What’s Up With DEI: Sinclair 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 Ohio’s state policy work; now it’s time to learn a bit more about Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Sinclair Community College serves more than 26,000 students in Ohio’s Miami Valley. 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

• Sinclair has set a goal to increase the number of students served in self-paced modular math courses. There are now 10 math module classes offered on the main campus and 12 – 15 classes will be offered during fall 2011. The successful completion rate for modular courses was 56 percent compared to 50 percent success rate in the counterpart conventional sections developmental math. Almost 60 percent of these successful completers went on to take the next course in their sequence. (Some students needed only the developmental courses as a pre-requisite for a technical program.) Sixty-eight percent of those continuing were successful in the next course in the sequence. Of the students who persist and take the final exam, approximately 96 percent pass with a 75 percent or better.
• The college is expanding the number of students served in basic skills boot camps, a one-week intensive developmental education review intended to accelerate students’ progression through the developmental sequence. First offered in math, the college added English and reading boot camps last year. They will expand beyond the main campus to satellite and learning center sites in fall 2011. Summer and fall success rates were 84 percent and 75 percent, compared to traditional developmental course success rates during those quarters, ranging from 51 percent to 63 percent.

Institutional Policy

• Sinclair’s DEI work is closely aligned the college’s AQIP Action Item project, “Improving the First Year Experience.” Additionally, DEI efforts support three of the college’s eight strategic priorities, which have been identified by the Board of Trustees: success for a wide range and variety of students; expand P-20 school linkages; and develop partnerships for efficiency and effectiveness.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• Eight faculty, staff, and administrators were able to take advantage of invaluable best practices campus visits, observing and assessing the developmental education practices at institutions recognized for having excellent programs. Site visits were to Jackson Community College in Tennessee, Eastern Gateway Community College in Ohio, and Virginia Tech.