New England Board of Higher Education » City University of New York

Comings and Goings: Pedone to Head Mass. Council of Presidents; New Presidents at Suffolk, SCSU

John O. Harney — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 16:03:36 +0000

Massachusetts state Rep. Vincent Pedone announced he'd leave the Legislature to become executive director of the Council of Presidents of the Massachusetts State University System. Pedone represented Worcester for nearly 20 years. He will succeed Frederick Clark, who left the council in November to become executive vice president of Bridgewater State University.

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James McCarthy, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York, was named president of Suffolk University, effective Feb. 1, succeeding David J. Sargent, who announced his retirement in 2010 after heavy criticism of his high pay.

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Connecticut State University System Trustees appointed Mary A. Papazianto to be president of Southern Connecticut State University.

Implementing System-Level Graduation Standards

John O. Harney — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:00:06 +0000

Driven by external pressure for increased accountability and internal pressure for improved learning outcomes, colleges across the country have been developing and refining assessment systems for several decades. In some cases, assessment results have significant positive impact, for example, when used to enhance teaching and learning or as a lever for organizational change. In other cases, the results have little impact, are not seen as useful or not designed for program improvement purposes in the first place. Assessment can have substantial negative effects as well, including ill will among faculty or other key constituents, reputational damage or reduced funding.

In 1999, the Vermont State Colleges (VSC)—comprising Castleton, Johnson and Lyndon state colleges, the Community College of Vermont and the Vermont Technical College—initiated a systemwide planning process that identified multiple strategic initiatives, including several designed to improve outcomes assessment and accountability. One initiative called for the establishment of common graduation standards for all students across the five colleges, at both the associate and bachelor’s levels. The board of trustees wanted to provide a “guarantee” to the public and employers that every graduate of the VSC could demonstrate essential skills for success after college.

The chancellor established a systemwide steering committee to oversee the graduation standards initiative. The committee included faculty representatives from each college and academic deans, and was co-chaired by the academic vice president of the system and the president of one of the four-year colleges. Faculty on the committee were expected to serve as liaisons to the faculty assemblies on each campus, to allow for broader faculty input and to facilitate endorsement of the committee’s plan. Likewise, reports were provided frequently for the state colleges’ Council of Presidents, the chancellor and the broader VSC community.

Areas of competency

The steering committee ultimately proposed six areas of competency: writing, quantitative reasoning, information literacy, oral communication, civic engagement, and critical thinking. Facing significant opposition to the entire initiative from a vocal group of faculty, the steering committee formed faculty-majority subcommittees to define the outcomes and propose assessment strategies for each standard. Several months into this process, civic engagement and critical thinking were permanently tabled as the subcommittees were sharply divided about the feasibility of valid assessment in those areas. This elevated the political challenges associated with assessing a limited set of skills rather than a broad set of learning outcomes such as those identified by the Association of American Colleges and Universities through Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP).

Unexpectedly, it was easier to come to agreement about specific language for defining learning outcomes than about what to call the entire set of competencies. Faculty vehemently opposed the initial label of “minimum competencies,” on the grounds that it potentially conflated expectations for collegiate learning with those at the high school level. Faculty ultimately agreed to the term “graduation standards.” Of course, this semantic shift did not mitigate the challenges associated with establishing appropriate performance levels for the standards, made politically charged given the VSC’s public access mission and that over 60% of students are the first in their families to attend college. Many expressed concerns about creating barriers to graduation. But by far, the most controversy centered on the assessment tool itself.

Fundamental methodological questions were debated. Would faculty design the assessments or would the VSC select commercially available instruments? Who would set the standards for passing? Would all students be assessed or would a sampling technique be employed? At what point in time would students be assessed? Ultimately the steering committee recommended a politically acceptable compromise—adoption of common statements of learning outcomes across the five colleges and agreement on a set of parameters for assessing the outcomes (including that every student would be assessed), while allowing each college to develop and implement campus-specific assessments for each standard. This plan satisfied the demands of the board of trustees and chancellor for common learning outcomes and a “guarantee” of minimum competency, and provided a mechanism for faculty buy-in at the campus level.

Implementation

The academic vice president in the system office worked closely with the college presidents and academic deans to ensure progress on the development of local assessments. The implementation timeline was staggered over a five-year period, beginning with the development of a writing assessment that met the requirements established by the steering committee. One college already had in place an institutional writing proficiency exam, and another had in place portfolio-based writing assessment. These models and others were shared among faculty and provided a foundation for the timely and relatively smooth implementation of writing assessments across the system.

