Research and Planning Commission
Spring 2015 Meeting
March 25-26-27, 2015
Lower Columbia College – Health and Science Building
Wednesday March 25
1:30
Registration – Health and Science Building HSB 123
2:00 – 4:00
Pre-conference workshops
SAI on Tableau: A Winning Combination – Victoria Ichungwa, Tacoma CC
A hands-on session on how to dashboard SAI points using Tableau. Intended for anyone that
would like to learn how to make college SAI data more interactive, and easy to access and use.
Tableau
W orksh op_2015.ppt
Tableau Roundtable – Hal Royaltey, Peninsula College and Joe Duggan, Edmonds CC
Roundtable is for experienced Tableau users to share examples, discuss problems and solutions.
4:00 – 5:00
Newcomers Session: Resources for those new to RPC and the SBCTC system
http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/education/RPC_MemberResources_V1.7October2014.doc
Thursday March 26
8:38am
RPC President Susan Murray opened the program, thanked Lower Columbia College RPC
team for hosting this meeting.
President Chris Bailey, Lower Columbia College, WACTC Tech Chair, welcomed RPC
RPC members introduced themselves
Data and Reporting: Moving from Legacy to PeopleSoft Barbara Martin, Project Director, ctcLink
Described experience working in leadership positions at various WA CTCs, including LCC. Overview –
team includes 35 people in Bellevue, Cyber has 50 people on site, and 20 in India. SBCTC people in
Olympia including Carmen’s team that ties it all together. Started in 2011. 1 yr project planning, 2nd year
selection process. Since then functional team – how to make PeopleSoft work for CTC needs. Issue is
global solutions across all colleges.
Have instituted daily 15-min scrums to get the work done, hard to spend time communicating versus
getting the work done. It is a high pressure environment.
FirstLink Go-Live Update:
Significant process to assess what is needed. Identified every item and task, assigned responsibilities and
timelines. Current thinking is that ctcLink work will be ready in July, so August 24 Go-Live date; chosen
to minimize disruption at the college. It is also the best date for Financial Aid. But will be disruptive, in
any case. It is unusual to choose single go-live date for all 28 modules. Have been working on technology
with colleges to make sure it will work for them.
Challenges that relate to the necessity of developing a global solution for a varied set colleges. E.g.,
faculty workload and payrolls are impacted by the differences embedded in the Collective Bargaining
Agreements across the system that must be accommodated.
Will conduct Disaster Recovery testing once performance testing is done. Agreements are in place,
system is designed.
Critical success factors – register students, collect tuition, award and disburse financial aid, process
payroll, purchase goods. Most attention needed on: collect tuition (related to accreditation requirement
for college-level financial audits); and Payroll processes.
Current Activities – Training for FirstLink (80 sessions in 5-week span) Just-in-time training will be
provided as it is more effective than training in advance with lag in using on-the-job. Insight: schedule of
training was intensive. There is much more training to be done.
CEMLIs (Configuration, Extension, Modification, Localization, and Integration). CEMLI testing: Cyber
development testing, ctcLink team testing, college testing. As of 3/25/15 of 216 CEMLIs, 64% in testing,
20% complete ready for “gold” environment. 16% testing not started.
Q: How do we know this is not Re-Hosting (5 years of effort but not successful)
A: User acceptance testing. Tests of discrete business components (eg register, bulk registration, award
grade) 1318 scripts, 2715 tests across the First Wave institutions. Tests are showing success.
clcLink – Activate Your Account (AYA)
Financial system – legacy system has transaction codes, which originated with punch-card systems, tell
the computer what to do with following data. PeopleSoft does not have transaction codes. There is no
published crosswalk. Must be back-created because OFM requires them.
Q: Tonya Benton? A: She is on leave; SBCTC will bring in technical reporting resource person.
Q: Go-live process? A: Takes more than a week. CEMLI for AYA is in testing (security). System integration
testing in process. Practice activating accounts will begin shortly. High risk to activate accounts while
system is in production. There is a sequence of data upload required. Colleges have some data needing
upload that is not in legacy system, that is also complex.
There will be a year between Go-Live for First Link and First Wave (Aug 2016 for First Wave). Year is
required to get the system thoroughly implemented before going to the next group.
Active Directory talks to PeopleSoft, but PS uses native tools to manage security. Uses name, birthdate,
SID; there is a crosswalk table for mapping multiple SIDs to single PS identifier for people who have e.g.
worked at multiple CTCs over time. There will be a login process to choose pass word, security question,
etc. Colleges need to work with students to verify accuracy of student name and birth dates.
ctcLink Training
Training website is continually updated. https://training.ctclink.sbctc.edu
Golden Gate Project Carmen McKenzie, SBCTC Director of Data Services
College access to data has been transitioned from ctcLink staff to Data Services staff. Data Services will
make data available to, e.g., campus level use, ODS.
