What’s Up with DEI: Houston 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 this week, we introduced Texas’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Houston Community College in Houston, Texas.

Houston Community College (HCC) serves more than 70,000 students in the Houston area. 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

• Given positive results from an MDRC study of HCC learning community offerings and the college’s own analysis, HCC has increased learning community offerings from 10 percent of developmental math offerings in 2009-10 to 20 percent in 2010-2011, with plans for additional increases in the future. Successful course completion rates in learning community and non-learning community courses are 68 percent and 59 percent. The college also has plans for accelerated learning communities that will link the exit-level developmental math course with college algebra. HCC is promoting learning communities on their website right now; check out the tag line on their homepage.
• HCC has gradually increased student participation in a four-week math bridge courses from less than 50 students a semester to currently more than 200 per semester. The results continue to be very positive, with bridge course students having lower rates of attrition and higher rates of achievement and persistence. In spring 2011, students passed the bridge courses at a rate of 79 percent; the pass rate in traditional developmental math courses was 68 percent.

Institutional Policy

• To improve alignment of HCC course and program advising the college has implemented a web-based software called CurricUNET that facilitates the posting, development, revision, and archiving of all HCC curriculum.
• The college has developed an interactive web-based dashboard for 2010-2011 that allows users to check HCC progress in nine categories: access, completions, faculty ratios, financial aid, persistence/retention, placement, satisfaction, student engagement, and transfer. 
• HCC has made significant progress in aligning institutional policies and procedures to ensure better coordination of developmental education, including: automatic blocks on students’ registration for courses for which they have not satisfied pre-requisites, automatic drops of pre-registrants who have been placed on academic probation or suspension with mandatory academic advising and limitations on subsequent course-taking; creation of a new grade (FX) to identify students who fail a course because of lack of attendance; and development of a faculty advising handbook.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• The HCC Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence has developed numerous courses and workshops designed to assist faculty in implementation of DEI interventions:  Freshman Success: First Year Experience; Learning Communities in Community Colleges; Classroom Strategies for Developmental English; and Battle of the Book: Combating the Textbook Reading Resistance
• In Texas, there is currently no floor below which students are allowed to score on the COMPASS exam prior to admission into developmental reading classes. Consequently, the lowest level reading course has a very low success rate. The college is exploring re-testing of students in the tenth week of the semester to see if any progress has been achieved and if not, referring students to other more appropriate programs, Adult Education, ESL, VAST (a program at HCC for those with learning disabilities), or a CE program that incorporates literacy or ESL instruction.