Northwest Commission on College and Universities (NWCCU)
Annual Update for WSQA
Academic Year 2014-2015
Due November 6, 2015
College Name:
Seattle Central College
Contact Person:
Wai-Fong Lee, Interim VP for Instruction
Contact Phone:
206.934.4062
Contact email:
wai-fong.lee@seattlecolleges.edu
Accreditation recommendations to the College
and year of recommendation
2012 Comprehensive Self-Evaluation Visit:
1. While Seattle Central Community College has
developed new planning and assessment
approaches, these do not appear to be fully
implemented nor did the evaluation
committee find strong evidence that they are
completely integrated into the decisionmaking and resource allocation processes. The
evaluation committee recommends that the
College fully implement the new planning and
assessment systems and that those systems be
meaningfully integrated into the decisionmaking and resource allocation processes.
Actions taken by the college to address
recommendations
1. Starting winter 2014, as part of the annual
strategic planning process, all departments
are required to submit their “strategic action
plans” for the following academic year. In
spring quarter, all department budget
requests must include relevant strategic
actions plans as an integrated part of the
budget request process. The strategic action
plan template includes the following items:
 Program/performance goals/objectives.
 Analysis and use of results from last year.
 Alignment of budget requests with specific
objectives of core themes/college-wide
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Improvement results
The improvement results are well reflected in
the outcomes of the Mid-Cycle Evaluation
Visit in April 2015. In its July 21, 2015 letter,
NWCCU informed the college that the spring
2015 MCE report has been expanded to
address the 2012 recommendations 1, 3, and
4 and the 2013 recommendations 1 and 2.
1. Expectation of this recommendation has
been met.
strategic plan/IT Strategic Plan, and
college priorities & directions for next
academic year.
 Approach and activities with timeline.
 Desired outcomes, evaluation methods,
and indicators.
2. SCCC has spent considerable effort in
identifying appropriate, meaningful and
sustainable objectives and indicators.
However, in several areas, the indicators
appear to reflect easily obtainable, rather than
meaningful and sufficient measures of
achievement for the core themes. The
committee recommends that the College
carefully reconsider, realign, and where
necessary, re-identify indicators that provide
more meaningful measures of the fulfillment
of the core themes and mission.
2. The core theme teams revised the indicators
of achievement as required for Standard 1,
and the Revised Standard One was enclosed
as an appendix to the 2015 Mid-Cycle
Evaluation Report.
2. See 2013 recommendation no. 2.
3. Although SCCC has identified general
education student learning outcomes, the
committee could not find a required
mechanism that ensures that appropriate
verifiable general education student learning
outcomes are incorporated and assessed
within each program.
3. The college created a process to collect
assessment data of course, program, and
college-wide student learning outcomes for
analyses. In the 2015 Mid-Cycle Evaluation
Report, the learning outcome assessment
results of 5 transfer disciplines and 2
workforce programs were used to
demonstrate the achievements and
alignments of course and program level
learning outcomes to the general education
student learning outcomes.
3. Expectation of this recommendation has
been met.
4. The committee recommends that the College
review its resource allocation to ensure
4. A full-time tenure-track faculty was hired in
winter 2014 for the Applied Behavioral
4. Expectation of this recommendation has
been met.
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adequate support for the Applied
Baccalaureate in Behavioral Science. The
College should also review policies and
procedures to involve teaching faculty in all
appropriate decisions associated with the
degree.
Science (ABS) program, and additional
funding has been provided to fund two
cohorts of the program each year. Full- and
part-time faculty are highly involved in
decisions regarding curriculum improvement
and course offerings.
2013 Year One Self-Evaluation:
1. The evaluation committee recommends that
SCCC continue its comprehensive work to
create a clear statement of mission fulfillment
related to acceptable thresholds.
1. The college established a new approach in
assessing the achievement of the core
themes and extent of mission fulfillment in
the 2014-15 Annual Core Theme Progress
Report, which was an appendix to the 2015
Mid-Cycle Evaluation Report.
1. Expectation of this recommendation has
been met.
2. The evaluation committee recommends that
SCCC continue the work it has undertaken to
refine core theme performance indicators
(Standard 1.B.2). Progress has been made but
significant work remains to:
 Look across the core themes to eliminate
redundancy of indicators and find a
common voice for descriptions of
indicators, objectives, and outcomes;
 Define terms clearly so that performance
indicators are measurable and can be
reliably assessed over time;
 Refine indicators that are designated to
assess “quality” to clearly establish if they
are measures of the quality of inputs or
the quality of outcomes.
2. The college refined and revised many of the
indicators of achievement in the Revised
Standard One which was included as an
appendix to the 2015 Mid-Cycle Evaluation
Report.
2. Expectation of this recommendation has
been met.
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