At the February RPC/ITC meeting, shared a draft of discussion points identifying issues in ctcLink from
the IR perspective. Question was how IR would have access to all of the data generated in a non-
transformed form. Since then, Data Services has launched development of Golden Gate, which will
address many of these questions.
Update on job title: currently director of Data Services, having served roles in the Data & Research side.
Diagram 1. Golden Gate is Oracle replication software. Sits on top of high-powered hardware. It is a
system that is fast and powerful.
Golden Gate replicates the 3 main PS databases (every table). Colleges will have access to all of them.
Diagram 2: Golden Gate will allow creation of individual district databases. Any source can be put into
these databases (e.g., DW, MRTE+) These will be Oracle databases.
Connections to can be achieved via ODBC, can be pulled over to college SQL servers. SBCTC could push
data out as well.
Will require working out a security model. Also bandwidth limitations, hardware is fast, but what about
connection. SBCTC has hired contractor to implement.
Q about MRTE+ security issues, and whether integration would be workable.
Q: Each college will decide on how to pull/tap Golden Gate data? Timeliness will vary depending on
approach. A: SBCTC can push data to the colleges, not sure of whether all colleges have IT capacity
needed to receive those data.
Carmen has GG advisory committee. Includes ITC, RPC, state board members. Building on
ITC/RPC/SBCTC conversations previously about a system-wide ODS. Collaborative process is underway.
Issues include meta data, policies. This advisory group would work toward a system-level ODS to
facilitate collaborative reporting.
Q: Issues around capacity of data pipes between SBCTC vs colleges, as demand for data coincides with
demand for operational data. So, will there be a prioritization of registration traffic vs data traffic? A:
Will forward question to team.
Chris (GRCC) and Eva (Edmonds) have volunteered to help document tables.
Mapping to create DW and SBCTC Master Data Views has been done, and those tables will be prioritized
ahead of tables that are application-specific.
Quality Assurance reporting system (QARS) is a separate process that includes documentation, and so
some of that work will be applicable.
Q: Tableau and SSRS will be able to connect? A: Yes. Carmen would like to have Tableau dashboard on
top for SBCTC real-time view. This will enhance collaboration between colleges/SBCTC.
Q: What by June 1? A: Cyber and Mystics will set up PS to GG. Carmen’s team will develop the databases
colleges will tap/pull.
Q: Data Warehouse (DW)? A: Idea is to pull data from various sources that constitute DW and compose
into GG db. Eventually allow for upload directly of surveys that currently are sent out/collected via Excel.
External to GG, there will be a reporting layer on QARS database, including reports with edit-checking;
corrections then made in PS and replicated to GG.
Originally ctcLink Team was putting views on top of data to deal with FERPA, college-specificity of data
access.
14000 total tables; 7000 application specific, of other 7000, 3500 tables may not include EMPLID – e.g.,
program table, student attribute codes, etc. Those sorts of things could be sharable and allow for fewer
scripts to be written.
Any table with EMPLID or financial data must be restricted by college. Otherwise could be shared.
Q: Opening up sharing of data – where is the discussion? A: not formal yet, but no one is pushing back so
this is an opportunity to move the discussion forward.
Plan for QARS is to have ready for Go-Live. This will be a necessity for quality of data, especially since
there are so many changes in PS, e.g., how classes are built. In PS, key attributes such as funding source,
are handled differently (it is one of many attributes on a class, rather than a specific stand-alone field).
Golden Gate can allow for security restrictions on a table-by-table basis.
Letter from RPC, shared last time with ITC. Mike brought Carmen into the office upon receipt of the
letter, and asked that she make sure Golden Gate solves the problems identified.
A. GG is not a reporting solution as it does not have a reporting application included, but it does
provide colleges with accesss to the data for ad hoc querying and local college reporting solutions.
B. Writing back to the database is not addressed in Golden Gate because it is to be written back to PS.
C. After June 1, can look into options for enabling colleges to upload their own tables/data to their GG
database.
Extensive discussion about how the decisions were made for selection of tables and processes. Ability to
be transparent and share, even if we do not standardize.
State policy requires sensitive pieces of data be encrypted in GG. This would include SSN. Discussion: IT
is held responsible for security but they are focused on preventing breaches. There may be a need for
RPC data governance role to assure that the balance is in terms of IR reporting needs.
Discussion: Issues Document that was shared at winter RPC meeting
Susan Murray – Exec to revisit RPC issues document, update it with subsequent activities, especially GG
and the way it addresses RPC issues. Then document will be shared back out with ITC (meeting in April)
to try to keep advancing the dialog.
