HIGH-PERFORMING SCHOOLS • SITE VISIT 101 • ACCREDI-DATING
HLC UPDATE
APRIL 2017
VOLUME 2, NO. 3
AN INSIDE LOOK AT RCTC’S REAFFIRMATION PROCESS
GAME SHOW
AND MOCK
SESSIONS
PREPARE
CAMPUS
FOR HLC
SITE VISIT
Vice Presidents, Deans, and Directors
from a number of Minnesota State campuses and the system office conducted
mock accreditation visit sessions during
our March 2017 employee development
day. Two sets of sessions were held; the
first was targeted to specific divisions/
units and how each was involved in
RCTC’s accrediation efforts, and the 2nd
set gave employees a “hands-on” feel of
how a site-visit may work.
During a session for facilities employees,
Dr. Mike Seymour, from Lake Superior
College, guided staff through a series
of small group exchanges that focused
on the types of questions HLC reviewers
typically ask facilities employees, starting
with general questions like “how does
your work contribute to the mission of
the College,” and progressing to more
specific Criterion 5 questions about
how facilities employees help maintain
RCTC’s infrastructure. He said that he
liked the enthusiasm that the facilities
employees showed during his sessions.
CONTINUED ON PAGE THREE
RCTC EMPLOYEES PROVIDE
FEEDBACK TO GUEST HLC PEER
REVIEWERS ON RCTC’S MARCH
30TH DEVELOPMENT DAY.
HE DIDN’T JUST ASK THAT, DID HE?
RCTC HUMAN SERVICES INSTRUCTOR SHELLI ARNESON (2ND FROM RIGHT), AKA
BACHELORETTE NUMBER TWO, CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT DR. MICHAEL ANTHONY
(LEFT), AKA THE “ACCREDIDATER,” JUST ASKED HER. ARNESON AND ANTHONY,
ALONG WITH CHAO MWATELA (CENTER), DEB CANNON (RIGHT), AND PRIYANK
SHAH (NOT-PICTURED), PERFORMED THE “ACCREDI-DATING GAME” DURING
ALL-EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT DAY ON MARCH 29TH. MORE ON PAGE 2.
STAKEHOLDER SURVEYS UPDATE
Accreditation is…listening to what stakeholders are saying
and making improvements.
RCTC has implemented a survey implementation plan to continuously seek
stakeholder feedback, analyze the results,
and make improvements from what we
learn. The plan includes a regular rotation schedule to collect feedback from
both internal and external stakeholders.
This fall the College implemented the
Noel Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) to gauge student satisfaction, and
a new survey the Personal Assessment of
the College Environment (PACE) by the
National Initiative for Leadership and Institutional Effectiveness to gauge campus
climate. We are also currently in the midst
of implementing the Community College
Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE)
and the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSFE) to
gauge and compare perspectives related
to student engagement. In addition to
these national surveys, as part of the accreditation process we asked students to
respond to the HLC Student Satisfaction
Survey.
• Fall 2016 SSI Strengths Examples of
student-identified strengths relate to
the quality of instruction they receive,
the campus being safe and secure for
all students, faculty being fair and
unbiased of individual students, the
campus staff being caring and helpful, a welcoming feeling on campus,
access to online services, and the
campus being well-maintained.
• Fall 2016 SSI Challenges Examples
of student-identified challenges (or
“Opportunities” as Steve Schmall
would say) relate to academic advising in relationship to program
SURVEYS CONTINUES ON PAGE TWO
“ACCREDI-DATING GAME”
PROVIDES FLIRTY FUN AT
STAFF DEVELOPMENT DAY
WATCHING
THE “ACCREDI-DATING
GAME” AT
OUR MARCH
EMPLOYEE
DEVELOPMENT DAY
WAS QUITE
AMUSING.
THE LONELY
HLC ACCREDITOR, CONVINCINGLY PORTRAYED BY MICHAEL ANTHONY,
WOOED VIVACIOUS RCTC EMPLOYEES, SHELLI ARNESON,
DEB CANNON, AND CHAO MWATELA, BY ASKING FLIRTY
QUESTIONS ABOUT ACCREDITATION.
