Annual Program Review Form
2010-11
The completion of this form is part of the institutional program review process. Please submit a completed form to the Program Review Committee and to your School Dean or immediate supervisor by February 16, 2011. Combined responses to questions 1 through 6 should not normally exceed four pages.
Department: New Student Counseling Department
Contact Person: Maria Heredia, Chair
Date: February 17, 2011
Please check this box to certify that faculty and staff in your unit discussed the major planning objectives: x
Description of Programs and Services and their Locations
I) MISSION STATEMENT
The New Student Counseling Department (NSCD) offers academic, career/vocational and personal counseling services to credit and non-credit new, continuing, and prospective students. The department goal is to assist students in navigating the educational system through individual counseling, orientation, student growth and development courses, educational planning, topical workshops and referrals as appropriate. Through these services we support students in making informed choices related to their educational goals.
II) LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Students are able to navigate educational and student support services to enhance their success.
2. Students are able to make decisions related to their educational and personal goals.
III) DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAMS AND SERVICES
A) Orientation
New Student Orientations:
The New Student Counseling Department (NSCD) provides orientation services to new students entering both credit and non-credit programs. Orientations are tailored to suit both native and non-native speakers across 8 campuses. Credit students also have the option to complete an orientation online. Bilingual orientations conducted in Mandarin and Cantonese are offered to credit and non-credit students.
NSCD serves students at the following campus locations: Airport, Chinatown (St. Mary’s), Civic Center (A.P. Giannini), Downtown, Evans, John Adams/(DeAvila), Ocean, and Southeast.
B) Courses
AAPS 100 – a 3.0 unit class assisting students achieve academic success
AAPS 101 - a .5 unit orientation to college class for graduating high school seniors and new
students. A Cantonese bilingual section is offered at Chinatown North Beach for
students transitioning from non-credit to credit.
AAPS 1111- a 15 hour orientation to noncredit certificate programs
AAPS 102 - a 1.0 unit orientation to college class
AAPS 103 - a 3.0 unit class focusing on transfer and student success
LERN 52A – a .5 unit class teaching college success skills for probationary students
LDST 101 – a 3.0 unit class teaching foundational concepts of leadership
SL 10 - a 1.0 unit class focusing on student government
SL 12 – a 3.0 unit class teaching leadership skills
SL 12A – a 3.0 unit independent study class teaching leadership skills
C) Workshops
NSCD Workshops and Collaborative Services:
NSCD offers a number of topical workshops for students throughout the district at various campuses.
Specific workshops offered by the department includes such topics as: major choice and career decision making; Steps to Credit, a workshop that teaches the difference between credit and non-credit courses/ programs and assists students with the credit matriculation process; Path to Success, an educational planning workshop addressing certificate, Associate degree, and transfer requirements; immigrant acculturation; writing personal statements; and applying for scholarships. The department also collaborates with other departments to provide a variety of workshops/presentations on such topics as: financial aid, child development, business, student health and Culinary Arts programs.
Many of the campuses provide community outreach working with various community agencies and CCSF departments such as the Public Health Centers, Job Corps, The Center for Young Women, Women’s Transitional Housing, the Hilton Hotels, the City and County of San Francisco, the Employment Development Division (EDD), UCSF, CDCD, and DSPS, etc.
D) Counseling Services
NSCD provides services to new, continuing, prospective, and concurrent enrollment credit and non-credit students. These services include academic, career/vocational, and personal counseling. Bilingual counseling services are available for students in the following languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Specific services provided by NSCD include:
Individual counseling
· Educational assessment and course advisement
· Exploring educational goals in credit and noncredit certificate programs and majors
· Developing a paper and/or electronic education plan
· Discussing study strategies and time management
· Discussing personal concerns or problems with classes or staying on track
· Referrals to essential support services on campus and in the community
· Referrals to Medi-Cal eligible services
· Counseling for students in classes offered by the department
· Student advocacy – letters of recommendations, references and appeals.
