The Power of Collaboration –
whether you “have” to or not
Presented by the New Jersey Council of
County Colleges
Presenters
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Patricia Donohue, President
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Joann LaPerla Morales, President
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Mercer County Community College
Middlesex County College
Lawrence Nespoli, President
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New Jersey Council of County Colleges
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New Jersey
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19 community colleges
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400,000 students
Decentralized higher education system
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“Coordinated autonomy”
New Jersey Council of County Colleges and its
role
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Trustee’s Perspective
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Community colleges experiencing “climate
change” – slowing government aid and
increasing enrollments
Trustees especially concerned about long-term
stability
Decided to begin the “Big Ideas Project” to
research strategies to increase efficiency and
capacity
Receive regular reports and bi-annual updates at
state-wide trustee retreats
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Presidents Perspective
NJ presidents knew that colleges needed to:
 Act collectively to create sustainable solutions –
even though we aren’t “required” to work together
 Shift from “Access” to “Access TO Success”
 Enhance accountability
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From Idea to Plan
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Engaged presidents, faculty, and staff from
across the state over 18 months to create a plan
Using 8 statewide working “affinity groups” to
begin implementation work in 8 distinct areas.
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#1- Transforming Developmental
Education, Testing, and Placement
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Group Focus: Building a common commitment to
transforming developmental education and improving
community college testing and placement.
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Major Strategies:
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•
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Offer Multiple Evidence-Based, Successful Developmental Education
Models Consistent with the Needs of the Students.
Improve Accountability for Developmental Education Using the
Student Success Model (developed by Group Three).
Identify Alternatives for At-Risk, Underprepared Students.
Build Statewide Approaches to Disseminating Best Developmental
Education Programs.
Initiate Statewide Conversation about ESL Pathways and How ESL
Relates to Developmental Education Pathways.
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What has happened this year?

Established a process which sets out two broad
approaches:
•
•
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The development of specific strategic principles intended to
reform the delivery of developmental education and its impact
on overall institutional culture.
The content elements needed for the planning and delivery of a
sector wide fall conference to disseminate these ideas with
accompanying models. This is a process intended to engage
faculty as a major source of input.
Three broad areas of interest have developed through the process:
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College Readiness and Educational Sequencing
•
Instructional Strategies (e.g., acceleration and modularization)
and Support Structures (e.g., student success courses)
•
Data Tracking
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What has happened this year?

A statewide survey on ESL Instruction has been
distributed to all ESL Coordinators on our 19 campuses.
•
This survey has been broken down by credit and non-credit ESL
courses to give us a better snap shot of the various student
needs.
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#2- Aligning Expectations
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Group Focus: Working collaboratively with K-12 and state
leaders to align expectations between K-12 and community
colleges.
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Major Strategies:
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Expand Implementation of College Readiness Diagnostic
Assessments at the High School Level.
Expand Implementation of Strategic Interventions.
Collaborate with New Jersey Department of Education and Local
School Districts on the Implementation of Common Core,
including Assessment.
Align High School Common Core with Higher Education
Curriculum and Learning Outcomes.
Create High Quality Professional Development Programs for
Language Arts and Mathematics for Teachers.
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What has happened this year?
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Developed an inventory of efforts across all 19 colleges
that demonstrate K-12 collaboration intended to increase
college readiness.
•
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Faculty are presently being identified to serve as test item
reviewers to reach alignment with the PARCC initiative.
Identified partnerships with K-12 leaders working to
implement the “common core” and related assessments.
Served on Governor’s college and career readiness task
force that developed statewide “Speed Up/Catch Up”
program
Forged relationships built on consistency and trust in
which, over time, we continue to author innovative ideas.
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#3- Enhancing Student Success Data

