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Feedback Report Prepared for Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana

September 2016

Ivy Tech Community College Feedback Report 1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As Ivy Tech enters a new era of leadership and aspires to achieve greater levels of student success, it will be well served by a foundation of successful reform efforts over the past decade and a strong college-wide commitment to students. The Aspen Institute-Achieving the Dream site visit team was particularly impressed by the College’s strength in developing the state’s workforce and the commitment of its faculty and staff to charting a path for Ivy Tech to achieve greater levels of student success.

This report offers recommendations for Ivy Tech to leverage its past successes and the opportunities presented by transition in leadership, a new period of strategic planning, and ongoing engagement with Achieving the Dream. We believe that one of the most critical opportunities Ivy Tech’s leaders have currently is to establish and build commitment college-wide to goals for student success defined in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes. We define these outcomes as (1) ensuring that students gain employment with wages significantly higher than regional averages (measured one and five years after completion); and (2) ensuring that students transfer to four-year institutions and complete bachelor’s degrees at rates similar to non-transfer students in those institutions. We encourage Ivy Tech to develop its own definitions of and benchmarks for these outcomes based on patterns of student success and state contexts.

More generally, our recommendations encourage Ivy Tech’s leadership to strengthen existing and future reform efforts by “starting with the end in mind” where the end reflects what the vast majority of students enroll in community colleges to achieve: improved labor market opportunity either directly after completion of a credential at community college, or after transfer to a four-year institution and completion of a bachelor’s degree.

The site visit team respectfully offers Ivy Tech three overarching recommendations of strategies for building a stronger culture unified around a clear vision of student success. Specifically, we encourage Ivy Tech to:

1. Establish and communicate a vision of student success at Ivy Tech focused on completion with strong labor market and transfer outcomes. The current culture at Ivy Tech, though anchored in a strong commitment to students generally, is not oriented to student success defined in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-transfer success. Ivy Tech’s leadership should be disciplined and deliberate about shifting the culture college-wide through the kinds of strategies outlined in this report, starting by establishing and routinely communicating a strong, clear student success vision and goals defined in these terms. The shift in culture towards a focus on student success should then be reinforced by encouraging more extensive local inquiry into student outcome data, framed by a limited dashboard of key metrics tied to the College’s shared student success goals.

2. Integrate current systems of student onboarding, program selection, guided pathways, and advising into a coherent student success system. Ivy Tech has a strong history of college-wide reform, particularly in the redesign of developmental education and gateway math courses. In other cases, implementation of effective practices has been uneven or isolated in pockets across the state. Moving forward, reform efforts could be better integrated into a well-communicated, college-wide strategy. There are several frameworks available in the field to help integrate and align different dimensions of reform. Specifically, we recommend starting with the design principles outlined in the AACC Pathways Institutes and drawing on the resources made publicly available through that initiative. Ivy Tech’s leadership may also wish to clarify roles and objectives of existing student success committees as well as their relationship to each other so that members of those committees have clear tasks and understand how their work contributes to shared goals.

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/PathwaysInstitutes.aspx


3. Consider changes in organizational structure and policies to maximize innovation, knowledge-sharing, and

efficiency in pursuing shared goals. There are many examples of innovation and strong implementation of reform across Ivy Tech’s regions, but the organizational complexity of the College limits the extent to which these promising practices are widely scaled and integrated into coherent systems for improving student outcomes college-wide. Ivy Tech’s central office can help campuses work together towards shared student success goals by facilitating more intentional sharing of knowledge about effective practices and by creating more shared accountability for student outcomes across regions. Doing so may require establishing greater clarity about the role of local versus central authority and creating structures for collaboration and knowledge-sharing across regions to attenuate perceptions of competition among them. The tension between centralized governance and local innovation is not one easily resolved, but site visitors heard repeatedly—and strongly agree—that efforts to establish a clearer balance between these competing demands is vital for the College as a whole to make concerted progress towards improved student outcomes.

In support of these broad recommendations, this report suggests additional in-depth strategies in six areas that reflect critical dimensions of excellence in student success based on our observations at high-performing community colleges nationwide. These suggestions include: COMPLETION

Establish a clear definition of student success in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes, and begin working to infuse that definition and related goals into Ivy Tech’s culture.

