EAC SA Report

Eastern Arizona College

Systems Appraisal Feedback Report

February 19, 2008

SYSTEMS APPRAISAL FEEDBACK REPORT

in response to the Systems Portfolio of

EASTERN ARIZONA COLLEGE

February 19, 2008
ANNOTATED WORKING COPY

30 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2400 Chicago, Illinois 60602-2504 800-621-7440

SYSTEMS APPRAISAL FEEDBACK REPORT In response to the Systems Portfolio of EASTERN ARIZONA COLLEGE

February 19, 2008

Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Elements of the Feedback Report

Strategic and Accreditation Issues

Using the Feedback Report

Critical Characteristics Analysis

Category Feedback

AQIP Category 1: Helping Students Learn

AQIP Category 2: Accomplishing Other Distinctive Objectives

AQIP Category 3: Understanding Students’ and Other Stakeholders’ Needs

AQIP Category 4: Valuing People

AQIP Category 5: Leading and Communicating

AQIP Category 6: Supporting Institutional Operations

AQIP Category 7: Measuring Effectiveness

AQIP Category 8: Planning Continuous Improvement

AQIP Category 9: Building Collaborative Relationships

Eastern Arizona College

Systems Appraisal Feedback Report

February 19, 2008

Executive Summary

The following are summary comments on each of the AQIP Categories crafted by the Appraisal Team to highlight Eastern Arizona College’s achievements and to identify challenges yet to be met.

Category 1 Helping Students Learn

• Eastern Arizona College has identified the teaching-learning processes present throughout the institution. It is evident that much sharing occurs in an informal manner; however, the institution should investigate more formal structures to present, review, and evaluate current information on student-learning opportunities. JB: Explain processes for presenting, reviewing and evaluating current information on student-learning opportunities.

• Eastern Arizona College provides evidence that it is committed to helping students learn. While the College has indicated some areas needing attention such as retention issues in several courses, it would benefit from a broadening of comparisons of results to include external entities. JB: EAC is focusing on student retention for one of next Action Projects.

• Eastern Arizona College embraces continuous quality improvement through the various processes in place to constantly evaluate and improve the College’s systems by looking at results and by using the data to improve current practices, policies and procedures, as well as instructional programs and courses. There is a need, however, to provide a more complete explanation of the processes used for these purposes. Without a narrative description and an accompanying use of appropriate examples to explain the processes used, it is difficult for an external audience to fully comprehend all of the nuances of processes and procedures used by the College. JB: Need to provide more narrative to more completely explain processes for using data to improve policies and processes.

Category 2 Accomplishing Other Distinctive Objectives

• While maintaining a sound financial footing is a definite strength of the College, it does not address clearly the category of Accomplishing Other Distinctive Objectives. The determination of other distinctive objectives appears to be poorly defined and media-related rather than process-related. JB: Need to explain why maintaining a sound financial basis is an important and distinctive objective because of equalization funding. Yes, need to define better.

• EAC provides a list of its secondary activities but lacks focus on how the processes are working and how they can be improved. As a result, the College may miss numerous opportunities for improvement in this area. JB: Yes, need to articulate processes better.

Category 3 Understanding Students’ and Other Stakeholders’ Needs

• Eastern Arizona College provides information about understanding the needs of students and other stakeholders. Tables and figures present a tremendous amount of information about how the institution functions. Within this category, the institution did not articulate HOW the College identifies, analyzes, prioritizes, and then addresses these needs. JB: This is an Opportunity.

• While the College has provided multiple charts to indicate the processes and procedures in place to understand student and stakeholder needs, it is not clear that any improvements have occurred specifically due to an analysis of these processes and the associated results. JB: Not quite at that stage yet.

• EAC’s faculty and staff have not been viewed as stakeholders; EAC may be missing opportunities to improve its retention of faculty and staff. JB: Yes, include in next Systems Portfolio.

Category 4 Valuing People

• EAC has provided objective and comparative data related to valuing people; there is a need to provide the processes to measure additional areas and procedures used throughout this category. Data collected is presented in tables consistent with the category; however, there is a need for attention to the procedures, process, and approaches used to collect the information. Without thoroughly considering the meaning of the AQIP questions for the Systems Portfolio, the College cannot get full benefit from implementing the continuous quality improvement model that AQIP is intended to provide. LKA: Given space restrictions, much of the narrative was abridged with just the results presented in table format. Revisions to this section will incorporate more descriptive process and procedure information.

• Table 4-3 denotes how the College evaluates employees. Given the dependence on part-time faculty, EAC may gain great benefits in the area of Helping Students Learn by further developing the evaluation system of part-time faculty as is done with full-time faculty. JB: A process is already in place—just not explained in this category.

• EAC has demonstrated a strong institutional commitment to recruiting, orienting, developing, and valuing a strong, professional, committed teaching and non-teaching staff.

