What’s Up with DEI: Coastal Bend Community 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 Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Coastal Bend Community College in Beeville, TX.

Coastal Bend Community College (CBC) serves more than 3,000 students in nine rural counties in South Texas. 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

• Coastal Bend redefined case manager duties and hired a full-time case manager for both the Alice and Kingsville campuses. This allowed case managers to increase the number of students served, the number of contacts made, and the number of interventions offered to students.
• Sections of CBC’s Fast Track English and reading courses are now offered on three campuses, in back-to-back eight week sessions. The courses had a 96 percent course completion rate and an 88 percent course success rate (students who receive an A, B, or C grade). Almost all students testing into two levels of remediation completed both levels during the course. Additional course offerings have been added.
• The Accelerated English Learning Community has also been expanded to all four campuses.

Institutional Policy

• The Student Success Task Force was reinvigorated as the Student Success Team, solidifying this committee’s ongoing responsibility for the vision, oversight, and coordination of all student success work at CBC’s four campuses. A small workgroup, with representatives from all sectors of CBC personnel, meets routinely to address DEI-specific issues, review data, share success stories, and expand promising practices.
• The college has instituted a number of supportive policies, including: the elimination of late registration; all students are required to take an Accuplacer Review course before testing; and students who have remediation needs may not register for courses online, but must meet with an advisor for registration. The college instituted this policy for developmental math students as part of their Achieving the Dream work; the policy now extends to students testing into any developmental education subject area.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• CBC invested in training for three new math instructors with limited experience working with developmental students, including monthly departmental meetings, professional development, software training, and an opportunity to make site visits to view successful models on other campuses or attend the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) conference.