Create broader, more intrusive, mandatory advising across students’ tenure at Ivy Tech.

Track students’ progress throughout their time at Ivy Tech and intervene with students who are experiencing academic or related difficulties or falling off-track in their program of study.

Integrate stronger mandatory advising and pathways/degree audit functions into a “student success system” of onboarding and advising that provides scaffolding for students from entry to exit.

TRANSFER

Implement the essential practices outlined in the Transfer Playbook in order to build strong 2+2 programs with regional four-year institutions and communicate clear pathways for students through those programs.

Create a stronger value proposition for students to complete the associate’s degree before transfer (for example, through transfer guarantees with specific four-year partners).

Work with the National Student Clearinghouse to track baccalaureate outcomes of Ivy Tech transfer students and use that information to improve structured pathways, teaching and learning, and student advising.

LEARNING

Incentivize stronger and more routine practices among departments in all divisions of using learning assessment and post-transfer/labor market outcome data to improve teaching and curriculum.

Improve alignment of professional development to student success goals and create stronger professional development opportunities for adjunct faculty.

Create more opportunities for cross-region sharing of promising practices.

Create greater clarity about central control versus local autonomy in curricular design (textbook choice, assessment, etc.).

EQUITY

Scale innovative financial aid strategies currently used in some regions, including efforts such as “first class free” or tailored scholarships, as well as centralized programs like Push to Complete or “Fall / Spring / Summer

https://assets.aspeninstitute.org/content/uploads/2016/05/aspen-ccrc_transferplaybook_05-2016.pdf


Completion” that provide support to SAP-maxed students near the end of their programs.

Create greater collaboration and clarity of purpose between the wrap-around services committee, the diversity committee, and the SRSC.

Ensure that disaggregated student outcome data are regularly distributed among faculty and staff and task key committees with examining disaggregated data to identify needs for targeted support of underserved populations.

LABOR MARKET SUCCESS

Improve the use of labor market projections, student outcome data, and employer feedback to inform program design and offerings.

Foster greater integration between academic (traditionally pre-transfer) and career/technical programs. Facilitate shared knowledge about effective practices across “silos” of these and other divisions within the College to help reinforce college-wide commitment to a single shared set of student success goals.

Ensure that career and technical education is incorporated in broader improvements to advising and onboarding, and that key reform efforts don’t isolate CTE programs from other areas of the College.

Collect formal wage and employment data to inform program improvements and to help students make informed choices about programs of study.

INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE Use the new strategic planning process to create a new definition of student success in terms of completion

with strong post-transfer and labor market outcomes, and set clear goals linked to that definition.

Build a student success research agenda at the system leadership level framed with key metrics that focus on completion, learning, equity in access and success, and labor market outcomes.

Be intentional about integrating future reform initiatives into a coherent student success agenda and evaluate existing and future reforms based on alignment to that agenda.

Engage faculty in inquiry about student outcomes and empower them to improve teaching practices through professional development opportunities aligned to a shared college-wide understanding of Ivy Tech’s student success goals.

Each of these recommendations is explored in greater depth throughout the report, and wherever possible we provide resources and institutional exemplars in each area to help enrich and give greater specificity to the recommendations. We encourage Ivy Tech leadership to reach out to its Achieving the Dream leadership and data coaches and to the Aspen Institute with questions about any of these recommendations or for additional resources. We are grateful to Ivy Tech’s leadership for the opportunity to learn from and about the College, and to the faculty, staff, and students who shared their insight with us during the site visit. Site Visit Team Trudy Bers, Achieving the Dream Data Coach, President of the Bers Group Mary Fifield, Achieving the Dream Leadership Coach, former president of Bunker Hill Community College and

Harrisburg Area Community College Rob Johnstone, Founder and president of the National Center for Inquiry & Improvement Bob Templin, Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, former president of Northern Virginia

Community College Keith Witham, Deputy Director, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program


Table of Contents

ABOUT THIS REPORT ................................................................................................................................... 2

OVERVIEW of Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana .............................................................................. 4