AFTER REJECTING THE TWO EMPLOYEES WHO PROVIDED MONOSYLLABIC
REPLIES TO HIS ARDENT ACCREDITATION QUESTIONS, THE FORLORN HLC
ACCREDITOR WARMED TO SHELLI
ARNESON’S THOUGHTFUL -- AND
TEASINGLY PROVOCATIVE -- ACCREDITATION ANSWERS, EVENTUALLY
SELECTING HER AS THE LUCKY PERSON TO GO OUT ON AN “ACCREDIT-DATE”! WE CAN ONLY IMAGINE
HOW MUCH FUN THEY’LL HAVE ON
THEIR DATE LAUGHING ABOUT ALL
THE AMUSING ACCREDITATION
ANECDOTES THEY HAVE TO SHARE.
SITE VISIT 101: THE NITTY GRITTY
If you have questions about the site visit,
but are too timid to ask anyone, you’re
not alone! Here are a few answers to
questions that may be on your mind.
is from colleges in Indiana, Iowa,
and New Mexico. Showing up at the
forums and meetings is important to
make the site visit a success.
1. During the site visit, will men and women
in suits be prowling the hallways, cornering students and teachers with weird
questions? No! However, site visit team
members do enjoy visiting with people in informal settings, such as when
they are walking from one meeting
location to the next, to learn more
about the college and its people.
3. How should I participate in site visit discussions? Be open and honest. We have
a lot of great success stories at RCTC.
Feel free to share those! We also have
areas we can improve upon. All colleges do. It’s OK to let the reviewers
know that we are aware of this and
share what we are doing to make improvements in those areas.
2. Should I hide in my office during the site
visit and hope the site visit team doesn’t
find me? No, there is no reason to be
nervous! Remember, site visit team
members are our peers who work at
other colleges across the country similar to RCTC. Our peer reviewer team
4. Do I need to get a tattoo to show my dedication to the college? You don’t need a
tattoo. You just need to remember,
and work hard to achieve, RCTC’s mission, like you do every other day. We
“provide accessible, affordable, quality
learning opportunities to serve a diverse and growing community.”
2
SURVEYS CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE
requirements and transferability,
ability to register for classes with
few conflicts, convenience of class
time availability, timely feedback of
academic progress in class, and the
item that always appears - adequate
student parking.
RCTC’s new Institutional Quality Council
is reviewing SSI results now and creating
recommendations for action plans on
how to improve items identified as challenges.
As an AQIP institution, we always seek to
improve from previous measures. Comparing 2016 SSI results to 2012 SSI results, 31 identical questions were asked
on both surveys. Twenty-nine of the 31
questions showed a higher level of student satisfaction!! Great job everyone!!
NILLIE PACE:
Similar to the use of the SSI survey, in
order to be able to benchmark employee satisfaction of the campus climate to
national and peer norms, RCTC implemented the PACE survey towards the end
of fall 2016. The PACE survey organizes
climate factors into the following areas:
Institutional Structure, Student Focus,
Supervisory Relationships, and Teamwork. A full analysis has not yet been
conducted, but a preliminary review of
responses indicates the following:
• Fall 2016 PACE Strengths - Examples
of employee responses identified
strengths related to “The extent to
which…: my job is relevant to the
institution’s mission, the institution
prepares students for a career and
further learning, students receive an
excellent education, my supervisor
expresses confidence in my work,
student ethnic and cultural diversity
are important, and I am given the opportunity to be creative in my work.
• Fall 2016 PACE Opportunities - Examples of employee responses identified opportunities related to “The
extent to which…: I have the opportunity for advancement, information
is shared within the institution, decisions are made at the appropriate
level, I am able to appropriately influence the direction of the institution, and the institution is appropriately organized.