Category 5 Leading and Communicating

• EAC has presented a number of charts and tables; however, often there is insufficient narrative for each of these to aid understanding both the procedures and processes used for Leading and Communicating. JB: Need more narrative on charts and tables.

• The College does not provide any concrete results for leading and communicating processes and systems. Without a set of clearly defined results, EAC will not be able to make improvements in this area. JB: EAC is not at the Results stage for this category.

• It does appear that communications are a major concern, and the College recognizes that just sending out more emails is not the answer to making faculty and staff feel informed and included in the process.

• While EAC’s recent focus on improving internal communication and developing leadership among faculty and staff reflects appropriate priorities, increased attention to enhancing EAC’s leadership role in the local community and region and to communicating effectively with community and regional stakeholders is warranted. JB: Need to include how EAC leadership works with community and regional stakeholders.

Category 6 Supporting Institutional Operations

• Throughout this category, EAC makes excellent use of tables to illustrate data collected and information gleaned from surveys and discussions. While results are identified and some target statements are included, using measurable outcomes in target statements would provide more clarity as to attainment of goals. The College has an opportunity to identify more specifically the actual outcomes expected from such systems and processes, expressed in measurable terms, which in turn will serve as a basis to continually improve these systems and processes associated with providing support services for both student success and administrative functions. DS: Where available EAC needs to show actual outcomes in target statements; where not available, EAC needs to identify desired outcomes and measure outcome accomplishment, then show improvement base on outcomes.

• EAC’s approaches to identifying processes, results, and potential improvements of its student and administrative support processes appear to be random rather than systematic. The College would benefit from a more systematic approach. DS: EAC has underway an action project to coordinate support processes and to evaluate them in terms of how they impact student retention.

Category 7 Measuring Effectiveness

• EAC’s statement has accurately summarized this category; “We recognize that at this stage in the development of our continuous improvement program specific key performance indicators in many of the reports listed as sources of performance indicators need to be defined and processes for their specific implication development. Many improvement processes remain to be defined and so results in many areas demonstrating effectiveness are not available” (page 74).

• EAC’s processes for monitoring the effectiveness of information gathering, sharing, analysis and interpretation seem to be focused on creation, circulation, storage, and access to only digital information. While information management is certain to be increasingly dependent upon digital systems, attention to the human creators’ and users’ processes is also needed. JB: Too focused on digital systems.

• The College is to be commended for designing and building its own information management systems for course management, course evaluation, and course performance. Through this, EAC has ensured that information gathered is relevant to the College’s needs.

Category 8 Planning Continuous Improvement

• Collectively, EAC’s many areas of opportunity for planning continuous improvement reflect a need to make these processes more systematic. It is difficult to identify a logical and consistent approach to planning. Planning by budget may result in the failure to approve potentially beneficial plans or in programs based solely on financial capabilities. JB: EAC is focusing on developing a strategic plan for one of its new Action Projects.

Category 9 Building Collaborative Relationships

• EAC has presented indicators, narratives, tables, figures, and graphs throughout this category; this is commendable and helpful. As presented, however, it is difficult to determine how the collective efforts have been used to establish, build, and support collaborative relationships from either a departmental level or an institutional level. There is a critical need for a clear, logical, and consistent approach to institutional planning. JB: Need to identify whether relationships are at the departmental or institutional level.

Accreditation issues and Strategic challenges for Eastern Arizona College are listed in detail within the Strategic and Accreditation Issues Analysis section of the Appraisal Feedback Report.

Elements of the Feedback Report

The Systems Appraisal Feedback Report provides AQIP’s official response to your Systems Portfolio by a team of readers trained in evaluation. After appraisers independently reviewed your document, the team reached consensus on essential elements of your institutional profile, strengths, and opportunities for improvement by Category, and significant issues for your institution. These are presented in three sections of the Feedback Report: Accreditation Issues Analysis, Critical Characteristics Analysis, and Category Feedback. These components are interrelated in defining context, evaluating performance, surfacing critical issues, and assessing institutional performance.

It is important to remember that the Systems Appraisal Team had only your Systems Portfolio to guide their analysis of your institution’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. Consequently, their report may omit important strengths — if you were too modest to stress them in your Systems Portfolio, or if your discussion and documentation of them was unconvincing. Similarly, the team may have pointed out areas of potential improvement that are already receiving the institution’s attention. Again, the team used its best judgment in identifying improvement opportunities. If some of these areas of potential improvement are now strengths rather than opportunities because of your own focused efforts, that is all to your credit. If the team was unsure about an area, we urged it to err on the side of giving your institution the best possible advice about where investing your efforts might pay off. If some of their advice comes after the fact, after you’ve already tackled an area, no harm is done.

