What’s Up With DEI: Cuyahoga 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. Earlier today, we introduced Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, OH.

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) serves more than 55,000 students in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. 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

• Tri-C has exceeded its goal for increasing the number of students in a course pairing a developmental math course (Algebra I) with a math success course. Of the students who participated from fall 2006 through fall 2010, 63 percent successfully completed their Algebra I course in the semester in which they took the paired course, compared to a 60 percent success rate for students in matched comparison groups. The college will continue to gradually increase the number of sections offered; they are conducting analyses to determine which students benefit most from this approach.
• Tri-C has exceeded its goal for increasing the number of students enrolled in supplemental instruction (SI) sections; the college increased the number of SI sections from 10 in the first year to 35 in the second year. The college has created a very strong faculty and student development program for SI and they are implementing scheduling and marketing changes in response to student feedback.

Institutional Policy

• The college made a critical policy decision to eliminate late registration, effective fall 2011. The new registration policy will facilitate Tri-C’s ability to enforce the orientation attendance policy. College-wide data show that students who entered in fall 2010 and participated in an on-campus orientation were retained in spring 2011 at a rate of 15 percentage points higher than those who did not participate. 

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Faculty and staff involved with the SI program created a course for SI student leaders, designed to provide ongoing support and training for the leaders. The new leader course was taught for the first time on all three campuses in spring 2011.
• After two years of emphasis on cooperative learning training for faculty, a team of 11 Tri-C faculty will be certified as “in-house” trainers. The team of certified faculty trainers will design a cooperative learning training for the third year of the grant.  In addition, faculty who have already been trained are pairing up to observe each other’s classes and provide feedback. The faculty members will receive a small stipend to participate.