Major recommendation 1. ESTABLISH AND COMMUNICATE A VISION OF STUDENT SUCCESS AT IVY TECH FOCUSED ON COMPLETION WITH STRONG LABOR MARKET AND TRANSFER OUTCOMES. ...................................5

Major recommendation 2. INTEGRATE CURRENT SYSTEMS OF STUDENT ONBOARDING, PROGRAM SELECTION, GUIDED PATHWAYS, AND ADVISING INTO A COHERENT STUDENT SUCCESS SYSTEM. ..........................................6

Major recommendation 3. CONSIDER CHANGES IN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND POLICIES TO MAXIMIZE INNOVATION, KNOWLEDGE-SHARING, AND EFFICIENCY IN PURSUING SHARED GOALS. ......................................7

IN-DEPTH RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................................. 9 Part 1. COMPLETION ..............................................................................................................................................9 Part 2. TRANSFER ................................................................................................................................................. 13 Part 3. LEARNING ................................................................................................................................................. 18 Part 4. EQUITY ..................................................................................................................................................... 21 Part 5. LABOR MARKET SUCCESS ......................................................................................................................... 25 Part 6. INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE ......................................................................................................................... 28

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 31


ABOUT THIS REPORT Ivy Tech Community College joined Achieving the Dream in 2009. Early work focused on building a stronger culture of data use and implementing numerous evidence-based strategies to increase and accelerate the success of Ivy Tech students. In 2015, Lumina Foundation awarded a grant to Ivy Tech to analyze the College’s capacity for data collection and analysis, effective practice implementation, and student success outcomes compared to community colleges around the country. In May 2016, Achieving the Dream and Aspen Institute College Excellence Program conducted a two-day site visit during which a team of national experts in community college reform held intensive focus groups with faculty, staff, and administrators from all of Ivy Tech’s regions. The objective of the site visit was to provide deeper insight to help benchmark Ivy Tech’s progress against the accomplishments of high-performing institutions across the country. This report of the Achieving the Dream-Aspen Institute site visit team’s findings and recommendations will be debriefed with the Ivy Tech leadership in late September and then shared widely across the system. In Fall 2016, Achieving the Dream leadership and data coaches will engage the regional campuses in half-day workshops designed to help the regions assess strengths in seven essential capacities for creating a robust student-focused culture. These activities will be prelude to a year-long strategic planning process led by Ivy Tech and further capacity building with the support of the Achieving the Dream coaches through 2017.

ABOUT ACHIEVING THE DREAM Conceived as an initiative in 2004 by Lumina Foundation and seven founding partner organizations, Achieving the Dream now leads the most comprehensive non-governmental reform movement for student success in higher education history. For more than a decade, Achieving the Dream has served as a catalyst helping community colleges bolster student success. Achieving the Dream guides colleges through an institutional change process that strengthens crucial capacities which network experience and research suggest makes a difference in enabling all students to earn certificates and degrees. Achieving the Dream’s National Reform Network includes more than 200 institutions in 35 states and the District of Columbia and serves more than 4 million community college students.

ABOUT THE ASPEN INSTITUTE’S COLLEGE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM Founded in 2010, the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program aims to advance higher education practices, policies, and leadership that significantly improve student outcomes in four areas:

Learning. Do colleges and their faculty set expectations for what students should learn, measure whether they are doing so, and use that information to improve?

Completion. Do students earn degrees and other meaningful credentials while in college? Labor Market Outcomes. Do graduates get well-paying jobs? Equity. Do colleges work to ensure equitable access and outcomes for minority and low-income

students and others who have historically been underserved?

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE SITE VISIT MODEL The Aspen Institute developed the site visit protocol used to structure the on-site interviews and organize feedback in this report as part of the assessment process for the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The Aspen Institute selects site visitors based on their expertise in community college practice and leadership nationally. The site visit model is designed to facilitate assessment of practice in six key areas: (1) completion, (2) transfer, (3) learning, (4) equity, (5) labor market success, and (6) institutional culture. Though there is naturally some overlap across these categories, site visitors are encouraged to try to gain a deep understanding of the strategies colleges use to achieve strong and continually improving student outcomes in each area, with an overarching assessment of the ways in which institutional culture reinforces continual improvement.


