Response to U.S. Department of Education Request for Information (RFI) on Promising and Practical Strategies to Increase Postsecondary Success

Submitted by Valencia College, Orlando, FL.

Contact information: Dr. Joyce Romano, Vice President of Student Affairs

Valencia College, P.O. Box 3028, Orlando, FL 32802-3028

Telephone: (407) 582-3423/Email: .

LifeMap

LifeMap is Valencia College’s developmental advising model and system that promotes student social and academic integration, education and career planning, and acquisition of study and life skills. LifeMap integrates all college faculty, staff, and resources into a unified system to create a normative expectation and focus of student effort to develop life, career, and educational plans early in their college experience.

LifeMap was first developed from 1994-1999 as a part of Title III grant funded initiative. The initiative also has roots in the College’s participation in the League for Innovation’s Vanguard Learning College Initiative in 2000. The purpose of these efforts was to make Valencia a more learning-centered college, and to address the differences in completion rates among students from different backgrounds. Several factors led to the creation of LifeMap:

·  75% of students were required to take at least one college-preparatory course;

·  Completion rates of college preparatory course sequences were low;

·  Maintaining access was a priority for the college during a time of growing enrollment;

·  Graduation rates were low;

·  Graduation rates of under-represented students (Hispanic and African-Americans) were lower; and

·  The fragmentation of services and support systems encouraged student “dependency”.

As described above, the institution’s motivation for designing LifeMap was dissatisfaction with student results in the completion of developmental education and student graduation rates, particularly among students from disadvantaged backgrounds who are a critical part of the community the College serves. Another concern was the fragmentation of student services among Valencia’s multiple campuses.

The basis for LifeMap was the theory that even in their earliest interactions with Valencia; students should know the College’s expectations for their learning and progression. Built initially on the concept of Developmental Advising as published by Susan Frost, the final model of LifeMap reflects the theoretical constructs and research by several scholars from the field. Valencia’s own description of “what works” for student success was coined in the phrase “Connection and Direction”. Through this “big idea”, the College believes that students are more likely to persist and achieve their life, career, and emotional goals if they feel safe, welcome, respected, and acknowledged; are both challenged and supported academically; and have a plan for completion.

The centralizing theme of LifeMap is student goal-setting. It includes a norm that students name their career and educational goals, and establishes a system to set and document these goals, facilitate planning and implementation of goals, developing assessment processes to re-evaluate goals, and documenting the achievement of goals.

LifeMap is the College’s developmental advising model and processes, however, developmental advising is the term used to describe the process that students are in as they enter, progress, and move beyond Valencia to their next educational and/or vocational destination. In clarification, Valencia uses “developmental” in the sense of human development, rather than the way the term is used to refer to those students who start in courses below college level, i.e. developmental education.

LifeMap is a five-stage model viewed from the student perspective that provides guidance to students on how to successfully achieve their career and educational goals. Each stage includes an outcome, performance indicator, and guiding principle that ties to the literature on best practices in higher education, and specifies a time frame in terms of academic progression. The Five Stages are:

Stage One: College Transition (Middle School to College Decision)

Stage Two: Introduction to College (0-15 credit hours)

Stage Three: Progression to Degree (16-44 credit hours)

Stage Four: Graduation Transition (45-60 credit hours)

Stage Five: Life Long Learning (New career or career improvement)

The evaluation of LifeMap and its impact on student learning and success is another major and ongoing component. As part of the College’s learning-centered initiative, which has been ongoing since the beginning of this discussion regarding developmental advising, LifeMap has contributed to Valencia students’ gains in traditional institutional effectiveness measures:

·  Fall to Spring persistence of new students increased to 86% in 2010 from 79% in 2002.

·  Fall to Fall persistence of new students increased to 65% in 2009 from 58% in 2002.

·  New student completion of 30 college credits in three years increased from 43% in 1997 to 57% in 2008.

·  New student associate degree graduation rates in 5 years increased from 23% in 1997 to 33% in 2008.

·  From 2002 to 2010, developmental education sequence completion in 2 years increased from 48% in reading to 80%; 55% in writing to 78%; 34% in mathematics to 61%.

·  Valencia received the first Leah Meyer Austin Award for Achieving the Dream for reducing targeted course completion gaps among students from different backgrounds while raising course completion of all students.

·  Valencia is the 2012 inaugural winner of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence based on our student outcomes of completion/transfer, learning, workforce, and equitable outcomes.

Student surveys and focus groups, analysis of the use of online LifeMap tools, and review of the completion of student learning outcomes informs LifeMap’s impact on student learning.

LifeMap Website: http://valenciacollege.edu/lifemap

Tags: Student Services, Student Success, Advising

1