Student Success Seminar
Central Piedmont
Community College
August 5, 2015
Disruptive Innovations
1.The Learning College
2.The Student/Success
Completion Agenda
st
3.General Education for the 21
Century
4.Assessing and Accounting for
Student Success
Barriers to Reform
The primary barrier to
educational reform and
transformation is the
historical architecture of
education.
1984—K. Patricia Cross
After some two decades of trying
to find answers to the question of
how to provide education for all
the people, I have concluded that
our commitment to the lock-step,
time-defined structures of
education stands in the way of
lasting progress.
1993—Wingspread Group
Putting learning at the heart of
the academic enterprise will
mean overhauling the
conceptual, procedural,
curricular, and other
architecture of postsecondary
education on most campuses.
1994—Roger Moe
Higher education is
1,000 years of tradition
wrapped in 100 years of
bureaucracy.
2014—Terence Robinson
Our current educational system is
similar to a wealthy patriarch who is
brain dead and has had a complete
systems failure but is kept on life
support. He is no longer functional or
productive, but because so many
depend on him and have a special
interest in his survival, no one is willing
to pull the plug.
Time-Bound
Time is learning’s warden.
• School year
• Semester course
• Class hours
• Three 55 minute classes a
week for 30 students times 5
courses
Place-Bound
We go to school; we go off to
college; we get kicked out of
school; school is out.
•
•
•
•
Campus
Classroom
Library
Distance learning
Efficiency-Bound
Most of our rules and regulations
are about what we can’t do than
what we can do.
• Linear/sequential
• ADA/FTE
• Three hours of credit for biology,
gym, algebra, history, and shop
Role-Bound
If you hold a Master’s Degree you
have been taught for 17 years by
93 teachers since first grade.
•
•
•
•
Knowledge expert
Deliver knowledge thru lecture
Sole judge
Guardian
Forces Resisting Change
• Federal, state, & local policies
• Funding mechanisms
• Secondary, community college,
& university separate systems
• Students
• Mid-level Managers
• Curmudgeons
What really works to
help students
succeed?
“Best Practices”
“While colleges will likely need to
adopt some new practices and
adapt some older practices,
practice-based reforms cannot be
the primary work undertaken by
colleges participating in
Completion by Design.”
Venezia, Bracco, & Nodine 2011
“Best Practices”
Adopting discrete “best
practices” and trying to
bring them to scale will not
work to improve student
completion on a substantial
scale.
Davis Jenkins
April 2011—CCRC
Guidelines for Student Success
1. Every student will make a
significant connection with
another person at the
college as soon as possible.
Guidelines for Student Success
2. Key intake programs
including orientation,
assessment, advisement,
and placement will be
integrated and mandatory.
Guidelines for Student Success
3. In addition to assessing
student skills and knowledge,
affective dimensions will also
be assessed.
Guidelines for Student Success
4. Every student will be
placed in a “Program of
Study” from day one;
undecided students will be
placed in a mandatory
“Program of Study”
designed to help them
decide.
Guidelines for Student Success
5. Every student will be
carefully monitored
throughout the first term to
ensure successful progress;
the college will make
interventions immediately to
keep students on track.
Guidelines for Student Success
6. Every student who enrolls to
pursue a certificate or degree will
work with college personnel to
create an individual Student
Success Pathway—a Roadmap to
Completion.
Student Success Pathway
Connection
Entry
Progress
Completion
From interest to
application
From enrollment
to completion of
gatekeeper
courses
From entry to
course of study to
75% of
requirements
completed
From complete
course of study to
credential with
labor market value
Pathway Components
Connecting
to high
schools
Preparing to
begin classes
Providing
classroom
instruction
Preparing for
completion &
next steps
Providing
remediation
Monitoring
first-term
progress
Preparing for
subsequent
terms
Celebrating
milestones &
completion
Role of Leaders
“There are many important
aspects of the Student Success
Agenda---But significant change
will not occur—and stick—
without visible, persistent
leadership from the college
president or chancellor.”
Byron & Kay McClenney 2010
Role of Trustees
Community-college governing boards must
take the lead in precisely defining student
success and completion in the context of
their own institutions. Once defined, boards
should place high priority on assessing and
highlighting student success and
completion on the board meeting agenda.
Noah Brown, President & CEO
Association of Community College Trustees
Role of Faculty
Colleges need to find ways to
make student success central
to the work of everyone on
campus—particularly the
faculty—equipping all with
the knowledge and skills
required for their most
effective work.
The Completion Agenda
“It’s not that we are ignorant
and don’t know what to do.
The question is whether we
want to do it badly enough.”
Deborah Meier
Author & MacArthur Fellow
What Do We Need?
In the words of poet
T. S. Eliot
we need leaders who are
willing
“to disturb the
universe.”
Terry O’Banion
Ancora Imparo
“Still I Am Learning.”
Michelangelo
obanion@league.org