The quantitative data used in this feedback report came from several sources, which collectively help benchmark indicators of student success across multiple outcome areas. The Aspen Institute drew on data compiled during Round 1 of the 2017 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence (for more on the methodology, see here). The Aspen Prize Data Model uses publicly available data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and the U.S. Census Bureau.

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/2017%20Round%20One%20Model%20Description.pdf


OVERVIEW of Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana is one of the most complex systems of higher education in the

nation. After numerous changes in name, charter, and mission since its founding in 1963, Ivy Tech’s 32

campuses collectively became Indiana’s comprehensive community college by legislative action in 2005. The

nearly 200,000 students the College serves every year are—relative to national averages in community

colleges—more likely to attend part-time, more likely to be adults (over the age of 24), and more likely to

have a family income low enough to qualify for Pell grants.

Despite this challenging context, the faculty and staff on Ivy Tech campuses have a tremendous commitment

to serving their students and regions. In particular, the site visitors were impressed by the College’s strong

foundation in developing the state’s workforce and the commitment of its faculty and staff to charting a path

for the College to achieve even greater levels of student success. The site visit team observed many examples

of this commitment during our visit at Ivy Tech—including in the sentiments of students with whom we met,

who all agreed that their campus felt “like a family.” As Ivy Tech looks to a new era of leadership and aspires

to achieve greater levels of student success, it will be well served by the work done so far and the strong

shared commitment to students.

While faculty and staff have worked hard throughout the system to improve the success of Ivy Tech students,

continued improvement will require developing a culture anchored in a clearer shared definition of student

success that includes completion with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes.1 Based on our site

visit interviews with faculty, staff, and student groups from around the state and an examination of student

success data, we believe that Ivy Tech’s leaders have a timely opportunity to advance such a culture by

developing and communicating a clear vision of student success, establishing stronger pathways and

advising systems, and developing new structures to take better advantage of the considerable knowledge and

innovation across the regions.

For additional systemic reform efforts to take root in practice, a key starting point for this work must be the

development and communication of a guiding definition of student success. Those working at all levels of

the College need a much clearer understanding of how Ivy Tech’s many initiatives from recent years (some

continuing, some discontinued after only a short time), as well as future efforts, cohere into a larger strategy

aligned to shared student success goals. Such a shared definition of student success would not only give

faculty and staff a clearer sense of why change is needed and what they are aiming to achieve, but also enable

Ivy Tech to evaluate existing initiatives and strategically select new initiatives moving forward. In this way, a

clearly articulated vision of student success that includes completion and strong labor market outcomes can

sustain momentum for continued reform and provide coherence to ensure that Ivy Tech’s reform initiatives

add up to scaled long-term improvements.

Please note: While the Aspen site visit team met with representatives from across the state, our brief visit in

Indianapolis did not allow us to examine deeply the practices of individual campuses or regions. Our

recommendations are thus focused primarily on broad organizational strategies that speak to the

opportunities system-wide to advance a shared set of goals and practices tied to student success while

enabling and supporting campus and region-level innovation and improvement. Many of these

recommendations have the potential to be extended to regional-level reform efforts through Ivy Tech’s

ongoing partnership with Achieving the Dream.

1 We provide recommendations for processes the college might consider for defining and setting goals on these student success outcomes in the sections below on transfer and labor market outcomes.


Major recommendation 1. ESTABLISH AND COMMUNICATE A VISION OF STUDENT SUCCESS AT IVY TECH FOCUSED ON COMPLETION WITH STRONG LABOR MARKET AND TRANSFER OUTCOMES.

Ivy Tech has over the past decade undertaken a number of efforts to improve retention and completion rates

and to create more coherent and student-centered processes in such critical areas as placement, registration,

and advising. Two of the most impressive recent efforts are the successful redesign of developmental

education delivery using a co-requisite model and the implementation of math pathways tied to meta-

majors. These reforms, though still being improved and aligned to gateway course redesigns, are widely

implemented and show promise to improve student outcomes. However, in many other critical areas,

positive efforts occur in small pockets of innovation at the campus or region level—for example, we note in

our discussions below strong examples of innovation in financial aid strategies and professional

development within particular regions. What prevents these initiatives from cohering in ways that advance

student success across the entire system is a lack of college-wide commitment to a single, clear vision of what

student success is, how it should be measured, and what unifying strategies are in place to achieve it. The

lack of a single, unifying vision enacted through consistent leadership communication and alignment of

administrative practices has created the feeling among many faculty and staff that strategies are often

adopted and abandoned without either a clear theory of change or the resources and long-range measures in

place to support and evaluate them.