The other three areas proved more difficult to implement. There was wide disagreement about the level at which students should demonstrate proficiency in quantitative reasoning, especially for students in STEM fields as opposed to those majoring in the humanities. There was disagreement about how to differentiate minimum competency in information literacy from what might be expected of high school graduates. Finally, there was ongoing confusion about how to differentiate expectations at the associate and bachelor’s levels. Concerns arose about the potential for wide variation across colleges in the performance levels being assessed, as well as in the overall quality of the assessments.

Several years into the implementation process, the academic vice president in the system office and academic deans at the colleges designed and implemented a process to regularly review the assessment methods and results at the colleges. In addition to annual monitoring of results across all assessments, one competency is evaluated comprehensively per year on a rotating basis. Faculty from across the colleges go together in a retreat format to reconsider the common learning outcomes, analyze local assessment methodology and results, and make recommendations to the presidents and chancellor for improving the process. This provided a mechanism for faculty to have a significant role in the ongoing improvement of the assessment system, while supporting the broader strategy of engaging faculty in assessment as part of the regular work of teaching and learning.

Given that writing was the first area to be implemented, it was also the first to be evaluated. As a result, revisions were made to the learning outcomes, as were recommendations for improving the reliability and validity of the local assessments. Writing faculty from across the system shared student writing samples and assessment rubrics, a process they found both useful and engaging, particularly given the opportunity for expanded colleagueship beyond the small departments in VSC colleges. Most recently, the assessment of information literacy was reviewed, which identified areas of concern in the current approach, including the wide variability in expectations across departments within colleges. Additionally, there was agreement that the standards and implementation are not rigorous enough in relation to intellectual property and the ethical use of information

Results and lessons learned

Given that all students would be assessed across all standards, the instruments developed by faculty at each college were, in theory, high-stakes. The VSC policy remains that no student can graduate without demonstrating competency in all four graduation standards. However, as assessments were implemented and have now been in place for several years, very few students fail to the pass the assessments in time to graduate. Students routinely require multiple attempts to pass (and benefit from a variety of academic supports in place to help them), but none of the colleges limited the number of times a student could attempt demonstrating competence. The de facto pass-rate, then, remains nearly 100%.

The perception of a high-stakes model may have brought about low standards (as did the original concept of “minimum” competencies). But the most consequential decision was to allow for the design of local assessments within a system-level model. This approach provided for substantial faculty ownership of the process but precluded any cross-college analysis or national benchmarking with similar institutions (although two colleges use a nationally normed online assessment of information literacy). Equally significant was the decision to measure competence at a single point in time rather than at multiple points in order to measure learning gains over time. While the notion of measuring the “value added” by a college degree is fraught with methodological problems related to isolating the effects of the institution (versus those resultant of maturation or experiences outside the institution), it has become the gold standard in outcomes assessment, particularly at a time when popular books such as Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Arum and Roksa, 2011) have raised questions about the extent to which students learn anything at all in college. Further, measuring competence at a single point in time provides little insight into how students acquire skills and the extent to which particular curricular or pedagogical approaches impact learning gains.

To a large extent, the approach did not take advantage of the opportunity to aggregate and analyze system-level data to improve teaching and learning. Despite having a single administrative information system across the colleges, inadequate attention was paid to developing robust data-collection and analysis systems to support the graduation standards initiative. The strategy of early compromise was critical to ensuring faculty engagement in the assessment process, but it leaned too far in the direction of local autonomy. This manifests an inherent tension in higher education system leadership: supporting strong, unique colleges while maximizing the benefits of the system.

In other respects, the assessment approach did maximize the benefits of being a system. VSC policy remains that meeting the graduation requirements at one college also meets the graduation requirements at any other VSC college, despite the variation of assessment methodology. This benefits transfer students and encourages community college students to continue their studies in the VSC. Other benefits of the assessment model include systemwide awareness of national trends in assessment and accountability, faculty agreement on essential learning outcomes for all VSC graduates, and increased student awareness of performance expectations for college graduates.

Perhaps most valuable has been the annual systemwide retreat devoted to analyzing assessment methods and results in particular areas. In order for an assessment model to ultimately succeed as a means of improving learning outcomes, systemic processes must be in place at all levels to continually monitor, evaluate and strengthen the approach. The annual review process could potentially be enhanced through student involvement, reflecting the growing body of literature speaking to the potential benefits of engaging students in the study of teaching and learning. But by bringing together faculty from across colleges, systems have the opportunity to establish what the Carnegie Foundations calls “networked improvement communities,” which provide for highly structured, cross-functional, cross-institutional inquiry. Finally, the decision to focus on a limited set of outcomes, while for some creating the perception of diluting the greater purpose of a college education, provides the opportunity for in-depth analysis of how students learn a discrete set of skills commonly viewed as essential for success in and beyond college.

