ATD Success Team April 13th meeting minutes
3:00 – 5 pm
SC 125 Meramec campus
ATD meeting started at 3:09 on 4/13/11
Donna Dare: We need to bring the good things to scale: we need to leverage our efforts for
the greatest number of people with the greatest amount of impact. We need the best thinkers
and implementers together to get to the next steps.
May 15th is just the beginning of a lot of steps that we are going to take as an institution. We
brought the strategy teams together, listened to their good ideas, and now we have to hammer
out a workplan—we are here in this room to think about how to do this. Questions will be
invited pre and post presentation.
John Cosgrove: faculty and staff survey.
Survey did not include input from physical facilitates staff—it did include adjuncts.
Approximately 775 faculty and staff responded to the survey this included 200-300 adjuncts.
Amanda White: analysis of written responses to the faculty and staff survey as well as the
analysis of the student surveys.
Questions?
Larry McDoniel: did you see anything that surprised you? Any contradictions?
Amanda: I was surprised that a lot of students really see faculty as a resource and building
relationships with faculty as being incredibly important. There were some responses about
student success that had to do with giving them more time to do non-academic things: club
meetings in the middle of the day, for example - more related to student engagement than
student success.
Donna: What you don’t see in qualitative analysis are all of the comments. What you need to
know is that over 350 respondents took the time to write extensive commentary. I was
overwhelmed by the responses.
Cindy Hess: how many respondents?
Amanda: about 350 written comments for the first question from the employee survey. The
student forum sample size: [Teresa] six forums with aprox. 30 in each—between 150-200.
Cindy: students selected how?
Teresa: SGA—I asked campus life managers to organize the groups for me. At Meramec and
FV, random students in the cafeteria were surveyed.
Teresa’s segue: This is why you are here. Here are the next three reports from the strategy
teams. I asked them to put together a 10 minute presentation based on the 12 hour sessions.
There will be 10 minutes of questions. This is the beginning of a long process. Intro: our first
team.
College success team:
Lillian Seese and Julie Copp - chairs
Julie presented first! - PowerPoint attached.
Q/a:
Andrea: wasn’t there a similar pilot a few years ago about COL 020?
Lillian: The NADE data showed success—it wasn’t a pilot, but it was part of the NADE selfstudy.
Why would students who only test into developmental math have a choice in which college
success course they can take?
Lillian: Around 1000 students fall into this category. Since they did not test into developmental
reading or English, they don’t seem to struggle as much.
Laura Sterman - Why leave out the reverse transfer students?
Lillian: Eventually we would love to have a college success course for students from four year
schools who do NOT come to us in good standing. We talked about a course for them along
with our students who are on academic probation. Part of the challenge was deciding who
would be involved from the get-go. We looked at the groups with the greatest challenges first.
Lillian’s presentation (the rest of the attached college success course powerpoint.)
Q/a
Pam: this is a curricular process, why governance?
Lillian: Because we want to make the course mandatory – we think it needs to go through the
governance process.
Pam: The big problem is the number of hours in degree programs. If it isn’t associated with
something people are pursuing—students just coming to take some courses—it gets tricky.
Lillian: We tried to address that. Some career programs might have in-house orientations.
Maybe curriculum will take care of it and governance won’t be involved.
Donna: Do we exempt certain programs? Most schools decided not to because those students
might transition into programs. Did you get a sense from your research about this?
Lillian: No. Schools were all over the board on this.
Ashok Agrawal: How many faculty and classrooms would be needed?
Lillian: hold on one moment. Let me get back to the presentation. We have some unknowns
that the implementation team needs to look at (1-3 credit course). If college success skills (3
credit hours) AND college success (3 credit hours) are both mandatory courses then we would
need 18.5 FTE faculty.
George Wasson: What credentials do we require for faculty?
Lillian: Masters degree and experience working with students
Cindy: What about me?
Lillian: Yes.
Cindy: So administrators could teach it?
Lillian: Assuming workload isn’t an issue.
Cindy: I have lots of time on my hands 
Lilian: We would need a million classrooms right up front  but, if students take this course,
they might take fewer other courses and things might balance out. The 1-3 hour debate was
huge. A 1 credit course could be offered more flexibly.
Cindy: How about online?
Lillian: Eventually.
Vernon Kays: There will be issues around how you accommodate scheduling—already a
challenge.
