Achieving the Dream

Primary Pieces of the Clarify Meta-Majors, Design Program Maps Strategy:

• Reinvigorate Guided Pathways: Pillars 1 and 2
  • Collaboration is key to implementing guided pathways. Faculty and advisors need to work together to map out program pathways, cooperating within and across departments to define sequences of courses that students can take to fulfill program requirements.
• Clarify pathways at ACC
  • Examine shared course requirements for programs. This will identify which programs can be clustered or grouped together into meta-majors as core requirements of each program.
• Create program maps, including ones that map exploratory majors
  • They should include a description of the program, including special admission requirements. A list of jobs and transfer programs the program is designed to prepare students for, a program sequence of courses beginning in non-credit, academic and non-academic milestones that students are expected to achieve to ensure timely program completion, critical courses that student must pass to progress, info on baccalaureate programs, or further education opportunities.
• Ensure students enter a program of student as soon as possible
  • Assist students in exploring their interests and strengths and connect them to people, courses, and experiences that can support their growth. The goal is to ensure that minoritized and underserved students are helped to enter and complete programs that lead to family-supporting jobs or transfer to 4-year colleges.
• Help students unlikely to be accepted into limited-access programs find other viable program paths
  • Short-term intensive programs, apprenticeships, boot camps, micro-credentials, digital badging, certificates, etc. that support career advancement and achievement of career goals that are flexible, affordable, and diversity learning opportunities.

Primary Pieces of Revise Student Onboarding Strategy:

• Dive into Pathways
  • Lay out pathways from the point of interest on the website, with maps that show the sequence of courses through a program, put into the online orientation, and then into advising. Using pathways tools to walk students through completion with "decision-making" milestones. First term includes a course that lights the fire, a college math of English class, and required first-year experience contextualized into their pathway.
• Enhance Orientation
  • Brand online orientation to ACC And require all students. Show a stepped out checklist. Be specific about what you want them to know. Are we getting them ready for advising, finish onboarding, what? Hype students up, tell them we want them here and they belong. Should be more engaging, include student and faculty testimonials. Talk about the difference between high school and college.
• Increase engagement with programs from the beginning
  • Offer a pathway-specific welcome event so students and faculty can meet each other. Organize visits from local employers to expose students to experiences and challenges they may encounter in particular career fields. Offer exploratory career sessions, internships, hands-on experiences throughout the first term.
• Expand career and transfer advising to all students
  • Complete educational planning each term that maps out courses until completion. Use the Colorado Work-based Learning Continuum. Engage students in career-focused research to identify unanticipated careers that align with their pathway interests and preferences.
• Design CE as an on-ramp to ACC
  • Work with local school districts to align career academies with ACC's pathways.

Primary Pieces of Develop Guided Self-Placement Strategy:

• Inform students about the differences between degrees, certificates, transfer, community college baccalaureates, and professional / technical degrees
  • Utilize transfer, career, FYE, navigators, student mentors / ambassadors, and faculty to distribute caseloads effectively and connect students with advisors who can assist them in achieving their goals and match the advisor's field of expertise.
• Clarify overall Educational Goal and major (degree, certificate, transfer)
  • This should be a factor in guided placement to clarify the math and general ed pathway requirements. Begin with a student's informed goal: students should select a goal that is aligned to their ultimate educational pathway. If the intent is to continue their education beyond a certificate or an associate degree at some time in the future, this will influence current course-taking, even if the student's short-term goal is to complete a certificate or associate degree and get a job.
• Allow students to select placement for English and math
  • Provide students with samples of coursework to determine placement alongside reviewing high school GPA, AP, CLEP, or other diagnostic testing scores. A student's self-analysis of their math and English strength or challenges in the past is fact.

Primary Pieces for Academic and Non-Academic Early Intervention Processes Strategy: 

• Warning Signs
  • It takes all of us! Look at the warning signs such as academic issues, accountability, behavioral, and coordinate as a team approach to intervention. No one person should be assessing this, determining the outcome, or creating the messaging. It should have different perspectives at the table.
• Incentivizing Task Completion
  • Advancing a 15-to-finish campaign to promote full-time enrollment and completion of milestones that we know contribute to retention and completion. Incentives could be free parking, food voucher, course tuition, bus pass, stipend, and much more.
• Messaging
  • Change the name, change the perception. Some may regard the use of support services as an indication that they "do not belong in college." Making non-academic support an integral part of every student's experience means that all students will receive help, even if they think they do not need it. Intrusive supports can involve making participation in advising or student success courses mandatory. Non-academic supports can also be integrated into academic curriculum. College faculty trained in pedagogies that encourage relationship-building can help students develop college skills and cultural capital.
• Ongoing assessment of students needs and alignment of supports
  • Capturing information about students during onboarding will assist with the evaluation of our supports and if we have the supports students need.
• Create more structure with a "human touch"
  • Greater structure may reduce the need for intensive support by simplifying students' choices and minimizing how many decision points students encounter.

Primary Pieces of Build a Welcoming Culture of Care and Belonging Strategy:

• Meet students basic needs
  • We know students cannot fully participate in college activities or feel a sense of belonging if their basic needs are unmet. The existing social inequalities in access to healthcare and technology are included here. These impede students' access to and participation in college classes and other activities.
• Keep students informed
  • Conduct a communication audit to determine how much, when, why, and how communication is disseminated to students. Consider students that are most vulnerable to becoming disconnected. Are we leveraging social media for students, families, potential students? Who are our intended audience for each?
• Use peer mentors and student leaders to cultivate a sense of community
  • Students want to hear from other students the realities of college and campus life, how they juggle work and family responsibilities, and serve as representation that they belong in a system not originally set up for them. Serving as role models, these leaders not only build community and generate enthusiasm among students, but they also grow and develop both personally and professionally.
• Increase collaboration to ensure students are at the center of all decisions
  • This includes with students, business and industry, families, internal assemblies to gather perspective and learn about student experiences and involve social and economic capital into the decision-making.
• Demonstrate care and compassion
  • Demonstrating care and compassion for students' feelings, experiences, and circumstances is morally right and essential to cultivating a sense of student belonging. 