Carol Moore is the past president of Lyndon State College and currently works as a consultant. Karrin Wilks is the past senior vice president of the Vermont State Colleges and currently serves as university dean for undergraduate studies at the City University of New York.

The High School to College Transition: Minding the Gap

John O. Harney — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:25:31 +0000

The value of a college degree is well documented. College graduates earn at least 60% more than high school graduates. Beyond the economic value, college graduates show higher rates of civic participation, engage in volunteer work and even have a much higher likelihood of being “happy,” according to a 2005 survey by the Pew Research Center. Students who drop out without attaining a college degree will forgo significant lifetime earnings and are likely to be saddled with debt that may impact their ability to buy a car, a house or even return to finish their education at a later date. And the consequences for failing are not just for the students who leave. Our economy, and many argue our democracy, depends on maintaining and building an educated workforce and citizenry. Most of our efforts over the past decade have focused on college access and we have made progress in preparing students to aspire to and apply to college. However, given our poor track record of graduating students, we have much work to do to help students attain a college degree. The data show that only about half the students who enroll in college end up earning a four-year college degree. This statistic has not changed much in over a decade. Yet the stakes have increased since President Obama took office. He has committed to increasing the number of high school graduates who enter and succeed in college, understanding that completing the degree is the prerequisite for career success.

The reasons for student attrition have been researched and documented and include: lack of finances, lack of preparation and poor fit between expectations and what students experience once they arrive on campus. An entire industry has been created to assess students and assess the campus environment, and the literature is abundant with best practices in student retention. My own campus employs many of them: early alert and mid-semester warnings, academic tutoring, peer mentoring, financial literacy programs and a first-year seminar to ease the transition to college. Despite all these efforts, we still lose more students than we’d like and are stymied about how to improve our retention and their academic success. We have developed a multitude of programs to focus on student success, but to some extent our approach is to do these for or to the student; too often the students themselves haven’t been true partners in efforts to help them succeed.

High school students may have a pretty good understanding of what they need to do to get into college, and of the importance of attending college for career and financial success, but they have an undeveloped and even unrealistic understanding of what it takes to successfully transition, persist and graduate from college. As I think about our students, I see a persistent and pervasive gap between what students are expected to be able to do in college and what students actually come prepared to do. Even those students who test into college-level courses—based on their performance on entering placement tests—seem to lack crucial academic knowledge and skills and appear ill-prepared for the demands of college-level work.

Students bring with them the habits and attitudes that may have been “good enough” to get by in high school but will not support their success in college where “passing” is not enough to maintain sufficient academic progress toward a degree. If they don’t get a C or better in developmental and foundation courses—also know as the “gatekeeping” courses—they cannot progress and lose time and money without reaching their goal. Too often students exert the minimal effort that they perceive will be good enough to pass the course. They seem more focused on getting through the course rather than learning the content and skills which can inform their work and lives. This is especially true when they don’t readily see the point of what they are learning—typically in their general education and developmental courses which they view as too much like high school.

Many of our faculty work hard to “meet students where they are,” allow for extra credit work, and encourage students to meet with them outside of class for further instruction or clarification. Still, too many students don’t take advantage of these opportunities and seem either unable or unwilling to seek assistance. However, I don’t believe that this is because they don’t want to be in college or they don’t wish to succeed.

The fact is that while many students have the expectations and aspirations to pursue their college dreams, they are unprepared for the work. Despite the reports stressing the need for a rigorous college-preparatory curriculum in high school, many high school graduates enter college lacking the academic habits and skills—including how to read a textbook and take notes as well as study and organizational skills—necessary to successfully transition to college-level expectations.

Beyond academic preparation, one explanation for the high school-to-college achievement gap is what Seton Hall professor Rebecca Cox calls “the college fear factor.” The students she studied know that a college degree is essential to their future success in life and careers but bring tremendous anxiety to the experience. Many bring past experiences with failure in an academic context. And typically, this gets reinforced on their first day of college where they have to “pass or fail” a placement test to see if they are deemed ready for college-level work. They come to college acutely aware of their past failures and lack of readiness and this feeds their self-doubts about whether they will be able to succeed.