Lillian: That’s why I want a 1 hour course  but, there are good arguments for a 3 hour course.
That will be for the implementation team to figure out.
Q/a
Tom Cupples: Is there some research that informs the class cap of 22?
Lillian: We went by other ATD school testimony.
Tom: Was there a range?
Lillian: 20-25 generally
Cindy: You said that this would be fully implemented in fall 2014?
Lillian: Right.
Pam: Question for John Cosgrove: Help me understand how you can say that this particular
action caused student retention from fall to fall or caused them to be more successful in gate
keeping classes when there are so many other variables? Some of the “measurable” seem
difficult to prove cause and effect.
Lillian: We can take student feedback and ask what made the difference.
Pam: But that is based on self-measurement
Donna: This is a significant part of the ATD discussion. We know that fall to fall is 51%--if we
measure this and we are doing things consistently, the results may be indirect, but we are going
to filter the outcomes. The point that the coaches have said is look at what will have the most
benefit for the greatest number. The measurable goals have to be clear and consistent—
implementation must be consistent, too. We will look at fall to fall retention to hang our
anchor. This is the intervention we are selecting—there may be other variables.
Lillian: It was easier for us the last 4-5 years to measure the effects because of college
orientation for dev ed students because we had a group that took the course and a group that
did not. Those that did take the course returned at a higher rate and had higher GPAs. In that
case it was easier to measure the impact.
Pam: The reason I ask is because it is hard to determine the factor. How can you separate
causes?
Lillian: I think qualitative analysis is the key.
Vernon: All of the stuff we are looking at right now drives at developing academic capital.
There is some research on the Gates data that points to this—all of these things are working on
the development of academic capital from the theoretical perspective that students perform
better when they have that knowledge.
**end of college success course presentation***
Teresa: introducing Joanie Friend and the orientation strategy team presentation.
Joanie: PowerPoint presentation – see attached.
Q/a
Vernon: do we have a package in Banner to track student services?
Joanie: That’s for the implementation team to work out. There are scanning services, for
example. One of the unanswered questions is that Forest Park doesn’t have the experience yet
at this point.
Cindy: launch in fall 2012?
Joanie: Yes. To give Forest Park time to get an orientation experience up and running.
Tom: early alert system—a process? A new electronic system? A Blackboard enhancement?
Joanie: What we found was that so few faculty use Blackboard, we gave up on that idea. Yes, it
would be an electronic system so that the class roster shows up and the faculty member simply clicks
on the issue that triggers the email alert notification.
Tom: is this like the green sheet process? Is it an extension of that? If faculty aren’t using the
Blackboard system, without a mandate they won’t use anything else.
Joanie: Right. The implementation team will have to determine if that is going to be
mandatory. It may require a policy change.
Pam: This orientation would be before students take classes. How does the early alert flow
with the strategy?
Joanie: This creates a safety net to reinforce the student. It provides a checkup and
reinforcement of orientation lessons.
Pam: It wouldn’t be implemented for everybody. We only implement early alert for first time
students?
Joanie: No, we have to figure out the logistics. We have to decide if early alert is something
we want for everyone.
Collective group: “Yes.”
George: it seems like instead of focusing—we are shot gunning again. There are four, five, six
different things that we are pushing out here. I wonder are we taking ourselves away from our
focus, rather than bringing us into focus.
Teresa: That’s an excellent point. There is going to be some streamlining when we put the
work plan together.
Joanie: We may not take all of this on at first—we might phase it in. We need to look at each
thing like the call center as options.
George: I don’t want us to get overwhelmed. Are we going to overwhelm ourselves to do this
and this and this and this? I feel overwhelmed and I have a very simple job. I’m trying to say:
“let’s put something on the table and hit it—and hit it hard.”
Donna: We didn’t have a good operational definition that was consistent with orientation. We
got all of this stuff wrapped up in the discussion. That’s exactly what I would say as well—John
is contagious sitting next to you—focus on two things, you can’t do more than two things. We
need to focus and discuss things explicitly. Kay and Heather have told us that. This is our first
attempt to get it out there so you can help us refine it.
Dennis White: I went to a conference dealing with retention and several colleges were doing
“extended orientation”—orientation in the beginning and follow-up activities. Did your team
look at that?
Joanie: you are right. You can’t absorb it all in a 3 hour session. We looked at it as a process.
Hopefully the college success class and advising will pick up from us.