Carmen has 10 people on advisory committee, focus is currently on First Link. Includes RPC members
Kelly (Tacoma) Mark (Spokane District) and Chris Johnson. Possibly this would be similar in the future to
the Data Governance Committee with broader representation.
Q: Clarification about the issues document. It was put together to get the issues put together prior to
the ITC/RPC joint meeting. Discussion at the meeting. ITC president said it was good information, but no
feedback yet. Strategy was to identify common areas of interest across RPC/ITC, look for common
approach for advocating. In light of progress shown with respect to Golden Gate the tone is different.
Question about finalization? Idea is that the document would be shared as the recommendation on
behalf of Exec. But RPC members want to have a chance to weigh in on the letter. Members would have
preferred for all RPC members to see the letter in advance of sharing with ITC.
NEW TOPIC: CIP codes in PS
Federal CIP codes and locally defined CIP codes, which were developed many years ago to
supplement/fill in gaps in Federal CIP codes to reflect local tables.
Local CIPs address both courses and programs.
We will have limited course level local CIPs in PS; basic skills, workforce math and English. However, CIP
codes for programs will change to Federal CIPs. Colleges will be required to map any local CIP codes to
the Federal CIPs before conversion for their college.
Q: What about quarterly updates on Family status, Employment Status? LGBTQ is not yet set up to be
captured in PS, because the cost difference for putting on registration versus admission screen. Work
on this topic is ongoing.
1:00
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Panel discussion via ITV with Commission staff
NWCCU: Sandra Elman (SE), Pam Goad (PG), Les Steele (LS), Les Thornton (LT)
SE: Seeks clarification of purpose of this session
Wendy Hall: RPC – WA set up as commission by WACTC, and in part is charged with keeping presidents
abreast of changes and issues related to accreditation. We have an Accreditation Committee, and help
each other understand changes, processes and procedures. Idea is to help us to understand changes so
that we can help our system do a better job with the accreditation process.
SE: Hope that this will be a re-iteration of valuable information at the recent ALO workshop. Nothing like
redundancy and duplication to reduce complexity and uncertainty.
Discussion: NWCCU tracks individual program and site changes because inquiries from Dept of Ed are in
terms of individual programs and individual sites. Programs of 1 year or longer must be tracked as
unique changes, and cannot be bundled. Some inquiries are related to Title IV funding, NWCCU is
charged with tracking and reporting. Dept of Ed regulation on Substantive changes (ref: Dept Ed code
602.24)
Program deletion is subject to fees (ref: standard 2.d.4); commission has to track accommodations for
students whose program is deleted. Size, complexity, maturity, financial health, experience of the
institution are important factors. NWCCU looks at overall situation for that institution. Assures that all
elements are aligned, tracked for institution over time (ref: Substantive Change policy page 3).
There are 7 regional accrediting commissions, NWCCU believes it has lowest membership fees in US. Fee
schedule is based on what other commissions do, taking into account their membership fee schedule.
They endeavor to do things in fair, equitable way. NWCCU will be reviewing fee the structure in 2 years.
With respect to the problem of college’s needing to be responsive to employers, but also go through
NWCCU review for program open/closure, NWCCE sees a balancing act to fulfill obligations to DofE and
be responsible to institutions. Institutions need to be innovative, but must adhere to DofE regulations.
This question has been raised by the 7 regional accrediting commissions to Congress.
Re: Peer Evaluation Process. Q: How are peer evaluators trained/provided guidance for verifying
evidence? Evaluators receive institution self study, raise questions. A: At site, job is to verify what is
reported, primary task is to verify the institution’s presentation of itself.
Q: Is there an internal review for consistency across evaluation teams? A: Yes, reports are looked at to
see if the report addresses the standards, and so on. Prior to submission of report, evaluators send
reports to institutions to check errors of fact. For year 7, institutions have an opportunity to provide
response to the Commission to talk about any issues.
Jim Mulik: Impetus was that some college get commendations for the same activities other colleges
have gotten recommendations.
SE: One of the good things is that we all share information, can learn from each other and enable
institution to be the best they can be. Challenges and caveats with respect to comparisons. 1.
Accreditation is an art, not a science. Human beings are conducting reviews, not a financial audit. 2.
There are complexities and nuances underlying each accreditation review, so each review is different.
This is because of fundamental constructs of accreditation, which is that NWCCU nor other regional
commissions compare colleges. Evaluators do not compare institutions. They look at the degree to
which the college meets the standards. Basis of comparison is the time since the institutions most
recent prior comprehensive evaluation and year one or MCE. You can have same standard, one in
compliance one out of compliance, because of contextual factors, institutional progress, degree to
which institution may be meeting standard, holistic evaluation of institution. Compliance vs out of
compliance is not a place to look for comparisons.
LT: We are trying to norm processes but not taking things out of context.
