Northwest Commission on College and University (NWCCU)
Annual Update for WSQA
Academic Year 2013-14
Due November 15, 2014
College Name:
Grays Harbor College
Contact Person:
Laurie Kaye Clary
Contact Phone:
360-538-4010
Contact email:
laurie.clary@ghc.edu
Accreditation recommendations to the
College and year of recommendation
Actions taken by the college to address
recommendations
Improvement results
Grays Harbor College is addressing four
recommendations from its Year Three
Resources and Capacity Accreditation
Peer Evaluation.
1. The evaluation committee
recommends that Grays Harbor
College continue to build and
develop the process of mission
fulfillment with the well-crafted
Mission Fulfillment Snapshot as a
tool to share with stakeholders and
to build an overall system of
monitoring improvement of the
College’s progress moving forward
(Standard 1.B.2).
The Mission Fulfillment Snapshot (Scorecard)
looks at the most recent past year’s Student
Achievement point percentages for GHC in
comparison to the system average to provide a
30,000 foot look at where GHC might need to
focus efforts. Using SAI points from the past
three years, the Institutional Effectiveness,
Research and Planning office has created a
pivot table that enables departments to delve
deeper into the data. At this point, the table
allows users to view transfer and workforce SAI
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For complete information, and to view the
Mission Fulfillment Scorecard, visit:
http://ghc.edu/admin/accreditation/Year3_Rep
ort.pdf
The pivot table was presented to all Exempt staff
at the Exempt Retreat in September. In
addition, the Instructional Management Team
has been trained on how to use it and has
incorporated review and analysis of the data
point summaries, demographics by point and
demographics by program, English Transition
and Math transition. The pivot table will
continue to be refined with new data. In
addition to SAI, the Basic Skills program
quarterly reviews and analyzes WABERS data to
determine areas in need of improvement.
into its annual Instructional Review process.
Discussions continue around the best way to
represent student learning outcomes
assessment on the scorecard and as well as
how to most effectively measure “Service to
Community”
2. The evaluation committee
recommends that GHC adopt and
publish a policy regarding the safe
use, storage, and disposal of
hazardous and toxic materials
(Standard 2.G.2).
Operational Policy 524 “Management and
Disposal of Hazardous Wastes” was adopted by
the Grays Harbor College Board of Trustees on
9/16/14 and is posted on the college’s website.
In addition to the Operational Policy, the
College has adopted and posted Administrative
Procedures 542.01 “Hazardous Waste Materials
Information and Training”, 542.02 “Spill
Response”, and 542.03 “Hazardous Waste
Disposal”.
http://www.ghc.edu/admin/board/bp/index.ht
m
A required Ad-Hoc Report was sent to the
NWCCU on October 2014.
3. It is recommended that Grays
Harbor College develop a robust
system for the collection and
analysis of appropriately defined
data to fully inform the planning
and evaluation process for the
institution, its programs and
services, as well as core theme
objectives and mission fulfillment
and that it develop feedback
mechanisms that more
Grays Harbor College has established active
systems for collecting and analyzing data to
inform decision-making throughout the
organization. There has been an emphasis in
recent months on identifying and
communicating the ways in which the College’s
planning processes (Core Themes,
Institutional/Strategic Planning and
Program/Area Planning and their related
assessment activities are connected and inform
one another. The Chief of Institutional
At the Institutional Level, the Executive Team
has adopted an Annual Report Format that
collects Goals, Accomplishments, Budget
Information and Outcomes/Assessment Results
from each member of the Executive Team. This
information will be shared with the Board of
Trustees and used in planning processes.
Additionally the college is entering its second
year of its Optimization (Strategic) Plan which
has as its foundation, specific and measurable
objectives.
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All maintenance and custodial personnel have
been trained and training for faculty and other
affected staff is in progress.
systematically use assessment data
to improve practices and make
changes to programs and services in
support of mission fulfillment
(Standard 3.A.3, 4.B.1).
4. It is recommended that for each year
of operation, the College undergo an
external financial audit and that the
results from such audits, including
findings and management letter
recommendations, be considered in
a timely, appropriate and
comprehensive manner by the Board
of Trustees (Eligibility Requirement
19 and Standard 2.F.7).
Effectiveness Research and Planning (IERP),
who serves on the President’s Executive Team,
is responsible for working with Senior
Administrators to monitor the planning
process, ensure assessment of
outcomes/objectives and identify results. The
College’s Exempt Team spent an entire day in
September, before classes started, reviewing
and discussing the different aspects of the
planning system, results of the prior year, and
how they would provide leadership to the
various planning activities in 2014-15.
Washington community and technical colleges
historically have been included in the State of
Washington’s financial statements, but due to
recent changes to 2.F.7, this is not acceptable.
In order to meet this standard, the college must
meet three important milestones:
1. Develop financial statements in
accordance with generally accepted
accounting principles.
2. Contract with professionally qualified
personnel to audit the financial
statements.
3. The college’s administration and board
must review and consider the results of
the financial statement audit in a
timely, appropriate and comprehensive
manner.
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At the Core Theme Level, the College has created
a scorecard to measure mission fulfillment by
looking at indicators for each of its core themes.
In addition to the high level data available in the
Scorecard itself, more detailed data is available
for many of the indicators and 3 years of data is
provided for comparison. See above #2 for
more details.
At the Program/Area Level there has been a
renewed emphasis this year in the Student
Services Department to improve Institutional
Effectiveness and Student Learning Outcomes
Assessment Activities. The IERP is attending
Student Services Managers Meetings and
meeting one-on-one and in small groups with
Student Services Staff to develop meaningful
measures of area improvement. Additionally,
the Instructional Division has identified data
resources they would like to have access to for
their Program Review Process.
A new position has been added to the Business
Office to manage internal financial controls.
Since the audit process is in development and
implementation, other results are not yet
available.
A required Ad-Hoc Report will be filed with
NWCCU by May 1, 2015.
All the Washington community and technical
colleges have been working with the State
Board for Community and Technical Colleges
(the SBCTC) to develop a timeline and plan for
the milestones noted above. The SBCTC
convened a pilot group of nine colleges to
begin this process, with field work for two of
the colleges beginning in May of 2014.
Grays Harbor College is not in the pilot group,
but will complete an inaugural set of financial
statements for FY 2013-14. College financial
staff attended a financial statement
preparation workshop hosted by the SBCTC on
August 25, 2014. Although the pilot resulted in
improvements to the tools used to prepare the
financial statements, each college is expected
to experience a significant learning curve when
preparing its inaugural financial statements. As
a result, the College estimates its statements
will be completed sometime around December
2014 - January 2015. Depending on auditor
availability, this will allow audits to begin
sometime between January and April 2015,
with the auditors’ field work taking
approximately one month to complete. We
anticipate receiving the auditor’s report,
including an opinion and any management
letter or findings approximately one month
after field work is completed.
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