Teresa: next up: advising strategy team
Julie Massey - see attached PowerPoint
Q/a
Joe Worth: Were there ideas about how to incentivize academic advising in departments for
faculty? Faculty in art, dietetics, is, etc. On our campus (FV) advise their students because it is
meaningful for them. Part of what need to drill down on with implementing this is how can we
sell this to other departments? Next step: training so advisors don’t get frustrated fixing
mistakes.
Julie: We felt it was important to recognize the role faculty could have in advising. We didn’t
get into details.
Donna: There were some faculty who were recognized as doing advising on their campuses
now on the strategy team.
Tom: I want to piggyback on George’s earlier comments. There are lots of new things that first
time students have to do and I’m wondering if we are thinking of the long lines that students
stand in to do some of this. That’s a lot of time for students to be sent around and waiting—
can we utilize that time that they feel is unproductive in a more productive way? Of course,
many of them wait until the last minute, but can we leverage some of that time to do some of
this? Will students be so overwhelmed that we are just going to scare them off?
Julie: Our CREW process has helped with the lines in the advising office during peak
registration times. Part of the implementation team is to examine what can be put together
and streamlined for the students.
Teresa: 90+% of our NEW students complete the process a week or two before classes begin—
It is our RETURNING students who are registering at the last minute. We need to send the
message to our returning students—get things done early. We might not have long lines and
wasted energy.
Julie: An academic plan front-loads the students so that they need less and less as they go.
Cindy: Doesn’t Banner have an add-on where you put in the educational plan and the student
can’t enroll in anything not on the plan?
Teresa: Heather and Kay told us about such a system and students only have to go to advising
to register IF they are making a change to the plan!
Cindy: My former school did and it helped a great deal. I’m sure Banner has that capacity.
Donna: The interactive audit will help with that, too. Students will look at their entire
academic plan and be able to access it themselves all of the time. It will be an important
resource.
Cindy: Exactly. It eliminated a lot of lines at Craven.
Layla: How would you make advising mandatory?
Julie: That’s for the implementation team. You can put holds in Banner, for example.
Joe: Did the idea of caseload come up at all? Case load management?
Julie: It was mentioned. We also looked at advisor:student ratios. This can be addressed in the
implementation team when discussing mandatory advising. Since students can make
appointments – they could always make sure they see the same advisor each time they come
in.
Donna: The strategies were developed around “intrusive” and “intentional.” We focused on
how do we do advising processes differently to meet these standards.
Teresa: I want to thank Julie, as well as Lillian, Julie and Joanie! Here is Donna Dare who will
talk about what comes next!
Donna: I have two things that I want to say:
I’ve been here 6 years and I would be very surprised if people who have been here longer are
thinking: man, I’ve heard all of this before. I hear this every day. We keep talking, but we never
do anything. I hear it all the time.
We have taken a risk having this conversation. You have taken a risk. It is time to put some
institutional will and decision making behind this. When are we going to listen to what we are
telling ourselves? When are we going to act? It is time to stop talking and start doing. That’s
what you are here for. You are here to solve these problems. The plans will morph—we won’t
get it right the first time through, but we are going to take our best shot with your support.
ATD is not a strategy or initiative. It is about student success and that is the business of the
college. If we are doing that all the time, in every area of the college, then we are not doing our
job.
We are all rowing in the same direction---it is phenomenal.
Q/a
Joe: A suggestion: There should be a technology component to this. We need to make sure
that some of these ideas are technologically realistic.
Donna: Ralph Kudrak and John are looking at this. They’ve reconfigured the advisory council.
We know there are problems with technology support. We know that problems exist and TESS
has to support it.
Larry: I would like to discuss Amanda’s first slide: students look to faculty as a resource. What
I see as absolutely necessary is that we need a communication team to make sure that the
faculty know what will be created, provided, and accessible for students. Faculty need to keep
informed. This is a professional development issue. Faculty need to be advised on all of these
updates. Communication is going to be a key here.
Ashok: In the implementation stage, we may want to sit back and look at the students
differently: 1-college ready; 2-traditional high school students; 3-adults who do not know
anything about how college works; 4-working adults pursuing professional growth. When we
look at these implementation strategies, we should consider the different students.
Lisa Wilkinson: There is a concern about the redundancy of some of these plans, but this might
not be a bad thing from the student perspective.
Donna – the redundancy is intentional.
Meeting notes respectfully submitted by Angela Warfield