LS: There is a large range of technology across the 160 institutions. Paper records are still possible, but
most institutions can provide electronic versions. Evaluation teams have been using DropBox to share
working documents during the course of the visit. Cautionary word, with respect to security; need to be
able to provide guest access.
SE: Logic model is an official product of NWCCU, but is not mandated. LT is working to produce
documents and materials to help colleges to demonstrate mission fulfillment.
Regarding the relationship of strategic planning and core themes, there was an effort to look at
accreditation process more holistically, less standard-by-standard. The logic model was an effort to
articulate that, show how standards fit that process. Mission, structure defined by standards 2-3,
evaluation 4, mission fulfillment 5. Question is not really about tying strategic planning to core themes;
in terms of accreditation, emphasis is on outcomes. Inputs/outputs are necessary to produce outcomes,
strategic planning is about how you attempt to achieve fulfillment of core themes.
Why have institutions had such a hard time dealing with outcomes? Part of the issue is with defining
quality, need to understand what you are trying to achieve. Trying to evaluate the entire institution, the
common outcome across all institutions is student learning. How best can we articulate student learning
in terms of the outcome? You need to make commitment to what you are trying to achieve, and what
dimension one is focusing on. Last training, talked about an algorithm representing student outcomes.
Graduation, student satisfaction, employer surveys. So planning and so on needs to be focused on the
achievement of those outcomes.
Regarding adding core themes- the definition of a core theme is that it is derived from the college
mission. Focus your work for accreditation on student learning outcomes and how that part of the
mission is being fulfilled, that will help address other issues such as presidential transitions and so on.
Some parts of the strategic plan are focused on inputs/infrastructure that are necessary conditions to
for mission fulfillment. There can be overlap, but the strategic plan and core theme plan are not one and
the same; strategic planning versus Student Learning Outcome (SLO) assessment.
The idea is that processes need to be “people independent” – student learning and SLO assessment,
mission fulfillment need to continue regardless of who is in place at the college. Accreditation efforts
need to be grassroots efforts, about student learning, mission fulfillment. Keep them ongoing regardless
of presidency. Accreditation is not episodic, the efforts need to be ongoing, grassroots and organic so
does not get set awry with presidential transitions.
Q: what advice does NWCCU have for RPC?
SE: Thank you for the question. In the spirit of collegiality, RPC members can attend workshops, attend
annual meetings. Write letters, call when needed. Work with colleagues who may be ALO. All
communications do not need to go through ALO, however.
LT: Look at the accreditation process as something that is supportive of institutional assessment. More
institutions are hiring IR staff to help them understand how well they are meeting their mission. RPC
experience identifying quality, how to measure it, information can be used to improve the institution.
LS: Helping NWCCU understand how IR are working on campuses. IR try to help faculty conduct
assessment as helpfully as possible with as little burden as possible, and also communicate about
student learning and what works. Bridging the gap between data collection, getting it out to the
academic programs so they can have analytical reflections and make changes.
PG: Not to try to do everything at once. Choose subset of indicators that are most meaningful in a given
cycle of evaluation, concentrate on doing that aspect well.
ITV ended 2:08pm
Post-ITV Discussion: Are there more materials that can be shared? Materials for ALO training are
recapitulation of NWCCU standards and policies that are on the website. Accreditation Committee will
provide access to available materials via the Researchers listserv.
RPC members need to support each other in developing common understanding and consistency. Other
accreditation commissions sponsor collective development of common definitions.
Several RPC members participated in the PNW Learning Consortium, convening aimed at developing
common understanding of the criteria. Focus is on student learning with institutional distinctiveness.
How to take micro data from program assessment, use it at an institutional level? On April 17th, a
discussion will be held on how student learning outcomes assessment rolls up to institutional
accreditation evaluations.
WACTC sent letter about the fees to NWCCU, who returned the letter because they only deal with
individual colleges. Issue is that CTCs will be disproportionately impacted by fees because CTCs make
majority of program changes versus 4 years.
Allocation Model Review Darby Kaikkonen (PPT provided separately)
Allocation problems were identified for correction in New Model. Note that $/FTE was the metric used
to evaluate the components of the model.
New Model – step 1: Set gross funding level
Step 2 – identify share for SAI
Step 3 – Set aside Minimum Operating Amount (MOA) ($2.85m/college)
Step 4 – Set District Enrollment targets
Takes FTEs from colleges that have been under-enrolled on 3-year average, share out
proportionally to colleges that have been over-enrolled. Under-enrolled, new target is actual 3year average. Over-enrolled, allocation is original target plus share of FTES contributed from
under-enrolled colleges.
Step 5 – Determine weighted enrollment share (accounts for high cost programs and focus on Basic
Education)
High priority/high cost (based on CIP codes on courses) and basic education will be weighted.
