PREPARING STUDENTS TO BE READY FOR COLLEGE, READY FOR WORK, READY FOR LIFE
INTRODUCTION T
oday community colleges are at a crossroads. While they continue to represent a portal to opportunity and growth, expectations have become more sharply defined. The pendulum has swung more fully than in 2012 from access to completion. Students and community stakeholders come to community colleges now with a sense of urgency against a backdrop of burgeoning student debt, increasing income inequality, and the need for adaptive skills that match jobs that are rapidly evolving. Critical thinking skills matter today more than ever before as graduates face a world that is marked by competition, global unrest, and political incivility. Wallace State Community College is embarking on its fourth five-year plan as a leader institution that understands its various roles in establishing broad and deep learning partnerships that transcend conventional institutional definitions. Through the establishment of its success agenda—Start Early, Start Right, Finish, Succeed—the college has positioned itself for strategic dynamism that differentiates Wallace State from other institutions. The college has developed this 2017-2022 strategic plan around the development and implementation of a new organizational re-design, Guided Pathways. This model contextualizes the sense of urgency that has gripped the nation, as a critical need has emerged for curricular and administrative pathways marked by simplicity, clarity, and alignment. The students the college will serve in the next decade do not have time to navigate labyrinthine lists of electives and options or administrative processes that are confusing and that
become burdensome barriers to academic success. To this end, an underpinning of Guided Pathways is the development and dissemination of curricular maps that are congruent with broader meta-majors. This model makes it possible for a student to enter a broad cluster of majors, and once embarked, to shift into another major within that cluster without starting over. The majors themselves within the clusters are clear, stratified, and aligned. Electives, for example, seldom appear in the curricular maps once a student moves from the broad meta-major to a specific program of study. Despite the financial constraints of a postrecessionary economy, Wallace State continues to invest heavily in academic programs and services that promote innovation, learning, and workplace preparedness. Alignment has become a critical and central component of resource acquisition and allocation. The college has invested, for example, in economic development studies that identify programs with the highest potential for growth and adaptation, and strong industry involvement continues to guide the institution’s strategic use of resources. In addition, Wallace State continues to invest in capital projects that will better position the institution for strategic growth and development. The most recent master plan, for example, specifies the construction of a new entrepreneurship center for continued business incubation and a new $2M welding facility as a result of strong state and regional demand.
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The accomplishments of Wallace State have been exceptional, including being named an Aspen semi-finalist for two of the previous four years, an award given annually to the most outstanding community college in the nation, and being one of a select number of colleges participating in the seminal Achieving the Dream program, a program begun by the Lumina Foundation and other organizations to enable more students to achieve the dream of realizing their own personal and professional potential, a step that often begins at the door of a community college. In 2015, the college was one of thirty colleges in the nation chosen to lead the Guided Pathways movement under the aegis of a conceptual framework presented by the American Association of Community Colleges. Wallace State is beginning its new five-year plan with a broader and stronger vision for its role as a vital, creative force for positive change for everyone touched by its many programs and services. This vision incorporates its success agenda but moves further and faster into its role as an accelerator of personal and professional growth and becoming, a vision expressed simply and powerfully in the idea of readiness: Ready for college. Ready for work. Ready for life. The concept of readiness as a foundation for strategic growth has not changed from the previous strategic plan, but the context for readiness has undergone dramatic re-definition in shifting from ambiguity and choice to definition and specificity.
OUR MISSION The Wallace State Community College mission statement serves as a beacon for guiding the college’s programs and services:
Wallace State Community College is committed to learning that transforms lives and communities. In support of the mission, Wallace State Community College is committed to student success through a student-centered, innovative, engaging, and supportive learning environment; teaching excellence; respect for uniqueness and diversity; strategic partnerships that advance community, workforce and economic development; cultural enrichment of our communities; and accountability and integrity.
OUR VISION Wallace State will facilitate learning without boundaries, will be committed to every student’s success, will exemplify the spirit of perpetual improvement, and will promote an overarching sense of community.
OUR PROCESS In August 2016, Dr. Vicki Karolewics, the president of Wallace State, commissioned a planning task force to review the previous fiveyear plan and establish a new five-year plan that reflected the college’s shift to the new Guided Pathways organizational model. This Strategic Planning Task Force was comprised of approximately sixty representatives of various campus and community constituencies. The Task Force met off campus at a planning retreat on October 14, 2016. The retreat began with background briefings from the College Dean, the Director of Institutional Advancement, and the Director of Advising. The President and College Dean served as facilitators, guiding review of the institutional mission and vision, and developing the strategic priorities and goals needed as a framework for the next five years. The retreat culminated in the production of a written compendium of views on the future direction of the college. This five-year strategic plan is based on the work of the Task Force before, during, and following the October retreat.
