Winter 2013 Research and Planning Commission Meeting Notes
Wenatchee Valley College
March 27th-29th, 2013
Day: 3-27-13 Pre-Meeting Sessions called to order at 2:00 PM by President Wilma Dulin
SAI Workshop – SBCTC Policy Research Associate Darby Kaikkonen walked through several queries in
the revised SAI database. This helped attendees better understand the mechanics behind the revised SAI
metrics as well as how SAI point totals are determined. Darby also demonstrated how to determine if
your college was not getting as many points as it should be. Attendees were encouraged to explore their
own revised SAI database using her queries so they could see if they were losing points. Some attendees
mentioned coding issues at their college that may cause them to not get as many points as they should.
MRTE Workshop – SBCTC Research and Data Manager Carmen McKenzie led a workshop for using MRTE
data to track how former community college students perform in four year institutions. Carmen
demonstrated how to isolate a specific cohort of students at a community college then track how they
perform in a specific class at the 4 year level. There was also some discussion regarding the appropriate
use of MRTE data, differences between MRTE coding and data warehouse coding, that Central
Washington University’s data soon being available, and what resources are available to assist IR staff in
using MRTE data.
Notes for March
2013 Workshop.docx
Day: 3-28-13
The RPC meeting was called to order at 8:30 AM.
State Board Update:
SBCTC Director of Research and Analysis David Prince updated attendees on the activities of the
Washington state legislature that impact higher ed. There is a general theme that any new money for
higher ed will be tied to an accountability measure of some kind. The legislature has focused a lot on the
SAI system – how it determines how much money a college is awarded, the history of it in the state
system, and how it will be used in the future. Many national experts on accountability in higher ed have
spoken to the legislature in part to help reinforce the principles SAI is based on.
Legislature Handout Legislature Handout State Board Update
SB Update.pdf
SB Update 2.pdf
Agenda.pdf
SBCTC representatives Darby Kaikkonen and Maureen Bryant spoke about the implementation of the
revised SAI metrics. There exists a need for colleges to become familiar with the revised metrics. Several
colleges are using some part of SAI as a core theme indicator. Presidents use SAI to compare their
college to other colleges. Revised SAI data will go back to 2006. In spite of revisions to SAI, the focus on
the outcome of getting students through college has always been the focus. The new SAI is more
complicated than the previous version but there is still a lot of effort to make how it works as
transparent as possible. There was some discussion around the fact that a “D” grade can result in a
transition point for a pre-college student in SAI but not be counted as a transition at the college level.
SBCTC Policy Research Associate Tina Bloomer talked about the next rounds of meetings with
commissions for SAI. They want to engage the Instruction Commission a little more. There seems to be a
lack of awareness regarding SAI and this could be a result of the small % of a college’s overall funding
that is determined by SAI. Most commissions seem to like the model but not the idea of using it for
funding. IR staff at system colleges could help build awareness of SAI. Tina wanted attendees to forward
her their suggestions for tailoring the next rounds of SAI meetings to each commission, council, or
group.
SAI SB Handout.pdf
The data warehouse will not be discontinued once CTC-link is completed.
The recent public information requests were discussed. The public information request related to the
distance education study has been broad and unclear in what information is being requested. The advice
given to IR staff by their AG has differed across colleges so no one is really sure how to respond. The AGs
will likely meet soon to decide how system colleges should respond to this request.
David updated attendees on the redoing of the Role of Transfer Report and Transfer Feedback Reports.
The Role of Transfer Report will shed some light on how much community colleges contribute to
Bachelor’s. The Transfer Feedback Reports could be a source of a common benchmark. The ERDC wants
feedback on how a transfer student should be defined.
Transfer Study
Handout.pdf
David also indicated that there is a study underway on the impact on student outcomes associated with
not awarding students a state need grant that they qualify for. Fewer state need grants are being given
and the students that get denied are more likely to be community college students.
WACTC Update:
Jean Hernandez updated RPC with regards to the activities of WACTC. She noted there will likely be
fewer audits due to the state budget situation. Colleges used to be able to decide if international
students should be counted as contract or state funded. There is some discussion about why colleges
can’t do that anymore. There is also some focus on competency based learning.