Establish a unifying vision and goals for student success. The change of executive leadership offers

Ivy Tech the opportunity to establish a new unifying definition and vision for student success. This vision

should be focused on what the majority of Ivy Tech students aim to achieve: completion of a credential with

strong labor market outcomes in career and technical education and/or completion of a bachelor’s degree

following successful transfer to a four-year college or university. The current strategic plan, Focused on

Student Success 2025, addresses many key aspects of a student success agenda but fails to define crisply and

clearly a vision of what student success means apart from ensuring that “students meet their educational

objectives.” Indeed, part of the importance of creating a new guiding vision of and goals for student success

is that Ivy Tech must also shift from a culture of “we’re here to help students achieve their educational

objectives” to one of (1) understanding how to tie those objectives to regional and state labor market and

educational demands and (2) designing and delivering systems and practices to ensure that students

complete credentials so they are prepared to succeed in the labor market, either directly after Ivy Tech or via

a four-year institution.

The goal articulated in the strategic plan addendum—to produce 50,000 additional graduates by 2025—is

one step towards a stronger student success focus, but does not appear to be broadly shared or understood

by faculty and staff, or to be embedded in daily practices at the campus level. Ambitious statewide goals are

an important starting point, to be sure. To drive the changes in practice “on the ground” that will be needed

to reach those goals, however, they must be translated into more meaningful and immediately applicable

goals at every level of the organization. Making the College’s overall goal actionable for individual campuses

and those who work within them will require defining the regional postsecondary attainment needs by sector

and level of education, convening key groups within and across regions to examine gaps between projected

needs and current output, developing both statewide and regional strategies for closing those gaps, and

translating big goals into incremental practice-relevant goals and benchmarks against which everyone in the

College can measure their own progress.

Encourage more extensive local inquiry into student outcome data, framed by a limited set of

key metrics tied to shared student success goals. To support a new guiding vision of, agenda for, and


culture oriented to student success, Ivy Tech should consider identifying 5-6 key student success metrics and

ensuring that data about these metrics are conveyed simply and broadly to multiple campus and leadership

audiences. These metrics should be aligned to the college’s goals for student outcome improvement and the

central office should regularly produce (and consistently disseminate) data for those metrics. Doing so would

help to build urgency and establish a shared understanding of the College’s major priorities and objectives.

This type of “dashboard” of key metrics is vital for leaders as a communication tool and an instrument of

change management. Presidents of Prize-finalist colleges, for example, commonly describe using a small

number of data points such as persistence rates, completion rates, transfer-out rates, time-to-degree, post-

transfer success, labor market outcomes, and achievement gaps to help tell a consistent story about where

the College needs to improve and by how much.

Additionally, Ivy Tech’s leadership should consider finding ways to embed more routine practices of inquiry

across all levels of the College, framed by those high-level goals and metrics. Although Ivy Tech has made

great improvements in data capacity and has the ability to produce an abundance of important data, current

reporting and communications strategies have not built a shared understanding or sense of urgency among

faculty and staff. Central office leadership can reinforce a culture of continuous improvement by investing in

local data use capacity and at the same time requiring the use of evidence in processes of program review,

budgeting, professional development, and other strategies to improve student outcomes.

Coherence between a guiding set of high-level metrics and local use of data to improve practice would also

help to address the tension that many faculty and staff feel exists between what they perceive as the College’s

desired student outcomes and the state’s accountability metrics for the College. In developing more

intentional use of data both for establishing broad improvement goals and informing strategies for achieving

those goals, the College might better demonstrate to external constituents—including the state legislature—

both its current value-add to the state and its commitment to improvement.

