April 24, 2025 Meeting

Agenda

  • Introductions (Greg Bormann)
  • Approval of Minutes for March 27, 2025
  • Dashboard (Xiaohong)
  • Add Five Strategies for Growth (ALL)
  • Non-credit, Dual Enrollment including Adult Learner Focus, CTE Pathways, Short-Term Certificates, CVC-OEI Badging, Credit for Prior Learning
  • Non-Credit (Jaime)
  • Other

Minutes

Information/Discussion:

  • Welcome

Leslie introduced the new interim VP of Instruction, Greg Bormann.

  • Approval of Minutes

Minutes were approved.

  • Meeting Overview

The meeting discussed the appointment of Greg Bormann as Interim Vice President of Instruction and the importance of instruction, student services, and marketing in institutional growth. The dashboard for student success was presented, highlighting daily enrollment, comprehensive reviews, and graduation data. The need for faculty access to class time data and the potential for internal app development was emphasized. Non-credit courses were proposed to enhance student engagement and community outreach, with a focus on re-entry adults and workforce preparation. The SEM plan was reviewed, with plans to incorporate subgroup work and Guided Pathways language in future drafts.

  • Dashboard (Xiaohong)
  • Xiaohong explained the dashboard, its access levels, and the importance of faculty access.
  • She explained the access levels for different dashboards, including restricted access for executive-level personnel.
  • The importance of faculty access to class time data and the use of campus maps was also discussed.
  • Xiaohong also explained the sorting and filtering capabilities of the dashboard, including the ability to see head count and unique headcount.
  • She also mentioned the internal dashboards for counselors and the importance of class time data for student classification.

 

  • Early Alert System and Faculty Feedback
    • Suggests exploring a comprehensive system to support retention and completion.
    • Discusses the limitations of the current faculty feedback system in Banner 9.
    • Emphasizes the need for a closed loop in the early alert system to ensure effective follow-up.
    • Suggests notifying faculty about first-year students to support their needs.
  • Non-Credit Courses and Enhanced Funding
    • Jaime presented a handout on non-credit courses, including their benefits and categories.
    • He discussed the accessibility of non-credit courses for undocumented students and out-of-state students.
    • He also discussed the accessibility of non-credit courses for undocumented students and out-of-state students.
    • David inquired about the approval process for non-credit courses and the possibility of mirrored credit courses.
    • Kelly is currently working on a couple for independent facilitators, and there's a second one. Her goal is to create two certificates, and those would be routed as workforce preparation courses.  She's pioneering the way for the rest of the team.
    • The West Kern Adult Education Ctr. Has a robust ESL program. Leslie would like to see us do a bridge from their level four, which is their highest level to readiness here. She believes maybe a college readiness program with college reading skills, but not bringing back the reading program is something we can look into developing.
    • Jaime explained the approval process for non-credit and the benefits of enhanced funding.
    • Discussed the importance of non-credit courses in re-engaging re-entry adults and displaced workers.
    • Jaime highlighted the success of bringing in students up to the age of 30 and the need for non-credit courses to support re-entry adults.
  • Other
  • At the next meeting Leslie would like to focus on what should be included from the work the group created, where they should go, and how is that worded, and then all the questions that arose from the last meeting and suggestions to be incorporated into the plan as well.
  • Also, data and numbers should be more consistent. We will work with Mike’s office to make sure that we are giving the same message in terms of numbers and percentages.
  • Also address by what is meant by “articulation agreement”.
  • Address the concerns about the part regarding limited marketing outreach efforts. They’re not limited.  They could be more robust, especially with adult learners.  So, we want to reword that part to say “inclusive” of other groups, and we can give some examples.
  • Leslie stated we have gone from losing 30% of our students pre-COVID to now to 21%, and that is not very good. We are the lowest seven of all the colleges in the state on how we are recovering from COVID.
  • So it’s not that outreach is not working. We just need to take a hard look at where we are doing outreach and what kind of outreach to see if we can improve the numbers we are getting.
  • Leslie stated they just want to say “yes” they’re doing a great job, especially with high school students. We just need to see where else can we look and what can we do differently.
  • Leslie made it clear that when she said we hope to absorb the court reporting if WESTEC were to close, was in no way her wanting them to fail. She was just saying we need to work more closely with WESTEC as long as they are functional.
  • Jaime suggested incorporating the five strategies into the working documents from last year and fitting them within the subgroup areas in the shared drive.
  • Leslie also stated we can still frame the work in Guided Pathways language. It’s up to the group.

Other Information

Action Items

  • Explore creating a Cognos report to allow faculty to easily identify first-year students in their courses.
  • Investigate building an internal early alert system or app, rather than purchasing an external solution.
  • Review the working documents from previous SEM subgroups and identify how the 5 growth strategies can be incorporated into the SEM plan draft.
  • Schedule a focused review of the SEM plan draft at the next meeting to incorporate feedback and align the plan with Guided Pathways language.