings with your peers and even with your own students.

You will hear more about the data and related initiatives as we continue our SENSE Benchmark Fridays this spring semester. The next session deals with the Effective Track to Readiness benchmark and is scheduled for Friday, March 18, 2011. You will hear more from the Professional Development Committee (PDC) about this very soon.

In the meantime, please review the key findings of the 2010 SENSE report for York Tech and other information about SENSE at www.ccsse.org/sense.