As RCTC begins to stabilize from several
years of leadership turnover, we all know
there is more work to be done related to
campus climate. It is encouraging how
people from across the campus are pulling together to make this happen. With
the new Institutional Quality Council in
place, the Council will next review
results and develop recommendations
CONTINUED ON PAGE FOUR
Accreditation is…explaining the quadratic formula to four different classes for four hours on the same day.
MOCK HLC
SESSIONS OFFER
REAL-WORLD
SITE VISIT
EXPERIENCE
CONTINUED FROM PAGE ONE
At a session for faculty, Dr. Lisa Schlotterhausen, Interim Dean at Riverland Community College, guided faculty through
the intricacies of Criterion 3 and 4 focusing on assessment. Afterwards, faculty
commented that they now understood
why the “Closing the Loop” action project was so important and how co-curricular activities can also be assessed, just like
classroom activities.
These sessions are just another tool to
help us be successful. Like Greg Mosier
stated during his accreditation presentation, “We are ready!”
The following people graciously provided their expertise and time to help us get
ready for the HLC Site Visit:
•Lynn Akey, MSU – Mankato
•Leslie Bleskachek, Minnesota State
College Southeast
•Jon Dalager, Minnesota State
System Office
•Brian Fors, RCTC Interim Dean
•Kelly McCalla, Riverland
•Gary Schindler, Riverland
•Lisa Schlotterhausen, Riverland
•Mike Seymour, Lake Superior College
•Joanne Simser, Minnesota State faculty
and administrator, retired
•Joan Roca, MSU – Mankato
WHAT MAKES A HIGHPERFORMING INSTITUTION?
Accreditation is...painstakingly helping a secondlanguage refugee fill out his FAFSA.
Clearly, RCTC is a high performance
institution. We know that. According
to the HLC, colleges that are dedicated
to continuous quality improvement are
proactive. Like those colleges, we do
the following actions every day.
• We focus on a mission that emphasizes the needs of students and
primary stakeholders. At RCTC,
we strive to educate our students,
in and out of the classroom, so
they can be productive community
members.
• We involve staff, faculty, and administrators in decision-making.
RCTC’s collaborative unions and
broad-based committee structure
ensures we all have a voice.
• We lead each other with shared
values that align with our mission.
We help each other align our college systems in accordance with our
hundred-year heritage.
• We learn from each other. As staff
and faculty, we learn as much from
our students as our students learn
from us.
• We respect each other. We believe
that students, faculty, and staff are
worthy of our time and effort. We
put our best efforts into helping
our students because we know they
have intrinsic worth. Similarly, we
know our colleagues work hard to
help those students.
• We collaborate. At RCTC, we work
together in order to provide our
students with the best education
possible, from the time they apply
to the happy moment when they
graduate.
• We are agile. We know that solutions that worked five years ago
may no longer be viable. Our student demographics have changed
markedly from what they were ten
years ago. Yet, here we are, still providing high quality education with
entirely different methods than we
used before.
• We plan for the future. Our planning processes, guided by our new
strategic plan Vision 2020 provide
us with the foresight and environmental scans we need to succeed.
• We share information. With our
new institutional researcher, and a
renewed commitment to transparency in decision-making, it is now
much easier to access necessary,
quality data.
• We are responsible. We behave
with integrity towards each other,
our students, and our community.
We know that we serve the public
good.
As you think through your daily work
and that of your colleagues, celebrate
the small successes that make RCTC a
high-performance institution!
3
SURVEYS CONTINUED FROM PAGE TWO
for action plans on how to improve items
identified as opportunities.
HLC Student Satisfaction Survey:
Efforts from seeking student feedback
on the HLC Student Satisfaction Survey
resulted in 138 responses. While being a
small sample size, student feedback was
overall very positive, and responses somewhat mirror responses received on the
SSI survey and a qualitative survey conducted by the Strategic Enrollment Management Council (SEMC) in May 2016.
Areas of strength related to: student satisfaction with progress they are making
towards degree completion, helpful instruction from faculty, faculty availability when needing help, appropriately
challenging course content, appropriate
course placement that matched academic preparation, and availability of academic advisors.
