Academic and Student Affairs Lead Initiatives within the Strategic Framework
AVC Meeting Updates
March 5, 2012
1. Metro Plan
- Student survey of all metro college students (designed to gauge interest in baccalaureate education) will be piloted and then sent via email this week. While it is being sent from the center at Perham, the email address and letter will be that of each student’s school.
- Metro presidents met Friday March 3. Primary topic of conversation was a draft “scope of work” for a consultant who would be hired by the Alliance to advance the development of a plan. Outcome of significant discussion was agreement to rethink the contract to align with work already planned or underway.
- Staff from ASA met with metro CFOs (Todd Harmening) and metro CAOs (Leslie Mercer) on Friday, March 3.
- Metro presidents hosted state university presidents at a dinner the evening of Monday, March 5; the agenda included discussion of a range of delivery, provider and site options.
- The group of Presidents from the Leadership Council involved with the Metro Plan met on Tuesday morning March 6 and discussed progress and on going concerns
- Chancellor Rosenstone and Vice Chancellor Knowlton met with the University Sector Presidents at noon on March 6th and developed a strategy for moving forward with requests for some data elements to assist the design of expansion of baccalaureate degrees in the Metro area.
2. Underserved Communities
- Whitney Harris, Rassoul Dastmozd, and Mike López met with Chancellor Rosenstone to discuss the charge and outline some possible approaches
- Mike López prepared a toolkit of promising practices to improve developmental education, given that students of color are more likely to be placed in developmental courses than White students.
- Vice Chancellor Knowlton suggested adding President Sue Hammersmith to the group, and a meeting was scheduled to further lay out an approach to this initiative.
- Whitney Harris, Rassoul Dastmozd, Mike Lopez, Sue Hammersmith and Doug Knowlton met briefly after Leadership council and identified several data elements that will be shared as we move forward to develop a best practices approach to engaging the underserved communities (for this purpose those communities will be defined as the communities of color)
3. Extraordinary Education
-E-Education
-Signature learning experiences
-Learning outcomes
-Collaboration among faculty and across Colleges and Universities
- Still awaiting information on the activities on various campuses.
- Saint Paul College is planning its Faculty Forum for April 2. President Dastmozd reports that they have launched a website for faculty to post results of industry site visits.
- Lynda will meet with Cheryl Neudauer (faculty lead on MCTC Faculty Forums) today.
4. P-12 Alignment
- The P-12 conference has been rescheduled for March 28.
5. Student Success (persistence and completion)
- The ASA committee of the board will be working on a board goal of “Creating Access to Success Pathways for MnSCU Students. The Board of Trustees Academic and student Affairs Committee will explore, discuss and advocate for research-based best practices in promoting student success (persistence and completion)
- Review of campus feedback on the recent Developmental Education and Student Success conference will be informing decisions about future faculty/staff training on best practices.
6. Developmental Education A CAO Task Force on Remedial/Developmental Structural and Policy Questions is to make recommendations relative to the following two sets of questions:
- Should MnSCU set a “cut score floor” with Accuplacer for our institutions system wide regarding developmental credit programming? Should students with scores below the floor build their skills through non-credit learning (e.g., Adult Basic Education, Online Modules and Continuing Education)?
- Should MnSCU establish a set of core developmental learner outcomes as the basis for developmental education statewide?
7. Transfer of Credits
Campuses were provided feedback on their compliance with various components of the Smart Transfer Plan. A report was provided to the Leadership Council on possible future improvements to the transfer activities within the system
8. Workforce and Customized Training
Transportation has been added as an industry sector to the spring 2012 meetings; agriculture will be rescheduled for June/July, 2012.
- Forty-three industry meetings will take place in April and early May; over 35 will be held at business locations.
- State chamber is supporting the regional workforce meetings by finding business locations, refining the agenda and possibly facilitating meetings.
- DEED is compiling and analyzing industry – occupation data by region; data reports will be posted on a website several days prior to each meeting.
- Public announcement of meetings will be made week of March 12, along with the completion of the online reservation system www.mnworkforceneeds.eventbrite.com
Grow Customized Training
- Presidents Kopischke and Helens met with the administrators of customized training and continuing education on February 22, 2012 to discuss possible strategies.