What’s Up with DEI: Valencia College

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing some of the DEI state policy team and college accomplishments from the last year of work. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. Yesterday, we introduced Florida and their state policy team; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Valencia College  in Orlando, FL.

Valencia College serves more than 55,000 credit students in Orange and Osceola Counties. Valencia chose to expand ATD pilots of learning communities and supplemental instruction as part of their DEI work. We’ve selected some highlights from their last year of DEI work in three main categories: scaling, institutional policy change, and academic and supportive service innovations.

Scaling 

• The college has exceeded its goal for increasing the number of Learning in Community (LinC) students: in 2010-2011, they offered 50 sections; this is an increase from 40 sections offered in 2009-2010. When comparing course by course (LinC vs. Non-LinC), developmental mathematic courses that are linked continue to show a higher success rate. For example, the Beginning Algebra course over the past five years has had a 15 percent higher success rate, meaning students earned an A, B, or C in the course. The Pre-Algebra and Intermediate Algebra courses over the same time period have also shown increased student success, 11 percent and 12 percent respectively. 
• Valencia also has exceeded their goal for increasing the number of Supplemental Learning (SL) leaders in classrooms and disciplines. In 2010-2011, there were 410 SL sections, serving 9,500 students; this is an increase from 320 sections in 2009-2010. Supplemental learning continues to have a positive impact on student success overall; while students in gateway courses who attend SL sessions show the greatest success (12 percent to 19 percent greater success rates), the success rate for all students in SL courses is higher (1 percent to 4 percent) even if they don’t attend SL.

Institutional Policy

• Valencia is also revising several course outlines as part of their DEI work. These outlines will be aligned with the Florida Department of Education’s new statewide developmental course competencies. The focus on course outline revisions strategy  is connected to a review process established at the college prior to DEI. However, the goals of DEI helped to shape the revision process and have influenced the outcomes. Valencia’s stated DEI goal of infusing college success skills into developmental reading, writing, and math courses assisted in the process of examining course content and provided the impetus to develop a process for course review. 

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• As part of the redesigned course outlines in developmental education reading, writing, and math courses, faculty have created 25 projects infusing college success skills into their courses.