Benchmarking Workshop:
RPC members Wendy Hall, Tonya Benton, Jim Mulik, and Valerie Kirkwood led a workshop on the
practice of Benchmarking success. The workshop provided attendees several opportunities to learn
about tools and methods that can be used to benchmark success at their college. The handouts are
below:
Benchmarking
Agenda.pdf
Bench Marking
Handout.pdf
Benchmarking
Handout YVCC.pdf
Benchmarking
Benchmarking
Handout YVCC2.pdf Handout YVCC3.pdf
Bench marking
Handout 2.pdf
ERDC Update:
Katie Weaver Randall updated RPC on the progress of the P-20 data warehouse. This data warehouse
will use some SBCTC data. The logistics of getting access to this data and completing the data matching
process can be pretty complicated. The ERDC’s data share agreement is on their website and describes
the different levels of access data requesters can have.
George Hough oriented RPC members to the ERDC website and what kind of data is available there. The
reports on high schools are “banded.” This means that percentages are reported as ranges in order to
protect the privacy of the students that percentage is based on. The smaller the number of students a
percentage is based on, the wider the reported percentage range is.
Handouts Included:
The Power Point presentation – 2013-03-28_RPC.pptx (just FYI)
2013-03-28_RPC.ppt
x
The SBCTC Data Readiness document that ERDC created based on discussions with SBCTC. This
document only contains the fields from the different SBCTC tables that ERDC is not bringing into the P20
DW. (questions or comments about this document should be directed them to Katie Weaver Randall –
Katie.weaver-randall@ofm.wa.gov
SBCTC Data
Readiness - Excluded elements.xlsx
The Excel table that allows each CTC to see which high school grads are enrolling at their CTC. –
Table1_College 2004-05 2009-10.xlsx. Please read the “READ ME” contained in the file prior to using
this file.
Table1_College_200
4-05_2009-10_April_2013.xlsx
The ERDC request form as well as a link to the ERDC webpage with additional information about making
a request - http://www.erdc.wa.gov/data/
Copy of
ERDC_RequestForm.xlsx
The link to the P20 for K12 reports - http://erdcdata.wa.gov/
Business Meeting 3-29-13
The Fall 2012 RPC Meeting Minutes were approved at the start of the meeting.
Roll call for winter
Roll Call for 2013
Winter RPC Business Meeting.xlsx
Treasurer’s Report- Starr Bernhardt presented the Treasurer’s report. Revenue for the Winter
RPC Meeting was $4,500 with 60 people attending. Food services for the Winter Meeting were $2,208.
One travel grant of $100 was awarded for this meeting. Total revenues increased by $1,791 at the
conclusion of the Winter Meeting. There are $8,945 dollars in total RPC revenue right now.
President’s report- President Wilma Dulin updated members on items such as the new fields on
registration form for LGBT students, Title 9 news, Davis Jenkins’ work in the area of best practices, state
need grant study, a possible increase in nursing degree requirements, next year’s best practices
conference (best practices examples need to be supported by evidence, so IR staff may be busy
providing this evidence), NWCCU wanting to be updated about changes however the number of updates
from colleges they are requesting may be too much of a burden for colleges to fulfill, and WACTC being
very pleased with the RPC IT survey results.
Liaison appointments – Wilma asked people to volunteer to be RPC reps to other state commissions.
Only those with the necessary expertise for a particular state commission should volunteer. There will
be traveling requirements and your college will have to pay for it so closeness to meeting locations is
important. Reps don’t have to be at every meeting or even attend the entire meeting.
Wilma announced that Joe Montgomery will chair a committee to manage research requests made of
RPC. This committee will help insure that our work as a commission remains in line our responsibilities
to ed services, that we don’t get overwhelmed with research requests, and that we don’t duplicate
research already completed by the state board or the ERDC.
Wilma also indicated that there could be a potential bylaw revision in the coming months. This revision
will clarify when incoming RPC officers officially step into their roles on RPC exec.
Liaison and representative reports
The data governance committee report was given by co-chairs Susan Maxwell and Carmen
McKenzie. There are 2 members from each commission on this committee. This committee has been
going around the state CTC system talking about data governance and what their group does. Their first
meeting as a group was to explore how they would function and to work on charter of guiding principles
and decision matrix.
Mark Macias and Russ Beard gave the ITC report. Mark needs to be replaced as the liaison to
ITC. ITC meets every other month. There is a lot of talk about ctclink in ITC. Russ recommended that RPC
make ctclink a permanent item on meeting agendas. There is a lot of talk regarding building templates
to replace services that ERP won’t address. The TFS site is still up but there is a group that is working on
replacing it. The replacement could be SharePoint Online. This service is free and every college gets free
access as long as they have a windows account.
