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.

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.

What’s Up with DEI: Coastal Bend 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 Coastal Bend Community College in Beeville, TX.

Coastal Bend Community College (CBC) serves more than 3,000 students in nine rural counties in South 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

• Coastal Bend redefined case manager duties and hired a full-time case manager for both the Alice and Kingsville campuses. This allowed case managers to increase the number of students served, the number of contacts made, and the number of interventions offered to students.
• Sections of CBC’s Fast Track English and reading courses are now offered on three campuses, in back-to-back eight week sessions. The courses had a 96 percent course completion rate and an 88 percent course success rate (students who receive an A, B, or C grade). Almost all students testing into two levels of remediation completed both levels during the course. Additional course offerings have been added.
• The Accelerated English Learning Community has also been expanded to all four campuses.

Institutional Policy

• The Student Success Task Force was reinvigorated as the Student Success Team, solidifying this committee’s ongoing responsibility for the vision, oversight, and coordination of all student success work at CBC’s four campuses. A small workgroup, with representatives from all sectors of CBC personnel, meets routinely to address DEI-specific issues, review data, share success stories, and expand promising practices.
• The college has instituted a number of supportive policies, including: the elimination of late registration; all students are required to take an Accuplacer Review course before testing; and students who have remediation needs may not register for courses online, but must meet with an advisor for registration. The college instituted this policy for developmental math students as part of their Achieving the Dream work; the policy now extends to students testing into any developmental education subject area.

Academic and Supportive Service Innovations

• CBC invested in training for three new math instructors with limited experience working with developmental students, including monthly departmental meetings, professional development, software training, and an opportunity to make site visits to view successful models on other campuses or attend the National Association for Developmental Education (NADE) conference.

What’s Up with DEI: Texas

During July and August, we’re sharing some of the accomplishments of the last year by our DEI state policy teams and colleges. We’re making our way (alphabetically!) through the six DEI states, profiling the DEI colleges in those states as we go. This week, we’re focusing on Texas, the Lone Star State. Here’s the policy update; look for reports about our colleges over the next few days.

The Texas Association of Community Colleges (TACC) serves as the state team lead for Texas’s ATD/DEI state policy work. Four of the state’s 50 community colleges participate in DEI: Coastal Bend, El Paso, Houston, and South Texas. Thirty-three others are ATD colleges. In the last year, Texas has moved forward on all three DEI State Policy Framework levers:

Data-Driven Improvement

• A revised set of developmental education accountability measures, now based on ATD intermediate and final benchmarks, are publicly posted. TACC presented institutional developmental education success data, based on these same measures, at the Presidents' Summer Conference in July 2011. 

Investment in Innovation

• TACC hosted a meeting of nearly 150 developmental math chairs from across the state, featuring Dr. Uri Treisman, director of the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin and developmental education revolutionary. See his call to action in this video. They began initial recruitment for a developmental math leadership team of college leaders to head up efforts for more comprehensive developmental math innovation and possible redesign.

Policy Supports

• Four bills regarding developmental education instruction at community colleges passed the Texas House and Senate. Deliberations included testimony from Cynthia Ferrell, DEI State Policy Team lead regarding Community College Research Center work on the ineffectiveness of online developmental education offerings. Subsequently, the language in HB 1244 and SB 1564 was changed from mandating online dev ed to include support for “a range of developmental coursework or instructional support that includes the integration of technology to efficiently address the particular developmental needs of the student.” The bills also address the need for new research-based and diagnostic assessment, encourage the use of course and non-course based developmental education, establishes alternative developmental education funding structures, and promotes professional development for developmental educators.

For more details on DEI state policy accomplishments, check out Jobs For the Future’s latest DEI publication Driving Innovation: How Six States Are Organizing to Improve Outcomes in Developmental Education Outcomes.

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.