What’s Up With DEI: Zane State 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 Zane State College in Zanesville, Ohio.

Zane State College serves 2,700 credit students in Southeastern 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

• Zane State’s intensive advising program, begun as an ATD pilot, is at full scale, serving all students who test into at least one developmental education course. Advisors monitor unmet prerequisite reports for all three developmental subject areas and re-enroll students who are inappropriately registered. The partnership of quality classroom instruction and intensive advising has enabled the developmental education program to maintain high course retention rates and successful completion rates despite the recent 9 percent growth in new students placing into developmental courses. Course retention rates range from 88-96 percent, with successful completion rates ranging from 72-82 percent.
• The college has implemented seven Project ADVANCE courses, accelerating students’ progress through developmental education by pairing two developmental courses in one semester or paring a developmental and a college-level course. Nearly two-thirds of the students eligible for these courses participated in the 2010-2011 academic year. Project ADVANCE students have higher course retention rates, successful course completion rates, and winter-to-winter retention rates than the traditional developmental students. ADVANCE students are also accumulating more college-level credits in their first year. A new eligibility determination process will enable the college to reach even more of the students that could benefit from this intervention.

Institutional Policy

• In the first year of the DEI grant, Academic Services at Zane State was restructured. The Developmental Education Department became an academic department within the Arts and Science Division with full-time faculty supervised by an associate dean. This integration of the developmental education department into Academic Services and the acknowledgement of the academic contributions the developmental education program makes to students’ progress to degree or certificate completion has resulted in unprecedented support from the college community.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• In January, 92 faculty (both full-time and adjunct) participated in a two-day cooperative learning workshop presented by faculty from Patrick Henry Community College. A subset of faculty have pursued more training, attending the two-day institute on active learning on Patrick Henry’s campus in May.