Executive Summary: Summative statements agreed upon by the Systems Appraisal Team based upon the institution’s achievements and challenges in regards to each of the nine AQIP Categories. Strategic challenges for the institution are listed in detail within the Strategic and Accreditation Issues Analysis section of the Appraisal Feedback Report.

Strategic and Accreditation Issues Analysis: Strategic issues are those most closely related to your institution’s ability to succeed in reaching its mission, planning, and quality improvement goals. Accreditation issues are areas where you have not yet provided evidence that you meet the Commission’s Criteria for Accreditation, or where the evidence you have presented suggests you may have difficulties, now or in the future, in meeting these expectations. If accreditation is essential for your institution then any accreditation issues identified are, by definition, also strategic. The Systems Appraisal Team identified both of these kinds of issues through analysis of your Organizational Overview and the feedback it provided for each Category, as well as by reviewing the Index to the Criteria for Accreditation that you provided along with your Systems Portfolio. This list of strategic issues offers a framework for addressing ongoing improvement of processes and systems, serving as an executive summary of the Report’s key findings and recommendations.

Critical Characteristics: Your Systems Portfolio’s Organizational Overview provides context for the team’s knowledge of your institution’s identity, mission objectives, strategic goals, and key factors related to improvement. Critical Characteristics are those features most important for understanding the institution’s mission, environment, stakeholders, competitive position, goals, and processes. Characteristics having the greatest relevance to each Category are identified in the Report.

Category Feedback: The Report’s feedback on each of AQIP’s nine Categories specifically identifies strengths and opportunities for improvement. An S or SS identifies strengths, with the double letter signifying important achievements or capabilities upon which to build. Opportunities are designated by O, with OO indicating areas where attention may result in more significant improvement. Comments, which are keyed to your Systems Portfolio, offer brief analysis of each strength and opportunity. Organized by Category, and presenting the team’s findings in detail, this section is the heart of the Report. At the end of the list of strengths and opportunities for each Category is the team’s consensus assessment of the institution’s stage of development on that particular Category. This section consists of a series of statements reflecting the reviewers’ assessment of the institution’s current status in relation to critical quality characteristics: robustness of process design; utilization or deployment of processes; the existence of results, trends, and comparative data; the use of results data as feedback, and systematic processes for improvement of the activities that the Category covers. Since institutions are complex, maturity levels may vary from one Category to another.

Strategic and Accreditation Issues

In conducting the Systems Appraisal, the team attempted to identify the broader issues that present the greatest challenges and opportunities for your institution in the coming years. These are all strategic issues, ones you need to grapple with as you identify your institution’s strategies for confronting the future and becoming the institution you want to be. The team also examined whether any of these strategic issues put your institution into jeopardy of not meeting the Higher Learning Commission’s accreditation expectations.

Issues Affecting Compliance with the Criteria for Accreditation. An important goal for the Systems Appraisal was to review your institution’s compliance with the Higher Learning Commission’s Criteria for Accreditation. The peer quality experts who served on the team were all trained in evaluating colleges and universities using the Commission’s Criteria, and the Systems Appraisal process they followed included careful steps to ensure the team used the Criteria as a major factor in their review. As the team reviewed your presentation of your institutions under each AQIP Category, it searched for accreditation-related issues and concerns. In addition, the team used the Index to the Criteria for Accreditation that you provided with your Portfolio to perform a comprehensive review of the Criteria and each Core Component to ascertain whether you presented compelling evidence that your institution complies with each of these Commission expectations.

The Systems Appraisal team concluded that Eastern Arizona College has presented evidence that it complies with each of the Five Criteria for Accreditation and each of their Core Components. Although the Systems Appraisal does not in itself constitute a review for continued accreditation, the team’s conclusion upon reviewing your Portfolio against the Criteria will serve as a telling piece of evidence during the Commission’s next scheduled AQIP review of your institution for Reaffirmation of Accreditation.

Issues Affecting Future Institutional Strategies. The Systems Appraisal Team identified the following strategic issues to assist Eastern Arizona College in prioritizing and taking action on the important broad challenges and opportunities it faces. From these you may discover your vital immediate priorities, shaping strategies that can lead to a quantum leap in the performance of your institution. Implementing these strategies may call for specific actions, so AQIP’s expectation that your institution be engaged in three or four vital Action Projects at all times will help encourage your administrators, faculty, and staff to turn these strategic goals into real accomplishments. Knowing that Eastern Arizona College will discuss these strategic issues, give priority to those it concludes are most critical, and take action promptly, the Systems Appraisal Team identified:

• EAC needs to establish key performance indicators (KPI’s)—that is, what will be measured in order to ensure that the College is operating effectively in carrying out its mission. Once these KPI’s are established, the College can identify appropriate assessment tools that will allow them to gather information about relevant results in the form of metrics for those key performance indicators. Analysis of the results can then be used to direct improvements.