Major recommendation 2. INTEGRATE CURRENT SYSTEMS OF STUDENT ONBOARDING, PROGRAM SELECTION, GUIDED PATHWAYS, AND ADVISING INTO A COHERENT STUDENT SUCCESS SYSTEM.

Ivy Tech has undertaken a number of successful efforts to improve retention and completion rates and to

create more coherent and student-centered processes in critical areas such as placement, registration, and

advising. Most notable among these are the successful redesign of developmental and gateway math and

English courses, boot camps (Ivy Prep), and mandatory advising. However, these innovations have yet to be

brought together into – or articulated to the Ivy Tech community as – a coherent strategy for managing the

student experience from point of connection to completion. As a result, the perception of many within the

College is that reforms have been implemented arbitrarily in accordance with national “best practices”

adopted from other community colleges rather than as part of a coherent Ivy Tech student success agenda.

Ivy Tech should begin working to understand which of these practices are most effective and replicate those

at scale, and then integrate those practices along with emerging strategies into a coherent, at-scale “system”

of support for student success statewide.

Tie existing student success assets and gaps to a broader strategy. After defining and beginning to

articulate new student success goals (as described in #1 above), Ivy Tech would benefit from adopting a

framework for improving student success, such as those proffered by Completion by Design or AACC’s

Pathways project. While there are many variations in what factors constitute “guided pathways,” our

recommendations focus on pathways defined as coherent academic programs that specify courses, learning


outcomes, and support services that lead to a degree or certificate and align with “requirements of further

education and career advancement in the given field” (Bailey, Jaggars and Jenkins, 2015, p. 16).2 A key to

these guided pathways is that students are advised into required and elective courses that lead directly to the

credential, thus minimizing time wasted on extraneous (for that credential) courses and helping students to

stay within limits of financial aid availability. We recommend starting with the methodology being advanced

in the AACC Pathways Institutes, especially AACC’s resources on “Pathway Design I – Mapping Pathways

through the Institution” found at:

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/Resources.aspx.

Once a framework has been adopted, the College can begin an audit of its existing student success assets in

terms of policies, practices, and systems that directly support student success goals. These may exist at the

statewide level or within individual campuses or regions. Understanding what aspects of student support are

in place currently (and at what scale), the College should then map out all the places where students may fall

through the cracks and what data may be needed to diagnose those gaps. For example: how many students

receive advising after the first mandatory session? As a result of that and subsequent advising, how many

students are on a clear path to a degree by the end of their first semester (or first year)? At what points (in

semesters and credit accumulation thresholds) do students leave Ivy Tech without earning a credential?

What are the most notable achievement gaps among demographic groups by region? Future interventions

and reform efforts should be strategically mapped to a coherent vision for student success: getting students

onto and keeping them on a clearly laid-out pathway that provides high quality learning to prepare them for

success in the labor market or at a four-year institution.

Clarify roles and objectives of student success committees as well as their relationship to

each other. Ivy Tech currently has a set of committees tasked with developing and implementing

important elements of a student success agenda, including the statewide and regional Student Retention and

Success Councils, a committee focused on strengthening non-academic wrap-around supports, and a

diversity committee. Participants in these groups are committed to working together to develop informed

solutions. However, the absence of clearly defined student success goals has resulted in a lack of clarity about

the specific roles of these committees and the extent to which the proposals they’ve developed (or might

develop) will be given priority and support statewide. Moreover, a lack of clarity about the permissible level

of regional variation – versus statewide standardization – in these interventions has resulted in inconsistent

implementation across regions. Greater clarity about the roles, objectives, and level of central office support

for these committees would enhance their effectiveness in carrying out a coherent student success agenda

that integrates the many promising elements of reform currently in place, as well as those identified as

critical next steps. Additionally, these three committees should be given greater clarity about the ways in

which their objectives are interrelated as part of a shared broader improvement strategy.

Major recommendation 3. CONSIDER CHANGES IN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND POLICIES TO MAXIMIZE INNOVATION, KNOWLEDGE-SHARING, AND EFFICIENCY IN PURSUING SHARED GOALS.

