Planned project kickoff date: 2005-07-01
Target completion date: 2009-09-01
Actual completion date:

Improve Access for CMC Learners

The Colorado Mountain College (CMC) student population will reflect CMC service area community demographics.  

The CMC AQIP Access Team and Diversity Council desire to systematically review the demographic make up of the college community compared to the demographic make up of the service area community to identify any gaps therein that signal access barriers to segments of our community.  To this end, the AQIP Access Team in collaboration with the Diversity Council have identified two immediate sub goals:

Sub Goal 1:  Build a Systems Portfolio that will identify underrepresented student groups by campus and college wide as compared to community demographics to determine future AQIP Access goals.  Suggested cohorts to pull:  first generation, low income, special populations, ethnicity, gender, by age, remedial student conversion to college courses; ESL student conversion to college courses; GED graduate conversion to college courses; local high school graduate participation rate.

As data is compiled for Sub Goal 1, both the Diversity Council and AQIP Team determined that, parallel to this data gathering, action should continue to honor the work and research of prior Diversity Council groups and thus a continued focus on our Latino/Latino/Hispanic population was established as:

Sub Goal 2:  Align the Latino/Hispanic student participation rate with the non-Latino/Hispanic participation rate.  Therefore, increase to 18% the college-wide participation rate of Latino/Hispanic students enrolled in college courses not including ESL and GED.  [Note: although this project and initiatives will target meeting needs of the entire Latino/Hispanic population, the indicator for success on this project will be the alignment of the % Latino/Hispanic students graduating from local high schools in the district with the % of Latino/Hispanic students enrolled in CMC courses not including ESL and GED].  Rationale for this specific sub goal is due to the large influx of Latino/Hispanic residents to the CMC service area. Some K-5 schools in the service area are over 50% Latino/Hispanic. As a growing and significant population within the community, we will insure that Latino/Hispanic community members are demonstrably encouraged and feel welcomed to college courses that take them beyond ESL and GED.

Primary Category: Understanding Students' and Other Stakeholders' Needs

As a learning-centered college, CMC is committed to building initiatives based on fact-based, data-driven information.  Coupled with the community college mission of access, CMC desires to collect and synthesize data to better understand our community needs and potential barriers to access.  As CMC builds this data, CMC will incrementally target specific and focused cohorts of students to determine participation rates compared to predetermined benchmarks.

With a systematic, data-driven approach to understanding community (studentsí and stakeholdersí) needs, CMC feels it will successfully launch a continuous improvement cycle for insuring that the mission of access is a reality for the entire CMC community.

Students

Student Development (a.k.a. Student Services)

Institutional Research

Diversity Council (college wide action-oriented committee)

Outreach efforts

High School Relations

Advising

Communication pieces (marketing)

Student Support Services:  tutoring, testing, orientation, financial aid

First Year Experience program development

Strategic Planning and Budget allocations

Student Surveying

Diversity Council, Diversity Action Teams, and AQIP Action Team meet with a focus on the established goals which is demonstrated with notes/minutes, reports and outcomes.

Action items with assessment are established and are reflected in campus and functional area strategic plans.

Diversity Council, Diversity Action Teams, and AQIP Action Team follow up on assisting with the assessment of action items and use the results to establish/revise action items and/or establish new goals.  This will be demonstrated in annual reports produced for the Diversity Council, AQIP, and Student Development.

Students and/or community members will be surveyed systematically to determine trends in their perspectives.

At least one annual college wide workshop/training on diversity awareness will be held and evaluated by participants.

Sub goal 1:  Systems Portfolio ñ a data-trend matrix will be developed tracking success and retention factors by student cohort and further refined to reflect per campus trends compared to service-area demographics.  

Sub goal 2:  measure of success will be the college wide participation rate of Latino/Hispanic students in credit and/or non-credit courses not including ESL and GED.  Align the percent of Latino/Hispanic students graduating from local high schools in the district with the percent of Latino/Hispanic students enrolled in CMC courses not including ESL and GED.  Definitions:
College-wide:  statistics and measurements based on aggregate
  data for entire CMC system versus per campus.
Participation rate:  percent of students enrolled in courses not
  including ESL and GED beyond drop for refund
  date.

Rationale for sub goal 2:  CMC recognized that it easily reached an acceptable participation rate for Latino/Hispanic students when including ESL and GED since a large portion of enrollees in these specific areas are Latino/Hispanic students.  However, participation in ESL and GED alone did not signify to CMC that it had genuinely created the level of access desired for all community members.  Therefore, after discussions in the CMC leadership groups of ALT (Administrative Leadership Team) and Diversity Council it was determined that to truly meet the challenge of access, the goal needed to be narrowed to capture access (participation rate) of Latino/Hispanic students in credit and/or non-credit courses not including ESL and GED.

Rationale for sub goal 2 benchmark:  it is noted that this benchmark focuses on the high school graduating class demographic makeup versus comparison to the simpler benchmark of the service-area community demographic makeup. In this case, it was acknowledged that simple alignment with the service-area demographic make up for CMC college-level courses was an unrealistic and unfair measure of CMC accessibility to Latino/Hispanic students.  This is based upon two realizations:
-  the challenge of our immigrant community having a consistent level of education and literacy at the high school level.
-  Immigrants may tend to only seek ESL courses that assist them in securing work.  It is believed, through anecdotal interactions with our Latino/Hispanic community, that economic survival is a priority for our immigrants leading to multiple jobs and/or jobs with unstructured hours leaving little room or interest in courses beyond ESL and GED.