Group Focus: Creating a more comprehensive student
success model that included metrics on progression through
developmental education and disaggregated success measures
by: a) students who enter community college prepared for
college level work; b) students who require developmental
education; and c) ESL students.
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Major Strategy:
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Develop a more comprehensive student success model that
considers entering student skill level impact on success within a
defined period of time.
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What has happened this year?
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Developed a new student success model to better track
and monitor the progress of students in developmental
education.
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A 5-college pilot will provide information on:
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Student remedial placement.
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Success in remedial classes.
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Student retention, completion and transfer to senior
postsecondary institutions.
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#4- Promoting Adjunct Faculty Development
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Group Focus: Developing programs to support regional
and statewide collaboration for adjunct faculty
development.
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Major Strategies:
•
Developed a statewide credential and adjunct faculty
orientation program to provide professional development for
the adjunct faculty who work in the New Jersey community
college sector.
•
Developed a program for sharing and supporting best practices
related to instruction methods and practices for adjunct faculty.
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What has happened this year?
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Surveyed the Adjunct Faculty Coordinators on our 19 campuses
with questions pertaining to the following:
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Adjunct Faculty Development Programs on our campuses.
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Existing mentoring models.
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Information dissemination/Resources available for Adjunct Faculty.
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Informing adjunct faculty on legal aspects of teaching (i.e. FERPA,
diversity, record retention requirements).
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And, important to note, what additional support our coordinators think
our adjunct faculty need.
Through this survey, have collected materials relating to:
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Orientation checklists (i.e. human resources, payroll, IT, etc.).
Compliance materials.
Effective instructional delivery techniques.
Adjunct Faculty Handbooks.
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What has happened this year?
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Through our data collection, we aim to develop:
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A statewide template for adjunct faculty orientation.
A statewide credential program for adjunct faculty along with the
framework for a job bank.
A statewide model for mentoring to be implemented by
individual colleges.
An online infrastructure for disseminating professional
development activities for adjunct faculty.
Annual regional conferences for adjunct faculty.
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#5- Promoting Joint Purchasing
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Group Focus: Enhancing the work of the current New
Jersey Joint Purchasing Consortium to achieve greater
cost savings.
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Major Strategy:
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Enable the New Jersey Joint Purchasing Consortium to achieve
greater cost savings by working systematically to leverage the
collective purchasing power of the sector.
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What has happened this year?
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Developed a business plan for a self-supporting
joint purchasing consortium across the community
college sector.
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The plan outlines the following for our Presidents:
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A proposed business model, budget, allocation formula,
assessment tools, and communications and technology
infrastructure.
•
Use of national purchasing consortia.
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#6- Promoting Academic Consortia
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Group Focus: Developing mechanisms for enhanced
consortia arrangements among the 19 community
colleges.
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Major Strategies:
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Create a New Jersey Distance Learning Consortium.
•
Create an environmental scanning structure to foster other
academic consortia among the 19 community colleges.
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What has happened this year?
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Explored E-Tutoring options.
Conducted training day with Quality Matters.
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Now exploring a statewide conference by Quality Matters.
Established work groups to:
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Identify opportunities for shared services to reduce costs in
support of student success:
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Online tutoring, orientation/student readiness, faculty
intervention.
•
Develop faculty focused initiatives in such areas as:
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Training/pedagogy, Quality Matters, Adjunct Reporting,
E-mentoring.
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#7- Building Alternate Delivery Learning
Systems
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Group Focus: Designing and implementing new best
practice teaching and learning methods together with new
and emerging technologies.
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Major Strategies:
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Engage discovery, experiential learning, or technology enhanced
curricular delivery.
Develop a plan for a unified system of mobile delivery.
Integrate the use of mobile device as a ubiquitous tool to enhance
active teaching and learning, and access to services.
Foster engagement between and among students, faculty, and staff
through the use of collaborative online strategies.
Expand the use of social media to enhance teaching, learning and
services.
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What has happened this year?
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Conducted sector wide survey to gauge mobile
readiness on our campuses.
•
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All colleges are found to be using mobile; they have been
found to be mobile ready
Mobile readiness was defined as the ability of our students to
access and interact with our websites, ERP systems, Learning
Management Systems, etc.
A report with recommendations about mobile readiness
addressing issues of support, security, data transformation, and
transition is eminent.
Survey indicates that use of social media is less prevalent
with no defined best practices.
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The IT Affinity group will engage in a sector wide dialogue to identify
ways in which they can improve collaboration, classroom announcements
and student engagement through social media.
#8- Developing Core Learning Outcomes
and Common Assessment Tools
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Group Focus: Developing core learning outcomes and
common assessment tools for the top 10 high enrollment
general education courses.
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Major Strategy:
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Establish statewide initiative to develop:
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Core course content and learning outcomes for the top 10
highest enrollment general education courses.
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An comprehensive inventory of instructional best practices.
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Common assessment tools.
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Faculty training and development tools.
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What has happened this year?
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Engaged in a process of surveying all faculty from each of
the top ten general education courses within the sector to
identify what they believe are the core learning outcomes for
their respective courses:
•
Each survey is unique to its respective discipline.
•
Survey content is informed by already established course
syllabi collected from each of the colleges.
•
To date, we have surveyed five general education courses,
with five more to follow in Fall 2012.
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Connecting to National Networks and
State Policymakers
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Presentation of student success “Charter” to
legislative education committees.
Established statewide and college graduation
targets through the year 2020.
Partnering with Governor’s Office on K-12
reform.
Statewide communications strategies on the “Big
Ideas.”
Three community colleges are partnering with
Achieving the Dream to serve as regional hubs to
promote student success initiatives statewide.
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A Note on Collaboration
Collaboration is very hard work. It takes a lot of time to
communicate effectively in a statewide initiative. But the
value added is very significant.
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Q&A
Questions?
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Information
For the following information, please visit:
www.njccc.org/bigideas.htm
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Big Ideas Research Papers
Big Ideas Statewide Recommendations
Big Ideas Implementation Updates
Or contact us directly at:
New Jersey Council of County Colleges
330 West State Street Trenton, NJ 08618
609-392-3434
www.njccc.org
info@njccc.org
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