Tonya Benton reported on the LGBT Taskforce. Their goal is still to allow students to identify
their sexual orientation on college registration forms. These questions will be added at system colleges
over the 2013-14 data year. The task force is developing a communication and development toolkit for
colleges to use when they are ready to implement these questions.
Tonya Benton also updated RPC on PNAIRP’s activities. The fall PNAIRP conference will be Nov
6-8 at Victoria BC. Tonya explained what PNAIRP is for new comers. The Theme for the upcoming
conference is “Ready Set Action / Student Engagement & Student Success.” PNAIRP is still looking for
proposals. Poster sessions could possibly be offered. Tonya encouraged meeting attendees to join the
PNAIRP listserv page. They will also be looking for a new VP soon. This could be an excellent leadership
development opportunity.
Tina Bloomer, John Lederer, and Summer Kenesson gave updates on the Short Term
Certificate Taskforce. This taskforce’s purpose is to decide what criteria help determine whether or not
a short term certificate is meaningful. They did lit reviews, looked at employment outcomes, and
whether or not a certificate resulted in students coming back for further credentials. IC needs to
approve what they decided before it can be widely shared within RPC.
Committee Reports
Accountability- Chair Maureen Pettit updated RPC members. Their work focuses on 2 things –
1) Complete one page overviews of accountability systems that are currently out there. This would
include systems such as the VFA, GMAP etc. The ultimate goal is to post these one pages overviews as a
resource on the RPC page of the SBCTC website. 2) For the second item of focus they are looking at
information on best practices/processes for presidents. They would possibly use Tacoma as a case study
for documenting best practices that successful colleges follow.
Accountability
Committee Meeting Minutes - March 2013.docx
Accreditation- Chair Jim Mulik updated RPC members. Their current focus is on collecting core
themes, indicators, mission statement etc. from all the colleges. Currently, this committee has gathered
links to where each system college posted these materials on their home pages. All of these links are
currently on a web page hosted by Whatcom Community College. Jim also suggested that this resource
be posted on the RPC page of the state board’s website. Meeting attendees raised no serious concerns
or objection to this suggestion nor did they seem concerned about having all their information linked to.
Other committee business included possibly facilitating a discussion around mission fulfillment
definitions from different colleges, interpretation of NWCCU standards for accreditation, and holding
accreditation production demonstrations at future RPC meetings.
Accreditation
Committee Report 28 March 2013 at Wenatchee - final notes.docx
Communication - Chair Chris Johnson updated RPC members. Chris commended those who had
helping keeping RPC members in the loop with pertinent news by forwarding news articles to the
listserv. The committee is considering work in several directions such as clarifying the process for adding
people to the researchers listserv list, developing a RPC logo, developing targeted trainings for the
different types of members of RPC, as well as other directions related exploring the training needs of
RPC members.
Communication
Committee Minutes.docx
Data Mart- Chair Mark Macias updated RPC members. Mark indicated that the ODS project is
not dead. They are currently not focused on the ODS since standardized data is not available to
everyone and technology across colleges is uneven. The recent RPC-IT survey of tech was part of work
plan for year. They will also do a survey on common reporting and analytics needs. Ideally, they will
complete this before the spring RPC meeting in June. Professional development to bring everyone up to
a minimum level on SQL proficiency was also suggested.
Data Mart Committee
Report Winter 2013 Final.docx
Data Stewards- Chair Cynthia Requa and Vice-Chair Hal Royaltey updated RPC members.
Committee work involved a project dealing with how to form IPEDs cohorts. Another focus area involves
data quality measures. There are also a lot of data elements that RPC members aren’t aware of. The
Data Stewards will be trying to get this knowledge from other data stewards groups outside of RPC. and
bring up knowledge on data elements RPC people don’t often work with. So we can all speak for
knowledgeably.
DataStewards_4-4-2
013.Final.docx
NEW BUSINESS –
Elections updates – the offices of president elect and secretary will be voted on before the Spring RPC
meeting in June. Nominations have been made and will be announced shortly.
The 2013-14 Work Plan will be put together over the rest of the academic year so Chris Johnson, the
incoming RPC president, can take it to the president’s retreat in July.
The Spring Conference will be held at Bates Technical College. RPC exec is working on putting together a
conference schedule. The format will likely be the same as the Winter 2013 conference. The focus area
of this meeting has not been decided.
The Winter 2013 RPC meeting was adjourned at 11:45