Therefore, although this project and initiatives will target meeting needs of the entire Latino/Hispanic population, it was concluded that a fair and true representation of CMCís success in Latino/Hispanic accessibility is insuring that the Latino/Hispanic high school graduates participate at CMC at the same rate as the non-Latino/Hispanic high school graduates.

July 2005: The AQIP Access Team and Diversity Action Teams established:

DAT UNO (Spanish): ñ An internal clearinghouse to communicate recommended Diversity Council action items to campuses and functional areas and compile a document of what strategic action plans each campus and functional area have identified for the upcoming year and ultimate accomplishment of those plans.  DAT UNO coordinates its activity to be in concert with the annual strategic planning process.  
Outcomes: DAT UNO creates an annual document identifying the college-wide strategic action plans by campus and functional area and the accomplishment thereof.  Diversity Council follows up on acknowledging and celebrating accomplishments.  DC continues to pass suggested action items through DAT UNO.

DAT DEUX (French): The Think-Tank Team to research best practices (i.e. existing CMC practices, literature review, conferences, community and other colleges, etc.).  
Outcomes: DAT DEUX compiles an annual ìlaundry listî of suggested action items which are highly detailed, are measurable and the suggested method to measure impact/success of the action item plus any success stories of that action item.  

DAT TRE (Italian):  The team to arrange annual college wide workshops and presentations on diversity topics.
Outcomes: an annual college-wide workshop or presentation that has a 50% college-wide participation rate. (Note - % of participation or other measure of success to be determined)

DAT FUMF (German): The Student Perspective Team.  This team gathers data from various groups of students on their perspective of the CMC environment and support/comfort of all types of students.  This may be accomplished via surveys, focus groups, and such.  
Outcomes: An annual report on the data, how collected, and the interpretation of the results.  Results will be used to create additional action items through DAT DEUX.  Results will also serve as a baseline for measuring CMC success in diversity initiatives.

September 2005:  participation rate trends for Latino/Hispanic students and service-
area high school graduate demographic make up are pulled and analyzed.

By December, 2005:  a Focus Group and/or survey is conducted of Latino/Hispanic
Students/community and compiled by the Diversity Action Team on Student Perspective (DAT Fumf).

Best practices and initiatives are identified by the Diversity Action Team on ìthink-tankî (DAT Deux).  Practices and initiatives are highly detailed with recommended assessment tools.

March, 2006:  Results and findings from DAT Fumf and DAT Deux are reviewed and prioritized by Diversity Council and AQIP Access Team.  The Diversity Action Team on ìclearinghouseî (DAT Uno) insures dissemination and use of the action items college wide along with follow up on assessment of success.
  A Diversity Council Strategic Plan is developed for implementation for 06-07.

The Systems Portfolio (data trend matrix) is complete and reviewed by the Diversity Council to identify gaps in access to be addressed as future goals.

May, 2006:  DAT TRE:  college-wide faculty and staff training piece.  This committee lost their chairwoman and therefore was delayed in action.  A questionnaire was administered to faculty/staff with a very limited response.  The timing on this may have been off.  In the future, DAT TRE will start putting together training after DAT DEUX has done research.  This way, they can look at the data from DAT DEUX and use it.  DAT TRE  puts together a display for Appreciation Day celebrating our students and staff/faculty entitled: ìTogether, all of us impact lives!î.

By Summer/Fall, 2006:  identified action items are implemented for the 06-07 academic year.  (Strategic Plan attached)

July, 2006:  Diversity Council initiates and charges new DAT Teams.  

October, 2006:  Diversity Council and AQIP Access Team reviews progress and prepares to assess success of action items.  

March, 2007:  Diversity Council and the AQIP Access team review the updated trend data including participation rate benchmark for progress.  Action items are reviewed and adjusted as necessary to continue progress toward meeting benchmark and/or a new goal is identified that focuses on another underserved student/community cohort.
Diversity  Council and AQIP Access Shortlist of 06-07 Projects

Completion of the Diversity Council Strategic Plan initiatives and assessment thereof.

Completion of the Diversity Council PowerPoint Presentation and subsequent showing at Foundation, College Council, and the Board of Trustees.

Creation of a video documenting student testimonials and CMCís impact on their lives for next Appreciation Day.

Expansion into the Arts including annual purchase of student art for permanent display at campuses.

Completion of the Data Portfolio and identification of other student cohorts who may be under-represented.

Creation of strategic plan for 07-08 based on identified student cohort.

The Action Project Goals are goals both for the AQIP Access Project Team and the larger college wide Diversity Council.  Both the Diversity Council and the AQIP Team are chaired by the Chief Student Development Officer who will produce annual reports demonstrating progress on goals, assessment thereof, and new or revised goals.  The annual report will be disseminated college wide and to the Governing Board.  This accountability through the annual report coupled with the identification of a primary ìdriverî on this goal will keep attention and energies focused on the goals.