Using college actual FTE enrollment in those areas, assign weights, which will produce weighted total,
which is used to determine share of total FTES as %, and then calculated based on the total dollars in the
“access” funding.
Step 6 – Compile District Allocation. Subcommittees still working on definition of high priority/high cost
(CIP codes), and stop/loss rules.
Darby will share presentation slides. Dummy data will be used for illustration.
3:15
RPC Committee Meetings (see Friday business meeting notes for report-outs)
Friday March 27
8:30 State Board updates Darby Kaikkonen
HS transcript database. It is getting close, there are a couple of security items remaining. It will contain
HS transcript information for students who enrolled at each college, for 3 years-worth of HS graduates.
Q: Will this be a way to get Smarter Balanced scores? A: This database will be in arears, so may not be
timely enough.
Discussion: Actual implementation of Smarter Balanced is still in process with OSPI, current thinking is
that it will be similar to process used currently for students to present transcripts to school.
Enrollment counts. Presidents noticed in Allocation work that there is variation in enrollment counting
practices. Workgroup will be established with reps from SBCTC, IC, Student Svcs, Basic Skills Council,
RPC, WEC. Recommendations will go to Allocation taskforce by end of next year. Two or three RPC reps
will be requested by Jan Yoshiwara.
Points per student (PPS) value in SAI. PPS excludes some students because it is a ratio, do not want to
include populations of students who will by definition not earn points. Criteria are in the Data
Dictionary; State funded except intent codes J, K and L. Issue: there are students who are state funded
who are taking community ed courses, not readily identifiable by intent code. E.g., L code for some
colleges includes students generating points. Alternative is to use StuClass field Fee Pay Status, values 97
or 98 (Senior Citizen, Community Education), excluding students who are solely taking those courses,
regardless of intent. David Prince brought this proposal to Ed Services Committee yesterday, this fix
appears to be OK with them.
Based on last year, the example impact of the change will be highest on Spokane Falls (gain of ~$12,000
had the fix been in place last year), which will shift $1K here/there across other colleges since total
dollars available is a set amount.
Q: Were other codes were considered. E.g., FPS 99 (non-tuition)? A: yes, but several colleges showed
lots of students earning points in that FPS.
Q: When will that be implemented? A: This academic year. But will not be updating previously released
fall quarter results.
Discussion: Some colleges use the quarterly SAI data to identify e.g., transfer students who earned 45
college level credits, but not the SAI 45-credit point, to check on course taking patterns for advising.
AtD Schools. For 2011 cohort colleges, this is last year of grant. SBCTC has one more year of providing
evaluation support to College Spark. College Spark wants to do an “after” evaluation during 2016-2018,
including all WA colleges ever in AtD. Question of the value to AtD colleges of an evaluation. What
information would be useful to provide back to College Spark regarding the value of their investment?
Discussion: Colleges that have recently used a structured case study approach (e.g., Yakima Valley)
found it useful. Enables a qualitative view of what changed, what did not, where can we go at the
institutional change level. Things institutions learned about becoming data driven, understanding how
as an institution you create your own barriers to the change you want to see. Valuable to the institution,
but also nationally, illustrate that even if there is a model to follow, there are hidden pitfalls.
College Spark could have not only gain insight into individual institutional change, but looking across the
state at how things have changed for WA CTC students because of the high level of effort across state.
Generally, less quantitative, more qualitative would be more valuable to the colleges. The problem is
not that we lack data, it is how to use data to support change at the institutional level. Data supported
inquiry is most meaningful for creating change, and would enable conversations across system.
Discussion of factors affecting performance data, such as interplay between externally-induced
enrollment challenges and student success practices that impact enrollments. Some schools have seen
shift to student population that is harder to serve, so maintaining same institution level performance is
actually a big effort and benefit. Issues of completion rates are affected by improved economy.
Value is less student outcomes within 4 years, but reflected in shifts in institutional culture, how to
create and sustain institutional changes. There will likely be variation across the colleges as to their level
of interest in participation, based on their experience in the initiative.
If College Spark pays for the evaluation in a way that minimizes the impact on the colleges, it might be
less onerous. Generally if the current evaluation team of Bob and Deena are involved, colleges might be
more favorably disposed to participate.
RPC Business meeting
Called to order by President Susan Murray at 9:21am
Roll – Member colleges present (26). Quorum met
Bellevue College
Big Bend Community College
Centralia College
Clark College
Clover Park Technical College
Community Colleges of Spokane
Edmonds Community College
Everett Community College
Grays Harbor College
Green River Community College
Lake Washington Institute of
Technology
Lower Columbia College
Olympic College
Peninsula College
Renton Technical College
Seattle Central College
Shoreline Community College
Skagit Valley College
South Puget Sound Community
College
Spokane Community College
Spokane Falls Community College
Tacoma Community College
Walla Walla Community College
Wenatchee Valley College
Yakima Valley Community College
Columbia Basin College
Highline College
North Seattle College
Pierce College
South Seattle College
Whatcom Community College
Member colleges not present (9)
Bates Technical College
Bellingham Technical College
Cascadia Community College
Actions:
Motion and second to approve minutes from Winter meeting as updated with RPC member corrections
provided to the secretary as described. Approved by unanimous voice vote.