· Scholarships Programs – recruitment, evaluation of applications, and selection, monitoring of student progress, follow-up for continued eligibility, funds distribution and budget management, retention counseling, referrals for ineligible applicants to other scholarship programs.
· Student Case load – students whose grade point average is below 2.0 are invited to meet with a counselor to discuss their progress. The counselor and student work together to formulate an action plan that includes attending the LERN 52A course, developing a realistic educational plan, and referrals to student support services (part of NSCD’s retention/early alert program)
Follow-up
After the initial counselor session all credit students are mailed an invitation to return for a follow-up counseling appointment to discuss their academic progress and develop an educational plan.
1. Please provide reflections on the data trends for your department. If you have additional data that you would like to provide, please also include that here.
Listed are several reasons the data by the Research and Planning office appears to be inaccurate:
· Campuses do not have adequate clerical support.
· SARS grid was not designed for accountability for non-credit counseling contacts
· At the Civic Center campus, matriculation process occurs in reverse order.
· The Evans campuses do not have computer access for students to apply online to receive student ID numbers.
· Unable to accurately count prospective students, in particular those receiving services at campuses other than Ocean
· Non-credit students are better served by drop in “appointments” rather than scheduled appointments.
· The perceived increase in revenue for NSCD is not an increase but rather a reclassification of designated resources due to a decrease in categorical funding.
· The inability to accurately report student contacts in particular the numbers of prospective students in both credit and non-credit served is the result of a data retrieval system that does not adequately address the intricacies of the service delivery in student development.
Departments are given priority for receiving new hires primarily based on the number of appointment contacts they record during an academic year. SARS, as noted above, reflects inaccurate appointment counts for NSCD. Further, NSCD serves students at eight campuses. Students at campuses other than Ocean tend to see counselors more often by drop in. Thus the current system, focused on appointments, undervalues the work done at these campuses.
In addition, the current system used to determine which department gets new hires leaves out crucial contributions to student success such as courses taught, workshops presented: New Student Orientations, Path to Success, follow-up and other activities such as: caseload management, scholarship coordination, SLO development, and high school recruitment activities are only a few of the considerations that are left out when making staff allocation decisions.
Finally, the narrow system leaves out crucial considerations such as the experience of at risk students starting college for the first time. These students often start college during peak registration periods, when counselors are on drop-in only. These are often first generation students who need to spend a certain amount of time with their counselor in order to get their needs met. Measuring the student to counselor ratio during these crucial periods would provide additional information regarding a department’s capacity to fulfill students’ needs, at such times, and would suggest when additional counselors are needed to meet student demand during times of peak use.
The number of students served, in classes, by New Student Counseling has been increasing with significant jumps in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 academic years as reflected in the FTES data. There was a sharp drop in FTEF during the 2009-2010 year reflecting a shift to in-load instruction as well as a decrease in class sections offered due to budget cuts. Productivity soared, in the 2009-2010 year, as a result of the increased in-load instruction and the increase in overall student enrollment in NSCD classes.
The demographic data suggests an increase in the proportion of female, Asian, and new students served by NSCD. However, data on prospective students has been included in the demographic tables, as if it were a level of the “Ethnicity” and the “Terms at CCSF” variables. As the numbers of prospective students are seen as decreasing, this artificially inflates the proportion of the other levels of each variable. Thus the trends noted above may be accounted for, at least partially, by the decrease in prospective students that is reported on the demographics page. However, the decrease in prospective students listed on the data page may be completely erroneous and simply the result of a change in data entry practices employed by NSCD. Some years ago NSCD began recording prospective students in a screen called “contacts” rather than creating a temporary student identification number and recording them as appointments. This change in data entry practices caused prospective students to be counted in the contacts variable along with things like phone calls, e-mails, rather than as prospective students. Thus, the change in data entry practices is likely to have caused the appearance of a decreasing trend, in prospective students, where in reality the amount of prospective students served may have remained constant.
