What’s Up with DEI: El Paso 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 El Paso Community College in El Paso, Texas.

El Paso Community College (EPCC) serves nearly 30,000 students in El Paso County, 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

• Math emporiums have been implemented on all five campuses and each one has been, or is in the process of being, scaled up. The college is on pace to reach their target of having 30 percent of developmental math students enrolled in math emporiums by spring 2012 and will likely exceed that target by summer 2012. Students enrolled in math emporium sections from spring 2009 through fall 2010 successfully completed the course at the same rate as students enrolled in traditional developmental math sections, 67 percent. However, during that same period the withdrawal rate for students enrolled in math emporium sections was four percent less than that of students enrolled in traditional sections.
• EPCC is now serving more than 3000 students in PREP (Pre-testing Retesting Educational Preparation) program, and is on track to continue adding 500 or more students each semester. The PREP Program has become the backbone of the college’s case management system, providing the tracking needed to guide developmental education students through the attainment of their first 30 college credits. From fall 2009 to summer 2010 the percentage of students participating in the PREP Program who advanced at least one level in developmental education coursework is as follows: 65 percent math, 65 percent reading, and 47 percent writing.
• The case management system piloted at two campuses during the fall 2010 semester has now been implemented on all five campuses. The target population is students who test into all three developmental areas (math, reading and writing); there are now more than 2000 students in the system. Part of this approach involves encouraging students to participate in the EPCC mentoring program. The college currently has 250 mentors (faculty, staff, and students) working with 1,600 students and expects to decrease the mentor-to-student ratio as recruitment efforts are expanded.

Institutional Policy

• EPCC has committed to requiring all developmental education students to enroll in their developmental coursework and a student success course during the first year of their college experience. Procedures to implement this commitment will be in place by the fall 2011 semester.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• The college conducted centralized informational and training workshops for mentors at the beginning of the spring semester and will repeat those at the beginning of the fall 2011 semester.  During the semester, EPCC offered similar sessions on each campus, including a meet-and-greet to bring mentors and mentees together to exchange ideas and discuss concerns.