The Center also has had the good fortune of receiving funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to continue work on guided pathways, specifically Pillar Four: ensuring students are learning. As part of this grant, the Center’s role is to develop a common understanding of and resources for ensuring students are learning so that institutions can more effectively implement guided pathways. To learn more, visit ccsse.org/center/initiatives/ensurestudentsarelearning/

In September 2019, the Center will host the annual Center National Advisory Board meeting. We are pleased to have five new members:

• Michael A. Baston
  President
  Rockland Community College (NY)


• Beverly L. Bower
  Don A. Buchholz Endowed Chair & Professor of Higher Education
  Executive Director, Council for the Study of Community Colleges
  Director, Bill J. Priest Center for Community College Education
  University of North Texas


• John E. Roueche
  Sid Richardson Regents Chair Emeritus
  The University of Texas at Austin


• Joe Schaeffer
  President
  Laramie County Community College (WY)


• Jan Yoshiwara
  Executive Director
  Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges

For a complete list of the Center’s National Advisory Board members see: ccsse.org/center/about_cccse/nab.cfm

As spring conference season kicks off, I hope to see you at one of the Center sessions. I look forward to hearing what your college is doing to improve the lives of students in ensuring that they are successful. See you soon.

Looking for a way to truly create engagement with CCSSE results, RCC President Cathy Kemper-Pelle shared select data with the entire college at the fall in-service keynote using a “Family Feud” gameshow approach. The in-service location did not support technology for an electronic polling app; however, the low tech approach was very successful.

Employees were seated eight per table, and each table had four large cardstock sheets individually labeled A, B, C, and D. Questions and four possible answers were projected onto screens. Each table discussed the posted question and selected an answer. At the designated time, each table held up the card with the letter of its selected answer. The correct answer was revealed with “Survey Says!” and College staff were on hand with buckets of candy to reward tables with the correct answer.

A few key data points from the survey were shared, and there was a follow-up session after lunch with more in-depth results for those interested in discussing the student responses further. While the discussions during the keynote were fruitful, we learned that it might be beneficial to have faculty and student services employees intermingled to deepen the conversations.

Employee Feedback
Attendance at the in-depth afternoon session was strong with good discussion, and the feedback was positive: “Good information that we should all be aware of. Presented in a fun and interactive way.”

The Institute reinforced that students need support to navigate the challenging and sometimes confusing processes of educational planning and academic decision-making. The presentations and discussion groups at the Institute helped the team gain in-depth knowledge of the Guided Pathways model. The support and resources provided by Institute faculty member Dr. Evelyn Waiwaiole helped the team think about how to implement this model at the College.

Leading up to the Institute, the team completed a comprehensive review of its CCSSE and SENSE results as well as institutional data. The framework provided for this review challenged College stakeholders to think critically about data and how it can be used to enhance student success. It also provided an excellent model for reviewing data that has informed several other projects at the College.

The Institute culminated in the completion of the Short-Term Action Plan. The Plan helped the team prioritize and focus on the steps needed to get started. It encouraged the team to address “low-hanging fruit” and achieve some pivotal early wins. The Plan outline prompted the team to think about various aspects of each of the steps identified, consider potential challenges, and identify necessary resources. The team was able to return to the College and immediately begin this important work.

Upon completing the initial steps identified in the Short-Term Action Plan, the team used the same framework to develop a plan for the next phase of the project. Currently, teams of faculty and student services professionals are working to develop Program Maps, organized around eight Pathways, to help guide students from intake to graduation. To date, Program Maps have been developed for over 40 transfer intents and degree and certificate programs.

The information and resources provided at the Institute also led to the development of a new case-management advising model named Polk Advising, Career, and Transfer Services, or PACTS. The model is organized around five phases of the student lifecycle from on-boarding to graduation. It employs intentional, appreciative advising strategies in order to prepare students for transfer, employment, and/or continuing education.

