Defining Our Greatness by the Success of Our Students

Don Doucette

Student Affairs Leadership Summit

July 1, 2009

The Planets Are Aligned

(Defining Our Greatness by the Success of Our

Students)

Elements in Alignment

I. Good to Great/Strategic Plan

II. The Death of Enrollment Funding

III. Achieving the Dream

Good to Great/Strategic Plan

• New institutional leadership

• Commitment to data/metric-based strategic planning (2010 Strategic Plan)

• Current development of Accelerating Greatness 2013

Good to Great Principles

• Develop a clear definition and measures for success.

• Develop effective, ethical leaders who lead by service and motivate others to service, commitment and collaboration.

• Recruit, develop and retain the right people.

• Confront the reality of what data say about institutional quality, performance and efficiency.

Good to Great (continued)

• Identify what we are passionate about and can become great at.

• Maintain discipline and focus on the core mission and opportunity for greatness.

• Build for long-term and sustained institutional success.

• Preserve focus on the core mission and related best practices while remaining open to new ideas, change and continuous improvement.

Ivy Tech’s Strategic Drivers for Accelerating Greatness

The basis for the 2013 Strategic Plan

What we are deeply

passionate about

What drives our

resource engine

What we can be best

at in the world

Ensuring that students achieve their educational goals

Unequivocal commitment to Ivy Tech as the

difference-maker for Indiana’s economic

future

One integrated community college transforming Indiana

Changing Lives… Making Indiana Great

Proposed Core Strategies for Accelerating Greatness 2013

1. Ensure that students achieve their educational goals

2. Make Indiana’s citizens, workforce and businesses more competitive globally

3. Ensure optimal quality and efficiencies statewide

4. Secure an adequate and sustainable resource base

Death of Enrollment Funding

• CHE’s Reaching Higher urges Ivy Tech to focus on improving completion rates.

• CHE incentive funding formula shifting from enrollment to course completion.

• CHE funding formula has been demonstrated as not working for fast-growth institutions.

• Legislature has not fully funded Ivy Tech’s enrollment growth for three years.

Institutional Response to Unfunded Growth

• Alternative revenue generation: fund raising, grants and contracts, etc.

• Cost savings initiatives: statewide contracts, consolidation, etc.

• Process improvement/re-engineering– Financial aid– Enrollment management

• Enrollment Study Group—contingency planning

Process Improvement Wins

• Common start/end dates, online calendar

• Common FA disbursement date

• Auto packaging FA

• R2T4 consolidation

• Guest student admissions policy

• Elimination of HS transcript documentation

• March 1 deadline

Enrollment Study Recommendations

1. Optimize schedule of classes

2. Increase class size

3. Encourage students to enroll early

4. Ensure and maintain quality

5. Enhance recruitment of qualified faculty

6. Adopt selected recommendations of Enrollment Management Process Improvement group

Student Success Recommendations

• Students may not enroll in classes after they have met.

• No further deterioration in FT/adjunct faculty ratio• Hire one FT student services staff for each 2 new

FT faculty• No new uncredentialed faculty; reduce previous.• Aggressively promote early application,

registration, financial aid, etc.• Initiate multiple retention strategies, such as

mandatory orientation, enhanced advising, etc.

Achieving the Dream• Lumina funds Ivy Tech to join major

national initiative (ATD)

• 102 institutions in 22 states

• ATD focuses on helping more community college students succeed, esp. minority and low-income students

• Broad-based institutional change, informed by student achievement data, necessary to improve student success rates.

“Colleges participating in Achieving the Dream agree to engage faculty, staff and administrators in a process of using data to identify gaps in student achievement and to implement and improve strategies for closing these gaps.”

Improving Rates at Which Students…

• Successfully complete of remedial instruction

• Enroll in and successfully complete college-level gatekeeper courses

• Complete courses with grades of C or better

• Persist from fall to spring, fall to fall

• Earn a certificate or degree

ATD Principles

• Committed leadership

• Use of evidence to improve policies, programs and services

• Broad engagement

• Systematic institutional improvement

Components of a Culture of Evidence

• What’s wrong?—Use of longitudinal, disaggregated cohort data to identify problems, achievement gaps

• Why?—Collect, analyze and use secondary data to determine underlying causes of problems

• Intervention—Use data and expertise to design/revise interventions to address underlying causes of identified problems

• Evaluate and Modify—Use data to evaluate effectiveness of interventions, extent to which interventions increase student success

Additional Benefits of ATD

• Ability to learn from the experiences of other ATD colleges– Why not just adopt practices that others have

proven effective (e.g. Valencia CC)

• Best practice institutions/peers

• Focus institutional capacity and priority on a student success agenda

ATD at Ivy Tech

• ATD Council formed (29 members college-wide); ATD regional teams to be formed.

• ATD coordinator to be named.• ATD roll out at fall inservices and

President/Provost fall campus tours• Data to identify problems in early fall• Focus groups to identify underlying causes in fall.• Interventions designed by expert teams in late fall.• Pilot intervention(s) in spring.• Evaluate, modify and repeat cycle during 2010.

BIG Cultural Change for Ivy Tech

• Focus on QUALITY not GROWTH

• Focus on STUDENT SUCCESS and COMPLETION not ENROLLMENT

• Previous financial incentives to focus on maximizing enrollment (through the 10th day count) caused resistance to changes that posed even a perceived threat to maximum enrollment.

Freedom to Do the Right Thing for Students.

• To make access meaningful.

• To help students finish what they start.

• To do no harm.

Definition of Our Success

• Student completion: that students achieve their educational goals

Definition of Our Greatness

• Student completion rates exceed not only national norms but best-practice institutional peers.

The planets are aligned:

• If not now, when?

• If not us, who?