PRIORITIES & GOALS
READY FOR
COLLEGE
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 1
To strengthen and streamline portals of entry, including recruiting, outreach, and marketing, and points of entry, such as physical and electronic contacts, through innovative and effective methods and practices The terms “portals of entry” and “points of entry” represent two dimensions of the same challenge, how to best reduce barriers of access to the college’s programs and services. Reducing barriers at entry means developing seamless intake processes and early alignment with meta-majors and programs of study. Increasingly, prospective students and other stakeholders reach out to a community college through the Internet and all its modalities, including search engines, social media, and other communication mediums. The first actual points of entry also remain critically important, a guiding principle that requires superior and market-tested levels of customer service and intentionality.
Goal 1:To develop predictive intake and marketing strategies that maximize growth, reduce ambiguity, and advance the institutional mission Goal 2:To develop infrastructure and technologies that optimally position the college in a dynamic global marketplace Goal 3:To implement at all points of contact a superior and market-tested model of customer service marked by quality, efficiency, consistency, adaptability, and effectiveness
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 2
To enhance student success through multi-dimensional programs and services that improve preparedness, build self-esteem, and remove barriers to academic and personal success In an educational milieu of increasing numbers of underprepared students, the college must develop acceleration strategies that move underprepared students expeditiously toward a credential and entry into the workforce and/or transfer to a senior institution. It remains a core institutional value that all learners benefit from access to wide-ranging support services that promote completion and alignment within a specific program of study.
Goal 1:To maximize the success of developmental students through acceleration strategies characterized by innovation, effectiveness, and best practices Goal 2:To develop a comprehensive network of support that empowers learners and reduces barriers to student success
READY FOR
WORK
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 3
To enhance workplace preparedness through intentional programs and services that improve in innovative ways the institutional response to the needs of business and industry, that utilize partnerships to promote the college’s mission and vision, and that produce graduates with the skills and discipline needed to succeed in the workplace. It is a critical part of the college’s mission to offer programs and services that demonstrably respond to both the present needs of business and industry and the dynamics of rapid economic change. To this end, the college must be positioned to understand the needs of regional employers and to effectively and quickly move students from an area of interest to a targeted program of study and completion.
Goal 1:To systemically strengthen and enhance institutional awareness of the present and future economic landscape Goal 2:To develop synergistic partnerships that advance the mission of the college
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LIFE
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 4
To develop multiple strategies of resource acquisition to support a culture of learning In recognition of the precarious nature of funding and the college’s interest in reducing the financial barriers to entry, the institution will need to aggressively pursue multiple revenue sources and strive always to recognize opportunities to utilize economies of scale and other measures of good fiscal stewardship and effectiveness.
Goal 1:To maximize current revenue sources through proactive communication and management strategies Goal 2:To aggressively pursue new revenue opportunities, including government and industry partnerships, to support present and future programs and services
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 5
To hold as a foundational principle that the dynamics of change will be grounded in a culture of evidence marked by integrity, accountability, and a belief in a continuous cycle of institutional improvement It will be a critical underpinning of the college’s strategic initiatives for the next five years to have in place a framework for data-informed decision-making. The college will continue to be an innovator and a beacon of opportunity for diverse learners, but its strategies will be contextualized by meaningful data both to provide context for predictive analysis and to serve as a crucible for determining effectiveness.
Goal 1:To develop and maintain baseline institutional data utilizing the institutional report card, the sixteen core indicators of effectiveness recommended by the American Association of Community Colleges, and other established measures of performance Goal 2:To utilize institutional data through environmental scanning and other methodologies to promote a personal and institutional culture of integrity and inquiry
S T R AT E G I C P R I O R I T Y 6
To establish transformational learning opportunities within, across, and beyond the college’s curriculum that prepare participants to lead successful and fulfilling lives without boundaries The college will embrace the challenges inherent in a changing educational landscape and be an agent of positive change in aggressively seeking ways to enhance the learning partnership for a broad community of participants. Foundational to the college’s curricular and co-curricular offerings is alignment, the development of a clear, coherent learning continuum that promotes workforce success and personal wellbeing.
Goal 1:To develop and implement communities of learners that enhance engagement among all campus constituencies Goal 2:To offer online and web-enhanced courses that utilize multi-dimensional sources and constructs that challenge the limits of learning Goal 3:To challenge the college’s community of learners to think critically and transformationally about themselves and their place in the postmodern economic, social, and cultural milieu
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