Primary Pieces of Academic Support Opportunities Throughout the Student Journey Strategy: 

• Establish shared personal and institutional responsibility for whole college success
  • There are multiple touchpoints throughout the student journey based on their academic needs. Many are mandatory and require an all hands on deck approach. We required a shared agreement that we all accept responsibility for the success of our students and there is not wrong door through which a student can enter to get the support they need.
• Monitoring student progress
  • Frequent and consistent checks on student progress to ensure students are connected to supports before they reach a crisis point. Ongoing assessment of services and supports is conducted and assessment of unmet need. Staff and faculty regularly follow up on referrals and use of services.
• Use targeted data and technology across the institution
  • Faculty, staff, and students make broad, routine use of data and technology to monitor students' progress toward their goals. Leverage technology to identify students' individual needs and connect them to appropriate services.
• Reimagine policy and practice
  • Policies ensure the college delivers services proactively and seamlessly, rather than expecting students to find services whtn they need them. Protocols ensure faculty and staff know which supports each student receives and any outcomes. Student learning outcomes clearly define the value and purpose of each support. Policies are routinely reviewed to ensure they facilitate the desired student experience and do not produce unintended barriers for students.
• Make it visible
  • A new focus on making sure supports are visible, are asset-based, and easily accessible and may be embedded for all to experience because we know it works. Ideas: pop-up food pantries at events. PR the food pantry via the institution. Use the campus garden to support the food pantry.

Primary Pieces for A Framework that Embeds Student Success Promising Practices in a First-Year Experience Strategy:

• A pathways / career-based approach to AAA
  • Required for first-time, full and part-time students. Linked with another class in pathways to contextualize content. Have the 2nd semester advising in the course and creation of success plan.
• Cohort model / learning community
  • Can the course be a 2-day, all-day session before regular classes start or something like that? Can we do focus groups with these students?
• Incorporate campus engagement experiences
  • Incorporate the use of library and career services
• Students receive follow-up
  • Track and follow-up with students through to credential achievement or job placement.
• Well-trained, vetted, and high-engaging instructors
  • Requirement to take EMTA. Include the development of a long-term assessment plan in EMTA using CCSSE survey results, student surveys, and focus groups.

Primary Pieces for Strategic Scheduling Strategy:

• Year-long schedule for all campuses; sequencing
  • Make data-informed decisions about the right balance of course delivery modes, as well as the times, days, and location in which courses are offered. Prevent bottlenecking and pathway to graduation.
• DFW rates contribute to high course repeat rates
  • Enrollment in the courses fill up quickly as the number of students repeating courses overlap with new student enrollments, impacting course availability. Target the institution's most challenging curricular bottlenecks for blended course redesign.
• Policies and procedures
  • Require / encourage students to change majors early on if key milestones are not met. Consider a student schedule planning tool with dedicated marketing and tracking to encourage students to take advantage of the tool. 

Primary Pieces of Accelerated Options to Complete Programs and Degrees Strategy:

• Embedded student supports
  • A range of financial, academic, and personal supports embedded throughout the program. High touch advising.
• Competency-based / more flexibility
  • Use PLA. Students can start courses whenever they fit into their schedule. Match course schedules to student demographics within particular disciplines. Use student personas to do this.
• Shortened AA degree / weekend courses
  • Can this be an option for stop-out students to attract them back to the college. Is this an option for CE students? Shorten and modularize curricula and offer interim credentials linked to career advancement.

Primary Pieces of the Milestone Advising Strategy: 

• Spread out advising responsibilities and connect students with a single point of contact
  • Utilize transfer, career, FYE, navigators, student mentors/ambassadors, and faculty to distribute caseloads effectively and connect student with advisors who can assist them in achieving their goals and match the advisor's field of expertise.
  • A single point of contact advisor who can handle various issues and provide personalized assistance, ensuring a smooth transition from one department to another if necessary.
• No appointment necessary
  • A way for students to get quick answers to questions without having to go to another department or make an appointment. The goal is to minimize wait time for students to get their questions answered and move forward.
• Utilize faculty in advising model
  • A split model of advising that includes faculty might include a designated time period during which all students see a professional advisor and then are transferred to their department or program.
• Advisor Training
  • Select an advising model like intrusive, appreciative, etc., that includes collaborating with students to define and reach their goals. Develop standards and training to assist advisors in using the model and meeting expectations. Engage in developing out the student personas to educate the who college about our students' live experiences.
• Annual assessment practices that include feedback from students
  • Define how student success is understood at ACC and engage the whole college in developing this definition. Continuously improve by gathering student feedback on advising satisfaction to identify areas for enhancement to better meet student expectations.

Primary Pieces of Active and Work-based Learning Throughout the Student Life Cycle Strategy:

• Training
  • This category applies to training across the college about what is active and work-based learning and how it can be applied over the student life cycle. Is it expensive and how do we engage employers? It also applies to faculty / instructors on how to embed in their courses / programs. Application of training in the classroom: how instructors are using in measured timelines throughout next year.
• Ensure equity in access
  • Unpaid work-based learning must be addressed to ensure equity. Accommodate working learners. Integrate data elements into data systems and track participation of faculty / instructors and students. Information on students that participate or offered access would answer questions about equity. Incentivize employers and students to participate and complete surveys.
• Assessment of student learning
  • Supervisor assess the student's competency at the end of the program, based on goals student and employer agreed on at the start.