So why don’t students reach out to professors who say that “their office doors are open” and they are “always available to meet with students”? Cox believes that students are afraid professors will confirm their academic inadequacy. Because of these fears, students end up not employing the very strategies that will help them such as meeting with professors outside of class, asking for help or asking questions in class for fear of being exposed as stupid. They don’t ask questions, seek outside help from faculty or their peers and may even skip class rather than risk seeming ignorant or slow. Unfortunately, these behaviors only exacerbate the problem. Students may be afraid to even admit this to themselves and usually have no one to turn to who can help them sort through these feelings. This is especially true for students who may be the first in their families to go to college. Finally, too few students see themselves as having some measure of control about their ability to succeed or fail. Those who struggle are more likely to attribute it to bad luck or factors they see as out of their influence. Students see themselves as passive recipients of their professors’ knowledge rather than viewing learning as an interaction between the professor and student. They typically rely on the faculty member to “teach them what they need to know” which usually translates to what will be on the test. This may be attributed to previous school experience or stage of cognitive development or possibly both. Helping students become active participants in their own learning requires skilled teaching, however this is almost never part of most faculty members’ graduate preparation. Research on Latino students by Laura I. Rendón, professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Iowa State University, indicates that students who persist are actively engaged by key adults (who may or may not be their instructors) also known as “validating agents” who take an active interest in and provide encouragement for students and affirm their ability to do academic work. These are people who, in the words of one of our students, “… believed in me before I even believed in myself.”

Increasing student readiness for college is important, but we also need to improve our ability to better serve students. Instead of adding program upon program to the array of services we provide students, I believe we need to fundamentally rethink the first year of college for the increasing numbers of students who come to us who aren’t “hard-wired” for success. Vincent Tinto, distinguished university professor at Syracuse University and widely known expert on student attrition, suggests that unless institutions of higher education do something to reshape the prevailing educational experiences of students during their first year of college and address the deeper roots of their continued lack of success, then we should not expect to see results any different from what we have experienced over the past few decades. Imagine if colleges were ranked by how much students learn once they arrive rather than by how much they need to learn before they enter. While this requires a larger cultural shift, in the meantime, there are a number of systemic models for what a program or a college that is focused on student success might look like.

The City University of New York has come up with a bold plan for a new college structured to improve student success. The college will engage students at admission in developing an educational plan and establishing connections with faculty and staff who will advise, register and help students apply for aid. Beginning in a three-week summer bridge program, students will complete a variety of assessments to diagnose learning strengths and weaknesses and begin to develop the skills and strategies necessary to succeed in their courses. Students will take a required first-year core curriculum integrating liberal arts and professional studies which will lead to a second- and third-year program that places students in linked courses along with internships. Finally, advising and student support services will be “wrapped” around students, and students will work either on campus or in a setting with partner employers.

Another effort is the Foundation Year Program currently being piloted in Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. It entails a structured year-long full-time college-based program that begins with a six-week summer program followed by three 12-week quarters in the fall, winter and spring. An intensive five-day a week schedule includes both credit-bearing and noncredit academic courses as well as supported study time, college and career exploration and leadership, wellness and youth development programming. Additionally, in the winter and spring terms students spend two afternoons per week in internship rotations. The program provides a dedicated student advisor and four full-time faculty who offer writing and math instruction, tutoring and advising to a cohort of 40 students. Though in its first year, program participants are expected to continue as sophomores either at Northeastern or at selected partner institutions.

A well-known approach that isn’t institutionally based is the Posse Foundation’s model, which creates a “posse” or cohort of students who act as a support system for one another in order to succeed in college. Posse Scholars are recruited while still in high school and spend their senior year preparing for their college experience. They meet weekly in workshops that build skills around team-building and group support, cross-cultural communication and leadership. Once they have matriculated, Posse staff visit each university four times a year to meet with Posse Scholars, campus liaisons and mentors. Each mentor meets weekly with the Posse as a team and with each scholar individually every two weeks during the first two years of college. This program recognizes the importance of preparation prior to matriculation and support while in college and to arming students with the skills and tools to be active participants in their own success. It demonstrates that the transition to college needs to begin while students are still in high school and suggests that we might rethink the senior year of high school—especially the second half of the senior year—to focus not just on getting into college, but on getting through college. This could include opportunities for dual enrollment to enable students to experience college-level expectations and assignments while they are still in high school and early placement testing so that students can get information on their academic strengths and remediate areas in which they are weak so that they enter college prepared for post-secondary level work. High schools could also offer the equivalent of a college success course including time management, study skills, reading a textbook and writing a college-level research paper so that students do not have to learn these skills while simultaneously being enrolled in college courses.

Too often college access and success are viewed separately with secondary schools shouldering the responsibility for college enrollment and colleges being accountable for student persistence. The result is typically finger-pointing and blame: High school folks say that colleges need to do a better job of graduating their students while those who work at colleges say that their students would succeed if only high schools did a better job preparing them. The truth is we will never achieve the goal of raising college attainment levels unless we work across sectors to close the gap between high school and college preparation and performance to ensure that students successfully transition and graduate from college.

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Deborah Hirsch is associate vice president for academic affairs at Mount Ida College.