Areas of opportunity related to: identification of an academic program the met
student goals, communication related to
the enrollment process, and financial aid
advising.
It is important to note that the range of
scores identified on RCTC’s student satisfaction survey are similar to scores received at other institutions. Areas identified with opportunity are typically those
offices identified as “high-stakes” offices.
While reviewing results of stakeholder
surveys can sometimes feel uncomfortable, that’s okay! Organizations that
excel continuously operate out of their
comfort zone! Operating out of one’s
comfort zone drives continuous quality
improvement, provides a higher quality of products and services to those we
serve, and enhances personal and professional growth.
CRITERIA CHECK
•Criterion 1--Mission
•Criterion 2--Integrity:
Ethical and Responsible Conduct
•Criterion 3--Teaching
and Learning: Quality,
Resources and Support
•Criterion 4--Teaching
and Learning: Evaluation and Improvement
•Criterion 5--Resources,
Planning, and Institutional Effectiveness
•Federal Compliance
RCTC JOINS THE MULTI-STATE
ASSESSMENT COLLABORATIVE
Accreditation is…new students in the fall semester clutching their
schedules, looking for EA121 and the mysterious HA108.
As part of RCTC’s ongoing
tradition of data-driven assessment, we are participating in the Multi-State Collaborative (MSC) to Advance
Learning Outcomes Assessment. MSC’s broad-based
initiative assesses authentic student learning. This
13-state, multi-year collaborative emphasizes the use
of VALUE rubrics (the same
rubrics RCTC used to help
derive our core outcomes
a few years ago) to assess
authentic student learning,
based on real student artifacts evaluated by faculty.
The outcomes assessed this
year focus on quantitative
literacy, written communication, and critical thinking.
Through the College’s participation, we will gain access
to benchmarked assessment
data that will help inform our
decisions about college-level
learning outcomes.
ACTION PROJECTS UPDATE
Accreditation is…getting up at 3AM to come to work to snowplow
all the parking lots before the students come to class.
Just what is an action project? Why are
they so important for our reaccreditation efforts? What are the latest updates?
You need to know the answers to these
questions, not because of the Higher
Learning Commission (HLC) site visit,
but rather because action projects are
key drivers for improvement for our
college.
According to the HLC, colleges “will
maintain at least three action projects,
short-term projects that the institution
believes will have the most impact on
quality improvement. Institutions are
required to submit at least three action
projects for review annually, with at least
one project focused on student learning.” There are a few important items to
note in this definition. First of all, action
projects are short-term. They have a
limited time span and don’t drag on for
years and years. Second, they focus on
quality improvement. In other words,
they make the college a better place
for students to learn and all of us to
work. Finally, at least one project always
focuses on student learning. Helping
students, after all, is why we’re here.
As you know, we currently have three
projects that have significantly helped
improve our college over the past year.
• Our Master Academic Plan was
recently finalized. The “MAP” is
the culmination of a year’s worth
of effort from many people. As we
implement the MAP over the next
three years, we will see resulting improvements throughout the college.
• Our Strategic Enrollment Management Committee has been working
hard to identify and help at-risk students earlier in the semester. They
noted that at risk students often had
never logged into email or D2L. By
having faculty reach out to these
students before it was too late, the
committee noticed that there was an
increase in the number of students
who were logging in to D2L. The
number of students that hadn’t
logged in was much lower after this
intervention than it was when the
data was first pulled.
• Our Closing the Loop (CtL) student
assessment efforts are taking hold.
As of late February, 94 faculty have
begun CtL assessments. This makes
CtL one of the most comprehensive
assessment projects ever done at
RCTC.
Clearly these action projects are having
an impact on the college. Through MAP,
we focus on our future. Through SEMC,
we retain our students. Through CtL,
we engage in campus-wide, thoughtful,
PDCA student assessment. Through efforts like these, we will continue to grow
as a college.