Election certified. Results: 2015-16 officers joining Exec (details below)
President-elect: Sheila Delquadri
Secretary Bayta Maring
Meeting content:
Presidents update. Susan Murray
Ed Services Committee (EdSvc). Susan attended most meetings, Wendy Hall attended one. Next meeting
will be at LCC, Wendy Hall will attend. Susan will attend final 2 meetings. Areas of focus: monitoring
legislation. Bills are still in process. No budget details yet.
Dual enrollment – multiple versions. EdSvc focused on clarification of Running Start (RS) vs College in the
HS, hope that RS in the HS would no longer count for enrollment. Current thought is that 4-yrs will have
a year or two to phase that out, but not finalized.
State Need Grants – still in process
BAS Programs. Presidents on EdSvc are interested in getting more information out to public/legislature
about BAS programs. SBCTC communications have developed 1-pager. Jan Yoshiwara has been talking
with universities to make sure that concerns are brought up and addressed in planning process.
Competency based degrees – Columbia Basin College (CBC) is lead of consortium. Barrier was reporting
and cost for NWCCU substantive change process. CBC proposal was approved recently by NWCCU but
timelines for others vary, so will not all launch at same time.
Reverse transfer. SBCTC is in process of looking at statewide agreement. Question of whether Reverse
Transfer can show up in SAI points (yes, possible)
Uniform application. Student Services and Instruction Commission talking about uniform application for
admission across CTC system. Workgroup will provide update in April.
“Best practices.” Presidents are interested, based on AtD, SAI, expectation performance will carry more
weight in the future, idea of being more systematic in sharing “best practices”, working across the
system to use that information when budget request to Legislature is built. Not clear which committee
(Strategic Visioning, Ed Services) will lead but there will be a work group. The RPC Excellent Practices
document, being shared with other commissions and part of the state level conversations.
Treasurers report Starr Bernhardt
Final numbers to follow once all expenses have been paid.
Winter – Joint with ITC, who handled all registration fee collection and paid the meeting expenses. RPC
provided two travel vouchers ($400 total).
Spring – 42 attendees. $2600 estimated expenses, ending balance $13,771
Committee Reports
Performance and Outcomes. Maureen Pettitt
Worked on the committee charge, will get presence on the website. List of performance and quality
documents, committee will review and update, plan to complete before the fall meeting.
Kelley will send short survey that asks colleges to check boxes of which they are participating in.
Excellent practices draft was finished in fall 2014. Have wanted to apply rubric to live programs. Pilot at
Tacoma, identified potential changes; want to expand to test against other college initiatives. Send
comments on how rubric works. Idea is that it will not take long to do the pilot test of the rubric, but
revisions will help.
Data Quality & Technology Hal Royaltey
Last meeting discussed LGBTQ data. Variation in practices for access across colleges. Two problems:
access, and how data are treated. Access is not under RPC purview, but treatment of data needs to be
considered in a more general manner. It seems to overlap with work of Ethics group, so there is
opportunity for collaborative work.
Committee developed formal leadership plan. Chair past, Chair, Chair-elect. Hal will be Chair past. Sheila
was to be Chair, but ended up as RPC presidential candidate, cannot do both. There will be an email
ballot to fill slots.
Projects in the works: IPEDS data, DW 2.0 (DW 2.x?) will have more of a PS flavor as more schools move
on to PS. Joe has done a lot of work on distilling Carmen’s DW 2.0 work into a 1-pager of questions.
Current focus is derived fields – e.g., Intent, Kind of Student. Proposed Kind of Student indicator bit field.
Some colleges use solely intent, others intent+course taking behavior. Issue of BAS students, where they
are both separate, and in workforce. In holding pattern with leadership and Golden Gate. Expect to get a
lot of work done over summer.
Communications. Starr Bernhardt
Goals for upcoming year. Need to update RPC expertise spreadsheet as there has been a lot of change in
duties and expertise. Talking with Exec about combining survey with RPC feedback on this meeting.
Will continue to maintain and update New Member handbook. Currently data resource heavy, may
expand. Will continue New Member orientation.
Hope to have Sharepoint site up by end of 2014-2015 academic year. Post documents, IR discussion
board. Logistics of permissions.
Method for requesting professional development funds is under development, proposed form is with
Exec.
