The college needs to develop and implement a comprehensive program for Identification and academic remediation for students with inadequate skills. Too many Hispanic and low-income students enroll in Gavilan College with inadequate basic skills to succeed academically in college level courses. This results in excessive dropout rates of 45% - 55% in many core degree level courses and poor retention. This reflects poorly on the college image and drains academic and student support resources. ... Basic Skills - read more...

Gavilan enrollment suffers from dramatic student "outflow". About one-third of graduating high school students who reside in the District attend other community colleges within a 50 mile radius. Prospective Students are unimpressed by Gavilan's stone-age platform teaching and lack of wireless computing. Stagnant enrollment threatens institutional fiscal strength and as cost reise, erodes funds for student support services that are proven necessary to success of Hispanic & low-income students. The college needs to conduct extensive community research to determine the reasons for the outflow; and then to develop attractive programs that serve the community educational needs

Technology

Hispanic and low-income students lack the information retrieval skills to properly cope in today’s information environment. To succeed academically and compete successfully in the job market, they must learn how to acquire, manage, and analyze large quantifies of information, and to quickly review and discard irrelevant information through the use of appropriate technologies.

The academic technology infrastructure is woefully outdated and inadequate to provide the technology skills, training, experiences and digital access that is now required to succeed in most Silicon Valley occupations and in university curricula. Faculty lack access to state-of-the-art computing technologies and software necessary to develop digitally enhanced coursework demanded and expected by the kids of the millenium generation, and they need massive staff development opportunities to master digital-age teaching.

Is Higher Ed Technology Keeping Up with Student Demand? Students see campus technology is a key factor in selecting a college or university and consider it critical for their professional development. Yet higher education institutions on the whole aren't keeping up with student needs in this area, according to a 2008 report: read more

Accreditation 2007 Recommendations

(per Steve Kinsella eMail)

1. Continue work on the Student Learning Outcomes to include assessment methods,

identification of a timeline for assessment completion,
development of performance measures
creation of a methodology to widely disseminate the outcomes of the assessment.

2. The college needs to develop and institute a process to evaluate the results of planning activities and improvements that were initiated to determine if the actions obtained the desired outcomes. This recommendation has three parts that relate back to assessment of actions such as budget allocations to determine if the allocation decisions yielded the desired impact.

Notes from meetings with Gavilan Deans

Attrition Problem - Basic Skills - Remediation

“Transitioning to college level performance without adding more credits” (see Jesse d’Aro, NSF STEP)

Gavilan is enrolling students who do not have the underlying ability to succeed at college transfer course levels (critical thinking & analysis)

250-level courses are an attempt to take students from years of academic neglect to college level in one semester; for too many this is not enough

250-level courses are “half nurture - half teaching”

If that is the case, why don’t we invest in faculty advising roles, with skills achieved via professional development?

There is plenty of research evidence that the faculty -student relationship is of primary importance in student success (and grant readers know that)

Why don’t we propose and plan to change our culture to incorporate that?

read more - Gavilan's Basic Skills Committee reports ...

Learning College concepts

Chaffey College Title V Transformation project - “Transform the whole student support concept” - we need to have a look at their model & experiences. 7 student learning labs with professional staff. Contacts: Laura Hope and Merrill Deming. Learning labs that produce FTES can be the path to institutionalization.

Maricopa Colleges are another good example - we should visit

For that matter, any number of League for Innovation member colleges have excellent Learning College models that we could learn from and emulate

Become a Learning College

Transforming (Changing) the learning vs. teaching culture

Faculty Professional Development is needed

How does Gavilan change its “casual culture”?

Do we have an obligation to NOT be prescriptive?

Assessment and Placement for success (enforce Matriculation standards)

“Undecided students are a huge source of attrition - a large group of drifters”; many are First Generation college students without family driven goals

“a.k.a. recreational learners” or “casual students”

Gavilan’s withdrawal dates contribute to the problem.

9-units = full-time is sending the wrong message

“Smorgasbord learning menu is out of style”, no proven results & readers know it

“We abandon students after they register”

Large population of students who are working part-time to full time; we are not doing anything to help them manage their education, and to focus on learning (focused students are successful, lots of time to study is not correlated to success as is focused study)

Hybrid classes might be a method for addressing the support issues

Where is the student study time in our compressed calendar?

Do we need course redesign to deal with this?

Certain departments opposed to compressed scheduling acknowledge that their students are incapable of performing according to the expectation that they will study 2 hrs outside class for each hour of lecture (or simply will not study independently)(is that a remedial student preparation issue, or a cultural ‘focus’ issue that we simply are enabling?)

? “Enrollment gap”

Research needed - what is happening to the “casual students” that we let in under current policies?

Student Support Services

... can be costly in terms of personnel - Title V readers must be convinced it will be institutionalized;

ED monitors and readers are well aware of too many instances of grand ideas failing when the grant $$ disappear

(… just look at Gavilan’s past Title V & prior Title III for layoffs)

Create a cohort that is full-time, eligible for financial aid; and move them thru transfer completion fast; demand student commitment and reciprocate with guarantees

Establish a system that rewards students for engaging full-time

Guarantee transfer completion in time-certain

Need for dedicated counselor (combine with research, data tracking skills)(use TRIO database) ? Must show the institutionalization commitment

Transfer Institute example - cohort goal is 50 - what is the success & persistence evidence?

“we have pretty good basic skills support services for the basic skills cohort, but this is lacking for the next level up (ie, 250 level)”

Santa Monica & Chaffey models cited (‘transfer is a moral issue’)

LifeMap is a student's guide to figuring out "what to do when" in order to complete their career and education goals. (This was begun as a a Title III-V project) ... LifeMap

Transition to college

Summer Bridge programs

TRIO-like proven strategies & outcomes (Federal expection is 6 semesters to complete; transfer or graduate)

Gavilan Learning Communities - what is the research evidence after 5 yrs? What is the incentive for either students or faculty?

Pasadena model

First Year Experience model - FYE

Canada College Title V example - Learning Communities project found a need for significantly more counselor time

Emerging scholars’ concept

Active Learning concepts

Power of Place (?)

Supplemental Instruction (SI)

(learning results are gained w/o huge extra costs or personnel commitments) (but Title V readers must be convinced it will be institutionalized)

... university style SI doesn’t work well at community colleges because the student mentors turnover is too high - is there a solution to this? Perhaps hiring already transferred students still living in our community? Or grad student interns?

The DSPS model with 2 professional Tutors is effective (also see Chaffey)

Curriculum Expansion & Development

Grow the Allied Health programs

great jobs
great community image
career ladder concepts
engaged cohorts
“pre-med” emphasis
Gerontology program development

Model cohort success strategies for Science-Technology-Engineering-Math ( STEM)