Focus Group Responses for Standard 4

Strategic Thinking and Planning

  1. Effective planning and evaluation occur within the institution at multiple levels across units and lead to priorities and clear institutional implementation activities.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
9% / 73% / 18% / 0%

Comments:

  • Where does planning occur?
  • Faculty level
  • Department level
  • Program level
  • Developing assessing portfolio project
  • Are there too many steps; are all the steps necessary?
  • Non-credit always evaluating course offerings to cull out courses hat don’t work and apply resources toward successful courses
  • Persistence = $ = student success
  • Persistence requires institutional commitment
  • Is there a way to make necessary changes mid process?
  • Need a clearer picture of why students are at UHMC and their purpose while at UHMC
  • Develop survey for determining student motivation for attending UHMC.
  • Ambiguity is a given
  • Difficult to plan for all student needs
  • Peer pressure to attend and drop out
  • Survey monkey to determine when students want classes
  • Some programs are disconnected
  • How are we aligned throughout the institution
  • What are our vision, mission and goals?
  • Will our mission continue?
  • Business model layered over education model to increase revenue
  • Ability to make course changes faster to improve educational effectiveness/student learning
  1. Institutional planning activities are well defined, evaluated and align with the institution’s strategic objectives and priorities.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
0% / 64% / 36% / 0%

Comments:

  • Is it time to revisit mission/vision?
  • Is AA supporting or and obstacle to student success?
  • Proactively anticipate consequences of change
  • Don’t loose or weaken “community”
  • Evaluation and Assessment are important
  • Responsive to workforce and community
  • Look outside college for information
  • Partnerships are essential
  1. Planning processes are informed by appropriately defined and analyzed data, and included evidence of educational effectiveness, including student learning.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
9% / 27% / 55% / 9%

Comments:

  • Not there yet, but have made great strides
  • We don’t have a shared vision of role of program review
  • Need to create meaning for institution wide data/information
  • Still short of culture of evidence
  • Lack of clarity
  • Wrong metrics
  • Faculty seem to feel disconnected from administrative planning
  1. Planning incorporates quality assurance, assessment and tracking, comparative data, and use of results to revise and/or improve the process.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
9% / 36% / 55% / 0%

Comments:

  • Yes!
  • What are the forums on campus to analyze data/information?
  • Where do we ask if student learning happens?
  • Do we need more formality?
  • Assessment at early stage of development
  • Assessment tools are being developed
  • Institutional outcomes not defined
  1. Institutional research capacity is used to assess effectiveness and student learning.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
0% / 18% / 64% / 18%

Comments:

  • No
  • Sporadic
  • Not easy to collect needed data
  • Create research structure upfront
  • More training
  • Knowing what evidence to collect
  • Student services perspective
  • What is it that you need to know about your students
  • What are the leading indicators?
  • Align with system priorities without sacrificing institution quality
  • Look at distance traveled
  • Need to develop a better understanding of students
  • Work back from drivers
  • Think Big
  • Incorporate NSF REU
  • More linkages with faculty (partnering) and student research projects
  • Explore partnerships with other universities and colleges
  • Remain open to visiting scholar research
  1. College leadership (faculty, staff and administration), are committed to continuous improvement.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
18% / 73% / 0% / 9%

Comments:

  • Yes, to a degree
  • Ned to create systemic process to maintain focus on continuous improvement through analysis of data, not data alone
  • Contract renewal process help for temporary faculty. What about permanent?
  1. Inquiry into teaching and learning leads to improvement in curricula, pedagogy and evaluation.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
27% / 27% / 45% / 0%

Comments:

  • Act more like a system
  • Data an excellent prompt for analysis/discussion
  • Average faculty not involved with discussion
  • Pockets are involved
  • Need more consistency
  • Assessment should create structure to lead this conversation
  • Small programs find it difficult to engage colleagues
  • Math has system list
  • System connections are important
  • Most student life offices are one person shows
  1. Stakeholders are actively involved in the assessment of the effectiveness of educational programs and their feedback is disseminated and used to inform improvement.

We Do This Well / Aspects Need Our Attention / Needs Significant Development / Not Enough Evidence
0% / 45% / 55% / 0%

Comments:

  • We don’t know where students go…
  • Internships programs survey
  • Survey of lectures
  • Internal and external stakeholders