PROMOTE SOCIAL JUSTICE AT NSCC AND IN THE COMMUNITY BY DELIVERING EQUITABLE STUDENT OUTCOMES

Student Bill Of Rights

• Inclusive, anti-racist, and culturally responsive curricula and pedagogies

• Diverse and supportive faculty and staff who are equity-minded higher education practitioners

• Welcoming, inclusive, and safe campus environments and timely and relevant pathways to graduation and employment

NEW UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE (NUE)

Crosscutting Recommendations:

• Ensure that data is both disaggregated and intersectional at both the campus and system level

• Prioritize the access, success, retention, persistence, and graduation of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, and other racially minoritized students

• Offer ongoing racial educational equity professional development for all public higher education trustees, leaders, and employees to ensure they have the competencies needed to translate the values of the Equity Agenda into action

• Institutionalize equity-based policy and program audits at every level of the system

• Create accountability structures to ensure that progress toward racial equity and justice is being made at every level of the institution

• NUE Category #3: Equity-Minded Teaching, Learning, and Assessment

• NUE Category #5: Hiring, Supporting, and Retaining Faculty of Color

• NUE Category #6: Holistic Student Support

Strategic Framework For Support Services For Student Success

Implementation Pathways

• Cultivate Campus Climate & Belonging

• Focus on Talent & Professional Development

• Expand Access and Accelerate Early Momentum

BUILD A TRANSFORMATIVE, FUTURE-FOCUSED ENVIRONMENT FOR AND WITH THE NSCC COMMUNITY

Student Bill Of Rights

• Diverse and supportive faculty and staff who are equity-minded higher education practitioners

• Welcoming, inclusive, and safe campus environments and timely and relevant pathways to graduation and employment

NEW UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE (NUE)

Crosscutting Recommendations:

• Prioritize the access, success, retention, persistence, and graduation of Black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, and other racially minoritized students

• Institutionalize equity-based policy and program audits at every level of the system

• Create accountability structures to ensure that progress toward racial equity and justice is being made at every level of the institution

• NUE Category #1: Admissions, Enrollment, and Transfer

• NUE Category #5: Hiring, Supporting, and Retaining Faculty of Color

• NUE Category #6: Holistic Student Support

Strategic Framework For Support Services For Student Success

Implementation Pathways

• Cultivate Campus Climate & Belonging

• Focus on Talent and Professional Development

• Create a Data Enhanced Student Success Ecosystem

The metrics through which NSCC tracks progress towards achieving strategic planning priorities are also aligned with state equity initiatives. The Strategic Planning Metrics Team reviewed the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Strategic Plan for Racial Equity and New Undergraduate Experience (NUE) metrics guidance as well as PMRS key indicators to develop plan metrics that were also aligned with state reporting systems and equity guidance. NUE encourages institutions to collect qualitative data from racially minoritized students and to disaggregate quantitative student outcome data by race and to consider “expansive excellence” when defining outcome measures, noting that:

[NUE] recommendations will push institutions to redefine measures of success, moving beyond completion, retention, and graduation rates to measure student engagement, belonging, post-graduate success, and individual and community impact; and above all to move into expansive excellence that increases racially minoritized students’ success—and thereby the success of all students including all racially minoritized groups and White students and with consideration for intersectional identities.

NSCC strategic planning metrics seek to center equity by focusing on “expansive excellence” measures of student life outcomes that go beyond college completion and include successful employment beyond college as well as four-year college completion rates. NSCC’s student access, retention, and completion metrics will also be disaggregated by race/ethnicity in order to better track the outcomes achieved by NSCC’s racially minoritized students. Further, plan metrics incorporate qualitative data collection through student surveys and focus groups to center student voice in the planning process and to help NSCC staff better understand differences in how historically minoritized students and populations access, engage with, and complete college. These data collection techniques give a fuller picture of how well the college is engaging with students holistically by exploring where and how historically minoritized NSCC students experience a sense of belonging on campus and how NSCC can better support these students to achieve their goals inside and outside of the classroom. These bottom-up data collection techniques will also be critical to the development of the NSCC Tactical Plan in Fall 2022.

This strategic plan outlines a bold vision for how NSCC will improve in the next five years, but it also outlines a new approach to truly measuring this concept of “improvement” in a way that is community driven, racially inclusive, student centered, and holistic. These improvements are not only necessary for the success of the college but also for the communities served by the college. NSCC has not only a role, but a duty to dismantle inequities that are systemic. The three priorities outlined in NSCC’s plan clearly direct the college’s efforts towards continuous change that will benefit all students.

This plan document is complete, but there is still much to do to bring NSCC’s new five-year Strategic Plan to fruition. The process itself has brought the community together in a positive atmosphere focused on a common goal: to improve its community by focusing on the holistic student experience and outcomes. Much is uncertain in our economic, social and political world, but the college is well positioned financially, as a result of prudent fiscal management, a Title 3 grant, the Success Grant, and the remnants of CARES and HEERF funding. The future promises an expanded Bertolon Simulation Center, a new Life Sciences Pathways Center and the option of HSI funding and growing opportunities to build philanthropic support for the college. NSCC’s resources are broad, and it is fortunate to have an energetic core of deeply committed faculty and staff to guide its next five years.

NSCC acutely understands the future enrollment and financial challenges detailed at the beginning of this document. The college is confident that this strategic plan addresses those challenges: seeking new students by providing new and relevant academic programs, redesigned course schedules and modalities, and deeper partnerships with our K-12 colleagues, and by improving the outcomes for existing students by supporting them more holistically, changing our operations to make their paths simpler, and rooting out inequities in all aspects of the student experience.

Enthusiastic support in the college community greeted the unveiling of this strategic plan earlier this fall. Of concerns raised, perhaps the most common was the sense that certain issues, ideas, or initiatives were not addressed, or not addressed adequately, in the plan. It is true that not everything NSCC will do as part of the strategic plan, or that we are currently contemplating doing, is included in this document and that is intentional for three crucial reasons:

1) A strategic plan is about setting priorities: including every possible initiative would cloud our collective understanding of our most crucial goals.

2) The last two years have proven just how fast and significantly the world can change around us and change how the college operates: we are intentionally choosing to leave room for NSCC to pivot over the next five years as conditions warrant.

3) A strategic plan document is far less important than its results: results depend on implementation and that, in turn, depends on great ideas and great energy. The best way to generate those ideas and that energy is to ask students, faculty, staff, and college partners to “fill in the blanks” of the strategic plan document and make it their own.

After a year of thoughtful discourse, both within the college community and with external partners, and thorough research of existing conditions and external factors likely to profoundly affect the next five years, NSCC is pleased to present its next five- year strategic plan. We believe it is a blueprint for a future with the power to transform both the college and the communities it serves.