Data show that enrollment at Chinatown/North Beach campus has almost tripled from the 2005-2006 year to the 2009-2010 while enrollment at John Adams Campus has dropped by about 50% over the same period. The enrollment drop at John Adams may be attributed to the construction, that occurred at that campus, that necessitated the use of two separate buildings to contain all of the classes and programs that John Adams offered.
2. Please describe any internal or external developments affecting your department since the last program review.
1. At this most critical time, given the current fiscal situation, NSCD lacks support and advocacy from the administration, due in part to the absence of Vice Chancellor of Student Development.
2. Classes that had been previously taught out of load are now taught in load. While FTES enrollment has increased, over 600 counseling hours per semester were lost.
Class Hours Per Semester Lost
AAPS 100 Fall: 216 Spring: 216
AAPS 101 Fall: 16 Spring: 80
AAPS 1111 - Spring: 60
AAPS 102 Fall: 32 Spring: 32
AAPS 103 Fall: 144 -
LERN 52A Fall: 112 Spring: 96
LDST 101 Fall: 108 Spring: 108
3. Loss of one 50% FTE counselor (transferred to the Tulay Program)
4. Huge budget cuts of 52% in the area of matriculation state-wide, have impacted services for in person orientations and the loss of extended evening and Saturday hours to serve working students unable to come during regular business hours.
5. Newly hired counseling positions are threatened due to a large decrease in State matriculation funding.
6. One counselor will be on maternity leave in Spring 2011.
7. One counselor’s 6 hours of reassigned time to serve on accreditation was not backfilled.
8. Two positions, one consolidated counselor position created from unfilled part-time hours and one replacement position initially allocated to P.E. department as an Athletic Advising position was approved by FPAC and PBC three times and are currently pending. These positions have been given the lowest priority and lengthier postponement than the other Student Development positions.
9. Due to the hiring freeze, we are unable to backfill 2.5 classified positions. This staff shortage thus creates challenges for planning, training, and providing adequate coverage at all campuses served by NSCD.
10. Courses cancelled due to budget cuts were reinstated to be taught in-load.
11. Curriculum for AAPS 102 and 103 were approved Spring 2010.
12. AAPS 1111 which is now required for some non-credit certificate programs is being taught at Chinatown, John Adams and Downtown campuses.
13. NSCD is currently engaged in a Credit ESL Orientation SLO Assessment Project.
14. The ongoing uncertainty created by the fiscal crisis, has increased the stress levels of faculty and staff.
15. The uncertainty surrounding the fiscal climate which impacts classified employee positions creates challenges for planning, training, and providing adequate coverage at all campuses served by New Student Counseling Department.
16. Continue training all faculty and staff on Medi-Cal Administrative Activities (MAA) annually, a referral system for Medi-Cal eligible students. Implementation of MAA activities will continue on a quarterly basis throughout the school year.
3. Summarize your department’s progress since the last program review on implementing your six-year plan for reviewing all courses, programs, projects, and services. Please also update the Excel spreadsheet that contains your timeline for this review and for the assessment of student learning outcomes. If your unit does not offer courses, use this space to discuss your plans for assessing your administrative unit outcomes.
· AAPS 102 (formerly named Guid R) was approved by the Curriculum Committee Spring 2010 and continues to be offered each semester.
· AAPS 103 (formerly named Guid T), a student development course was approved by the Curriculum Committee Spring 2010. This course was revised and the number of units were increased from 2 to 3. Currently, two sections are offered each fall semester.
· AAPS 1111, a 15 hour orientation course for noncredit certificate and transitional studies programs was approved by the Curriculum Committee Fall 2009 and is being implemented at 3 campuses.
· Creation of a course to replace LERN 52A, Probation 1 and 2 is anticipated for Spring 2012.
· The Puente program, a collaboration between NSCD and the English Department underwent program review Spring 2010 and it is anticipated that Puente will continue to participate in the annual program review process.
· Formulate an assessment instrument beginning Fall 2011 to examine the needs of AAPS 101 students to assist in the formulation of SLOs for the course with anticipation of developing an SLO assessment for Spring 2013.