Accreditation Jim Mulik
Debriefed about NWCCU ITV and unanswered questions. Talked about paper Patty James shared on
possible Congressional changes to accreditation framework. Discussed outcome of the CCSF lawsuit.
Looked at materials that NWCCU shared at the training in March. The Year 7 training included a list of
required documents. There are many policies on the list, and colleges may not have policies in place;
colleges may need to take action to address gaps. Reviewed Logic model, and similar materials NWCCU
has released that are optional for use. Discussed committee charge–draft will be circulated and provided
to the RPC structure and guidelines work group.
Approval of Winter meeting minutes.
Motion and second to approve minutes from Winter meeting as updated with RPC member corrections
provided to the secretary. Approved by unanimous voice vote.
Taskforce updates.
SBCTC Math Taskforce Wendy Hall (document sent out to Researchers listserv)
Final draft went to State Board. Quoting from that document: The key challenge of this plan is to scale
up the work that’s already been done, and to launch a statewide initiative that engages every CTC in
system-wide work to improve math achievement, and thereby improve the percentage of students who
successfully complete certificate and degree programs.
Six major efforts comprise the plan:
I.
Define and promote college level math pathways tailored to students’ academic majors and/or
professional and technical program requirements, aligning pre-college curriculum to those pathways
II.
Improve and expand advising to help students choose math pathways that support their goals, and
leave the door open for opportunities to achieve even higher goals.
III.
Extend math reforms to smooth the path from professional and technical programs to applied
baccalaureate programs.
IV.
Engage college and university faculty and staff in sustained work to bring improvements in math
success to scale.
V.
Expand the MESA program.
VI.
Clearly define and use metrics for measuring progress.
Q What is plan for these recommendations?
A: Was initially for Legislative budget ask. Next action steps are unclear. Need for funding and also
flexibility colleges already showing improved outcomes, but not for colleges where that has not
happened. Idea is that there will need to be mechanism to bring colleges onboard. This was initiated by
State Board members, so this will likely maintain effort.
DGC.docx
Data Governance Committee Taskforce (Susan Maxwell)
See embedded document.There is a Data Governance web page on the SBCTC website,
(http://www.sbctc.ctc.edu/college/d_data-governance.aspx), with sign-up for data alerts.
Intent Descriptions Workgroup (starting up in April), registrars, RPC, financial aid, instruction, wec, ece,
sbctc. Hal and Darby. System level. Assure that titles for intent codes are consistent and meaning behind
codes is clear and used consistently across system.
Office of Chief Information Officer Policy 141.10- Securing Information Technology Assets Standards.
Typically, there is not a data manager at colleges addressing quality, security. State is asking review of
data classification (4 categories – public, sensitive, confidential, confidential with special handling). How
do we insure proper management. E.g, SSN is Cat 4, needs to be encrypted. Question of what is public. A
data governance task is to sort data into these categories.
Building Bridges Technology conference Discussion: RPC members who attended found good
information there, but not necessarily IR-specific. Planning committee solicited input, IT were more
strongly motivated to engage, so had more IT focus.
Brought a broad variety of participants. Good chance to network and talk about issues for which there is
not another venue to discuss. Several good presentations about approaches to reporting, good value
and information to share.
Data Governance/Security theme will be an area of focus for the 2016 BBT meeting.
Carmen asked what kinds of topics around data governance that would be good for the conference?
Data governance, we are all playing catch-up, we need to develop and share effective practices.
Suggestion: frame the conference as discussion about data as an asset, versus “data governance” which
people are less interested in (semantic choice).
Discussion. How to engage stakeholders in importance/necessity of these topics; possibly awareness has
increased given news that Maricopa had data issue that cost school net $25M, based on levels of access,
how access is cut off when people leave (disgruntled employees)
Discussion: People need to understand what data governance is, difference between state and campus
level issues. Campus data governance groups are needed. ctcLink puts urgency since PS requires roles
and access to be defined, will result in some people having more limited access than current system.
Data governance structure needs to be clear so as to address work-arounds. IR has important role in
data classification process.
Discussion: Security awareness and skill levels are low. E.g., colleges need a secure FTP site.
Q: Why should RPC take on data governance vs IT? IR are extracting data, emailing student information
to others, and see where the data reside. Can help identify security gaps, who should have access. E.g,
discussion about LGBTQ information: who should have that information, who needs it?
Smarter Balanced Taskforce (Angie Rogers)
No news, as there was no feedback since RPC meeting in February from RPC about documents sent out
from Bill Moore. She will send again, along with questions raised at Dec 2014 workgroup. Currently, the
commissions are looking over those materials and providing feedback.
PNAIRP (Summer Kenesson)
Website updated – will meet in Portland Wed-Fri Nov 4-6, 2015
The Association (Cynthia Requa)
Leadership retreat April 12-15. With increased popularity, will need to set limit on participants per
college next year. Changes are being made to curriculum. Will share survey results.
