The Quality Initiative, a focused and systematic improvement project, is one of the most innovative changes in the revision of the HLC accreditation process.
Fort Lewis College's Quality Initiatives are to increase student success and improve student retention and graduation rates by:
Current Status: Every student is assigned a faculty advisor and a staff advisor. Students must obtain authorization from their faculty advisor (and only their faculty advisor) to register for classes. In addition to assigned advisors, students seek input from various places on campus, including, but not limited to, NAC, El Centro, TRiO, Leadership Center, and Disability Services. Advising is uneven, and there are no clear roles for those involved in advising students. There is no uniform evaluation of advising in faculty review. Objectives: Create clear roles and guidelines for advisors. Create a mechanism to evaluate faculty advising based on newly established roles and obligations. Utilize technology more efficiently to improve degree tracking for both students and advisors. Create trigger points to ensure students monitor the progress toward degree completion more effectively.
Current Status: A student is not required to declare a major at a particular time before graduation. Objectives: Create a “Mother Plan” to guide students toward a four-year graduation. This would include academic progress goals and implications for academic probation and termination of financial aid if consistent progress is not being met. Prevent student malingering.
Current Status: No systematic navigation tools assist students towards degree completion. Some departments have their own tools; however, the catalog is updated annually, making it very difficult to navigate degree requirements.
Objectives: Create a map for graduation for each program of study (for first-year students and third-year transfers). Maps will be available to students on the departmental and/or program website. Each program of study will develop and implement a detailed four-year instruction plan. This would include annual course offerings, faculty teaching, and sabbatical schedules. Move to a two-year catalog schedule.
Ensure understanding of and support for the QI among faculty/staff and students;
Develop eight-semester degree maps, publish maps in the catalog, and publicize recruiting, advising, and orientation materials;
Note: This activity, originally a strategic plan action item, was escalated into a matter of compliance with the state statute in the Fall of 2012. Per the Colorado Department of Higher Education, all FLC programs must comply with the degree length in the 2013-14 catalog. After the degree maps are completed, the QI will see this activity by ensuring their publication in the catalog and inclusion in recruiting, advising, and orientation materials.
Implement a degree planning and tracking technology to enhance support for student decision-making about course selection and sequencing and student self-monitoring of progress toward a degree:
Develop four-year instructional plans so degree tracking technology functionality related to course sequencing can be programmed:
Create institutional encouragement for students to graduate on time:
Clarify the roles and responsibilities of faculty and professional advisors:
Note: This activity incorporates into the QI the work by the Faculty Advising Committee on roles and responsibilities of faculty and professional advisors that began in the Summer of 2012 and which explicitly addresses the advising of students who are declared vs. those who are undeclared.
Create data reporting and data collection systems to evidence the QI;
Note: The report to the QI must be evidence-based. The Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment will be consulted about best providing that evidence using existing and new data reporting and collection systems.
Fall 2012
Winter 2013
Summer 2013
Fall 2013
Winter 2014
Summer 2014
Fall 2014
Winter 2015
An ambitious change project aimed at improving FLC’s academic enterprise (aka a ‘Quality Initiative’) is a new requirement to reaffirm institutional accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission. FLC is up for reaccreditation in 2015-16, so the QI's focus was taken from items already in the College’s Strategic Plan (Action items 1.a.i-iii).
Excavating clear paths to on-time graduation will be a quality improvement. That said, the QI does not monopolize quality improvement projects. Many other groups outside of the QI are working on improving the quality of the educational experience for our students.
Because of the short timeline for implementation of the QI – three academic years – we will not be able to show improved four-year graduation rates for a specific cohort as evidence of the QI’s success. Therefore, the success of the QI from an accreditation perspective will be measured by implementing the activities designed to remove institutional obstacles and create institutional encouragement for four-year graduation. We will continue to monitor four-year graduation rates after the end of the QI.
The HLC states on its website that the QI “is intended to allow institutions to take risks, aim high, and if so be it, learn from partial success or even failure.” For this reason, the primary evaluative criterion will be “the genuine effort of the institution.”
Following the principle of under-promise and over-deliver, we only committed to degree maps for these two groups of students for the QI. To truly serve our students, we must push on and develop degree maps for all major student categories.
The development of four-year instruction schedules is the linchpin of the QI, as it will be the most significant change in current institutional practice. We are pushing most of the QI activities out this year to work with administration, department chairs, and faculty over two years to implement this activity successfully.
Probably. At this time, we are developing a conceptual map for incentives. We will be studying the various options next semester.
All of us are responsible for articulating the institution’s/state’s perspective on four-year graduation to students and supporting them in staying on or getting back on track.
All students must know they must be enrolled in 15-18 credits per semester to graduate in four years, depending on their academic program and prior credits. The student will decide whether to enroll at the recommended level or not. Practically speaking, their financing will drive students’ decisions about load. Currently, the federal government only requires students to be enrolled in 12 credits to receive full financial aid without any institutional policy requiring a higher credit load.
The student will decide whether to graduate on time or not. What the QI seeks to do is to remove obstacles for students who do want to finish in four years. The QI activities will also make more straightforward for students the possible consequences of taking longer (e.g., courses may not be available, students may accumulate more considerable debt and/or exhaust specific sources of financing) so they are making truly informed decisions on this issue.
Dr. Beverly Chew, Coordinator of Degree Planning Resources and Professor of Psychology.
Because we could submit a formal proposal for our QI for review by the HLC staff and peer reviewers beginning September 1, the QI Taskforce was the first accreditation team formed. Faculty members were selected in consultation with the Faculty Senate, and the Student Affairs representative was chosen in consultation with the Vice President for Student Affairs.