March 27, 2025 Meeting

Agenda

  • Welcome
  • Approval of Minutes for February 27, 2025
  • First “Draft” of SEM Plan (Sharyn Eveland)
  • Dashboard Update (Xiaohong)
  • Discussion: Ideas and Suggestions for the Goals to Include in the Strategic Action Plan (Specifically from the perspective of SEMCOM)
  • Other

Minutes

Information/Discussion:

  • Welcome

Vicki welcomed the committee members back.

  • Approval of Minutes

The group approved the minutes by consensus for the meeting held 3/27/25 with a correction to last paragraph to change “send on” to “send out”.

David Mitchell: Clarification on where it states in the minutes that divisions can get this information regarding a student’s ed plan.  Where do divisions get this information? Xiaohong stated this report is already built in Cognos.  Xiaohong requested a list of people who may want this report and David Mitchell stated that whoever is in charge of scheduling for each department and the Division Chairs would be a good start.  Xiaohong stated she would send the report to the Division Chairs.

  • First Draft of SEM Plan (Sharyn Eveland)

Sharyn: The report is five pages. The reports has the 7 following parts:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Situational Analysis
  3. Strategic Goals and Objectives -There are five goals.
  4. Strategies and Actions
  5. Performance Measurement and Evaluation
  6. Resource Allocation
  7. Timeline and Implementation Plan

David Mitchell:  A group of us were looking at this and had focused on retention, persistence and wanting to track the percentages.  Are we no longer interested including that in this report?  The work done on this is in the SEMCOM shared drive folder and there seems to be none of that work included, so is that not a part of the strategic enrollment plan anymore?  Have things changed?

Sharyn:  They are not specifically identified.

David Mitchell: The information is not mentioned at all in the reports, and if the focus has changed then OK, but none of the work that was focused on is included in this report.

Other Comments/Concerns with the report:

Vicki Jacobi: How did you come up with Strategies for Goal 4 “establishing articulation agreements with additional 4-year universities”? What are you talking about? I already have articulation agreements with every Cal State universities and all UC schools.  Are you now wanting four private schools a year? Or is that the life of the plan? I don’t understand that objective?

Sharyn: The objective is to strengthen the transfer program and the goal is for the life of the plan.

Xiaohong Li:  How did you come up with 21% increase student enrollment? 

Sharyn Eveland: The goal is to get where we were pre-COVID.

David Mitchell:  From what we have been told, we are never going to get back to that pre-COVID FTE scenario. It isn’t necessarily going to happen.  Is this more of a dream scenario.

Sharyn Eveland: It’s just a goal.

David Mitchell:  Last year there was no teeth in this, is that still true?  If we don’t hit any of these bench marks we are not going to lose grant or federal funding.  Is that still true?

Leslie Minor:  This is not punitive if we don’t reach these goals. 

Vicki Jacobi:  We should look at this report if we don’t try to hit some of these marks then financially this institution is in big trouble.

David Mitchell:  There are certain plans on campus that we are legally obligated to adhere to, is this one of those?

Leslie Minor:  No this is not one of those. 

Vicki Jacobi:  Shouldn’t this plan tie into our student equity plan, guided pathway plans and ACCCJC?

Leslie Minor: This plan is more general.  We can add those as addenda.

David Mitchell:  The numbers/percentages don’t match. Summary states 5% over the next 5 years, and the next page the goal basically says 7% per year.  Doesn’t make sense.  It’s a huge stretch.

Shelley Getty: Budget Committee says if we grow 25% we actually don’t see any stability. His projections were 5% a year.  Numbers should probably agree better across campus because things are being said drastically different around campus.

Xiaohong:  For this year, we definitely met the 7%, more like 8%, but that is with WESTEC FTEs.  Do we mention WESTEC because we don’t know the plan for WESTEC? 

Leslie:  Be cautious because fraud may have an impact on the final numbers.  By the middle of April will have a better picture of the final numbers

Vicki: WESTEC is not very stable right now, and that whatever strategic plan we do needs to not count on WESTEC FTEs.

Jaime:  Is there a plan for supporting the students WESTEC is currently servicing?

Leslie: We may in the future be able to increase or absorb the court reporting.  We could absorb some of their classes but not all of them. WESTEC does not have the personnel and stability needed to thrive.  No clear answer on the future of WESTEC and how this would affect TC.

Vicki: Another impact on us is the Bakersfield College’s Arvin Center which will be in full operation.  The Southwest Center is also pulling students from attending Taft College.

Leslie Minor:  We have strategies we are focusing on to increase enrollment:

  1. More CVC classes
  2. Dual Enrollment
  3. Short term pathway, CTE skill ready, work force ready
  4. Credit for prior learning
  5. Non-credit

David Mitchell: Is it possible to get a list of what are non-credit course that the state has?

Jaime:  There is 10 categories for general non-credit.  There are four categories within the ten categories that qualify for enhanced funding.  we are going to have a lunch and learn to go over this topic.

Vickie:  Most of it should be skilled-based courses.  We should make the medical assistant classes non-credit classes along with the paramedic program. Also looking at ECE and mirrored classes as non-credit.

David Mitchell:  The five strategies should be included under the increased overall enrollment on the SEM Plan report next draft.  Also lunch and learns are not the best way to get that information out there.  Recommend to present the information in Senate like August and January then hit early and often. Jaime will get together with Candace to get the non-credit topic on the agenda.

Vicki:  We need to get this plan and the strategies and start making this information well known by everyone.  Instructors should be aware of the targets and see how they are doing and how they increase enrollment and retention.  There is a lot of pressure on faculty but there needs to be some sort of strategic plan within each of the divisions to lay out what courses that need revisions and what non-credit courses they want to create.

Vicki and Cecilia: Do not agree with the statement on the SEM Plan 24-27 Draft which states under #2 Weaknesses: Limited marketing and outreach efforts, particularly to underrepresented populations. That is not accurate.  Remove “outreach efforts” out of that statement. The outreach department is doing a phenomenal job and there has not been this much outreach done in the last three years.

  • Dashboard Update (Xiaohong)

Xiaohong quickly reviewed the data dashboard.  It’s an online version that can be pinned to your desktop.  The link is on the IR website and the sideboard has the dashboard.

Committee members can access the dashboard and review and come to the next meeting with their list of questions.

Meeting adjourned.