Other topics:
RPC-related professional development and travel on official RPC business, when RPC members
represent RPC at commissions, workgroups. To reduce financial barriers to participation, a process is
under development to request RPC reimburse expenses to member college. Communications
committee produced draft request form, currently with Exec.
RPC requests of WACTC to have an RPC rep on Technology Committee. Strategic Visioning also
suggested. Rich Cummins from CBC was WACTC RPC liaison, but he has not been available to attend any
RPC meetings this year. The liaison position will turn over in July.
Election results (29 colleges voted, 6 did not vote)
Secretary announced and certified the nominees that received the majority of votes have been elected.
Wendy Hall (current president-elect) will become President in 2015-2016.
President-elect : 20 votes for Sheila Delquadri, (Yakima Valley Community College); 9 votes for Kristy
Anderson (Grays Harbor College)
Secretary: 16 votes for Bayta Maring, (Shoreline Community College); 13 votes for Summer Kenesson
(Olympic College).
Other:
Meeting planning. Appreciation for information received from members willing to host. Previously
meetings focused on professional development, lately have shifted to business of being a commission.
Question of how much of people’s time is asked, and value for that time.
Work Plan updates Susan Murray
RPC work plan is based on the WACTC System Direction Goals, as they pertain to the Ed Services
Committee through which RPC reports. RPC work plan is based on RPC Committees develop strategies at
fall meeting. Last year, timing was off since Ed Services meeting did not happen until later.
Ed Services receives RPC work plan, approves and incorporates into their own work plan. RPC needs to
review work plan accomplishments to conclude year. Work plan is RPC opportunity to demonstrate why
RPC needs to be at the table. The work plan can be revised as needed next year.
System Direction Goal: Economic Demand
• Objective: Support the development of meaningful public data related to the value of a community
college education. We have not received requests for data. This item is about outside entities
requesting system level data. Discussion: Side Issue of developing protocols for providing access to
email lists for employees or students. Tacoma: treats as Public Information requests, and if for
research purposes, go through IRB.
System Direction Goal: Student success
• Objective: Support development of meaningful, accessible data related to educational attainment Project
from last year - WSSSC-MDSSC request for assistance with disaggregated data. Provided access to
AtD tools. Shanda and Darby will be presenting to their spring meeting about using data. Other issue
about Pacific Islander as distinct from Asian. Colleges need those data to create/assess programs, so
waiting for ctcLink may not be feasible.
• Objective: Develop meaningful benchmarking measures for SBCTC colleges’ use in accreditation and in
assessing performance in local, regional, state, and national contexts Benchmarking discussions will
carry forward, including recent RPC discussions about data for comparative purposes.’
• Objective: Support WACTC in understanding promising practices. Excellent practices work is
continuing. WACTC is interested in using this framework for identifying and promulgating excellent
practices for increasing student success.
System Direction Goal: Innovation
• Objective: Increase efficiency in data gathering, management, and analyses. RPC members have been
actively working on numerous areas noted in the strategy column (including IPEDS, benchmarking
tools; participation ctcLink work and data definitions; information sharing re: NWCCU).
Communications Committee has been building resources available on web. DQT has been working
on the items listed, although the work has been much more complex than is reflected in work plan.
• Objective: Develop shared data resources and protocols that help ensure that data is appropriately
defined, accessible, and replicable. Orientation for new members occurred on Wed, and suggestions
will be incorporated.
• Objective: Increase RPC member’s access and ability to use technology to support IR. Joint meeting
RPC/ITC occurred in February. Will be soliciting feedback, consider how to structure joint meetings
so that they are valuable. May expand focus beyond ITC to other groups. Still learning how to work
within the commission structure more effectively to benefit the system. Commissions are still siloed
and have distinct cultures. RPC is more inclusive and welcoming across roles at campuses.
Q: Can RPC change the RPC Committee structure for a year to be responsive to work plan for the year?.
A: Group that is working on guidelines and governance will come up with proposal and report at fall
meeting. Taskforce model, “solve and dissolve” for shorter term focus areas. Issue of aligning current
RPC committees to Ed Services goals for the year. Need for committees to carry on internal purposes
not always driven by annual WACTC agenda. Possibly 3 tiers: Committees – ongoing; Taskforces – short
term (a few months); Work groups – speak to WACTC priorities, shorter term (1-2 years)
Discussion: As a commission, RPC needs to serve the system. We are in a process of change, developing
a shared understanding, helping the system to understand the role and help the system to understand
how to best make use of RPC.
Members sang Happy birthday to Austin Davis.
Appreciation was expressed to Lower Columbia College team for excellent hosting of this meeting.
Adjourned at 11:27 a.m.