ATD Success Team March 23 meeting minutes
3 – 5 pm
TC 105/107 Florissant Valley campus
The meeting began with a welcome to everyone!
Then John Cosgrove gave a report on a survey created by IRP and sent to successful returning students
and successful non- returning students. (Enrollment management made some follow up phone calls to
some students who did not respond to the survey initially.) Here are some of the results:
New students Fall 2010, who did not return – 305 sample, 90 responded 30% rate.
Satisfaction with advising – almost 40% said they never saw an advisor N=56
Coursework difficulty – 39 said neither difficult or easy
Quality of Instruction – about 1/4 not happy with instruction, 3 out of 4 said it was fine
80% said transfer to another institution did not play a role in not returning, 2% said they did not return
because they achieved their short term goal. 58% said personal life had an impact on not returning. 38%
said personal lifestyle was biggest reason for not returning. 52% said they had plans to return to STLCC
for summer or fall 2011.
Returner survey – Sample of 1500, 342 responded (23%) 27% Never saw an advisor,
42% of students indicated that course work neither difficult nor easy. Overall satisfaction with instruction
- 77% Very or satisfied. 75% are likely to enroll the next fall.
Will conduct focus groups of Successful AA students from fall 09 and fall 10 – Keith and Terry Freeman
will help facilitate the focus groups and students will be paid for participation – hope to do in April.
Employee ATD survey went out today FT employees, but not physical plant employees (due to no
computer access). Faculty, staff and adjuncts received the survey.
Campus Based Team Reports –
Brainstorm role of campus based teams.
FP Andrea Nichols – future role of campus teams, they want to be updated on the process and progress.
They want to continue to be involved. Would like to integrate ATD strategies with professional
development. What worked - Stressed collaborative model, open forum, anyone could participate, your
feedback is important. Campus dissemination, hard to measure, sessions during service week gave
people ability to participate. Very low participation with adjunct faculty. Credibility issue with faculty,
will something really happen?
FV Sue Serns – Those who came to meetings seemed to get something from them. Want to see how
measures will be implemented, would like smaller dept focused groups to discuss the data, once the
three strategies are implemented, want more discussion. Felt the process was really fast.
MC Lisa Wilkinson – 3 meetings, dynamic discussions, those who came were engaged staff and faculty,
concern about speed of the process, a bit confusing at times, What worked – broad based involvement,
some non-developmental departments, liked to hear about what happens in advising, good opportunity
for sharing, scheduling meetings a nightmare. Negotiating pushback and ambiguity could be a challenge.
Want professional development related to ATD issues, would like smaller groups and focused to work on
the new initiatives, make sure efforts are measured.
Possibly a flow chart to help people see where we are in the overall process.
WW - Layla Goushey – 15 campus team members, distributed surveys on goals 1 and 4, had four
campus team meetings, Lunch and learn with 20 adjunct faculty at start of semester. Surveyed adjuncts
as well. Surveys helped to get people engaged even if they couldn’t attend the meetings. One faculty
member shared video from Valencia website with her students. Lots of emails, kept things on people’s
minds, many conversations focused on advising, first year experience and dev ed. Access to data and
Hyperion was very helpful. Didn’t work – some pushback, some not wanting to engage with ATD.
Concern she didn’t keep the achievement gap of minorities as a focus. Future role – trouble shooters to
facilitate implementation. Assessment – should we be laying the ground for assessment now?
Adjuncts should not be forgotten. Big disconnect between adjuncts and STLCC, not just with ATD.
May 15 – 30 ATD plan due. Question about funding to support recommendations? Administration has
said there will be funding when the plan is presented. Dr. Hess said LT made cuts in other areas so
funding would be available for new initiatives.
Group work – function of the campus based teams and the college wide success team. Every year we
have to put in a plan. We refine the plan annually and stay focused on the four strategies. Donna’s three
goals for academic and student affairs are AQuip, ATD and Accountability.
1) Discuss implementation plans and strategies monthly, until we determine if fewer meetings are
needed. Are we playing a role in implementation or just an information group? What is working,
and what are we interested in drilling down. Cindy thought this group would just help determine
the strategies, then this group would dissolve and then we would work on the specific
strategies.
Strategy implementation teams are the focus next. Concern about how frayed things can get.
Some would like to keep the group in tack.
Concern about policy issues and how this will be implemented. How to make sure the good data
gets back into the implementation. Lots of ground work has been laid, hate to lose momentum.
This group could help with accountability and support Teresa and Donna. May need a list of
policy recommendations to ensure these issues get addressed.
Work plans are very basic, lots of work comes after in the implementation process. The collegewide group could act as a consulting group to meet whenever needed. At what point does an
initiative cease to be an initiative? Assessment council has functioned as a consulting group,
concern it may be going away. This group is needed to help facilitate the institutionalization of
ATD, need clear function, power and budget to implement changes or dissolve into existing or
new structures that are part of the institution. ATD is a three year deal to get the innovation
institutionalized.
This group was formed to institute org change, monitor the strategy teams, then revisit every
semester to determine if we need to dissolve this group. Layla thinks there is a need for districtwide team to help with the transition. Concern that discussions about student success need to
continue, because we need to ensure discussions about student success are occurring on a
regular basis in existing institutional groups, may need to redefine ourselves. Should look at
what we want ATD to do, lever, think tank, and organizational catalyst?
We have had a history of pockets of innovation, but not bringing things to scale. We need a
college wide team to make sure the initiatives move forward. Role of this group is to promote
ATD on the campuses, to keep communication flowing on the campus.
Felt the campus groups helped provide a forum for conversations about student success on the
campus.
Layla felt that the College wide student success team next semester could offer:
1)Accountability, 2) Feedback to implementation teams, 3) Symbolism of the group 4) Continue
dissemination to the campus groups.
Campus teams can get adjuncts involved and support smaller groups.
Meet April 13 with strategy teams
April 20 meet with college wide student success team from 3:30 to 5:30 and dinner afterwards
April -21 Coaches visit with strategy teams.
Respectfully submitted by Joanie Friend