Featured sessions included:

• Rethinking Advising with Melinda Karp, Founder and Principal of Phase Two Advisory
• Skyline College Student Panel
• Student Financial Stability and Guided Pathways with Priyadarshini Chaplot, Vice President of Strategy, National Center for Inquiry and Improvement
• Using CCSSE and SENSE to Understand the Onboarding Process with Evelyn Waiwaiole, Executive Director, Center for Community College Student Engagement

The Center is the lead partner in management of the CAGP Institute series and is the main contributor on the voice of student and faculty engagement in guided pathways integration. The Center has created Pathways tools (Toolkits and Modules) and will publish a national report on Guided Pathways in spring 2020.

The CAGP grant is funded by the College Futures Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, and The Teagle Foundation. CAGP Pathways Institute #5 will be held in Riverside, California, on January 31-February 2, 2019 and will focus on Ensuring Students are Learning and Progressing Along the Pathway.

First and foremost, all students reporting their age as under 18 are automatically excluded from both the cohort data set and institutional raw data files. Records that are excluded from institutional reporting for other exclusionary criteria are included in the institutional raw data file, unlike the records for underage students.

The survey data are weighted to account for a sampling bias inherent to the sampling process. (Read more about that here.) The weights are based on enrollment status, so if a student fails to respond to the enrollment item question, a weight value cannot be created for that record, and it is excluded from institutional reporting. The enrollment variable in both the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) and the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE) is Item 2, ENRLMENT. To avoid duplication, surveys from students who indicate that they have taken the survey in another class are also excluded. This is Item 3 (TAKEB4) in CCSSE and Item 1 (SRVAGAIN) in SENSE.

Center staff also check for straight-lining or skipping on many of the items that compose the benchmarks. If a student skips all of the sub-items in Item 4 on CCSSE, or answers all sub-items as either never or very often, the entire survey for that student is excluded. (These CCSSE variables include CLQUEST, CLPRESEN, REWROPAP, INTEGRAT, CLUNPREP, CLASSGRP, OCCGRP, TUTOR, PARTICCBP, EMAIL, FACGRADE, FACPLANS, FACIDEAS, FACFEED, WORKHARD, FACOTH, OOCIDEAS, CONVSTUDIFF, and SKIPCLAS.) The same holds true for SENSE; if a respondent answers all sub-items in Item 19 as either never or four or more times, the entire survey for that student is excluded. (These SENSE variables include ASKQUES, PREPDRFT, LATETURN, NOTTURN, SUPINSTR, NOTCOMPL, PINCLASS, PREPOUTC, GRPSTUDY, NRGSTUDY, USEINTMG, MAILFAC, FACASSN, CLASSREL, FEEDBACK, RCVGRDS, FACIDOC, OCIDEAS, and SKIPCL.)

Finally, because SENSE is focused on the earliest student experiences, only students who respond that they are in their first semester/quarter (Item 6, TERMSENR) are included in the SENSE analysis data set.

If you want to recreate the Center’s version of an analysis data set with your institutional raw data file, you also will need to exclude the records that meet these exclusionary criteria. An easy way to do this is to eliminate all records where the Center-created variable IWEIGHT is missing.

If you have additional questions, contact data@cccse.org.

Community College of Vermont (VT) Workshop
October 2018

Polk State College (FL) Plenary Address
October 2018

Cecil College (MD) Workshop
November 2018

Delaware Technical College (DE) Workshop
November 2018

Project Success-Center Data Workshop for Tribal Colleges Plenary Address
Fall 2018

If you are interested in Center staff facilitating a workshop or professional development activity at your college, please contact info@cccse.org.

The tutorials include a primer on navigating the online reporting system, a guide to interpreting Key Findings, an overview of the Benchmark, Means, and Frequency Reports, as well as information on generating various breakouts through the custom reports request system. The CCSSE tutorials are available here. SENSE tutorials are available here.

For more information, or for assistance with Center tools, contact surveyops@cccse.org