Evident across site visit interviews were examples of considerable expertise and effective practice among Ivy

Tech faculty and staff. Indeed, at several points during interviews with groups from across the state,

participants themselves were surprised to learn of innovative practices at peer campuses. For an

2 Bailey, T. R., Jaggars, S.S., & Jenkins, D. (2015). Redesigning America’s Community Colleges. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/Resources.aspx


organization of the size and complexity of Ivy Tech, it is not surprising that innovation happens in isolated

settings and implementation of reform efforts may be at times inconsistent. However, Ivy Tech’s central

office can help campuses work together towards shared student success goals by facilitating more intentional

sharing of knowledge about effective practices and by creating more shared accountability for student

outcomes across regions. Doing so may require setting forth greater clarity about the role of local versus

central authority and creating structures for collaboration and knowledge-sharing across regions to

attenuate perceptions of competition among regions.

Create clarity in roles of campus leaders and committees. Some of the most salient challenges that

emerged during the site visit are related to tensions inherent to the Ivy Tech governance structure. In

addition to the lack of clarity within the roles of committees described above, there is a general lack of clarity

about the roles of leaders and key staff at all levels of the system—from campus presidents to faculty leaders

and others. This lack of structural clarity manifests in paralysis around decision-making as well as

inefficiencies system-wide in the sharing of knowledge and resources. The change in executive leadership

offers an opportunity to establish new norms around shared governance, to foster greater trust and

transparency between local and faculty leadership and the central office, and to create a more streamlined

and coherent organizational structure with clearly assigned roles and levels of accountability for achieving

shared student success goals.

Find a balance between central governance, economies of scale, and local adaptation.

Additionally, while some effective policies and practices should be implemented consistently and at-scale

statewide, others require local adaptation to best suit regional contexts, strengths, and opportunities. This

results in a kind of paradox: on one hand, campuses need greater access to a shared knowledge-base

structures through which to consistently implement proven reforms; on the other hand, the central office

must be careful not to implement “one-size-fits-all” reforms in instances where regional variation can lead to

greater student outcomes. This tension is not one easily resolved, but site visitors heard repeatedly—and

strongly agree—that efforts to establish a clearer balance between these competing demands is vital for the

College as a whole to make concerted progress towards improved student outcomes.

Institutional Context The Aspen Institute looks at a range of demographic and institutional characteristic indicators relative to national averages.

These indicators help situate student outcomes in the context of the institution’s mission and student population.

Ivy Tech Community College

National Community College Average

Underrepresented Minorities 16% 31%

Undergraduate students receiving Pell Grants 66% 42%

Age 25 or older 42% 38%

Attend part-time 69% 59%

Credentials earned that are vocational/technical 71% 52%

Source: 2017 Aspen Prize Model; IPEDS


IN-DEPTH RECOMMENDATIONS

Part 1. COMPLETION

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

% Full-Time Students Who Earned 24 Credits

% Part-Time Students Who Earned 12 Credits

Credit-Hour Accumulation Within First Academic Year

Ivy Tech State System 2017 Prize-Eligible Colleges

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

National Average

2017 Prize-Eligible Colleges

Average of Top 10 in Category

Ivy Tech State System

First-Year Retention Rate

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

National Average




Three-Year Graduation & Transfer Rate

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

National Average




Degrees Awarded per 100 FTE


Strengths:

A majority of Ivy Tech students accumulate at least 12 (part-time) or 24 (full-time) credits within the first

academic year. The factors that contribute to strong rates of initial momentum should be better

understood and leveraged to help make improvements in completion rates.

Ivy Tech’s approach to financial aid is strong compared to other community colleges nationally,

particularly given the high proportion of very low-income students the system serves. Ivy Tech’s central

office financial aid administrators should be commended for helping regions tailor innovation funds to

support their students in critical ways. The central financial aid office also has promising state level

initiatives (for example, providing aid for students near completion who time out on SAP) that may help

boost completion rates.

Areas of opportunity:

Forge a stronger culture college-wide around goals for student success defined as completion with strong

labor market and post-transfer outcomes.

Further strengthen advising. Students currently have one mandatory advising session, but indications

from students, faculty, and staff are that subsequent advising is limited and that even with an assigned

advisor, students still do a lot of self-advising (particularly with respect to transfer).

Strategies to consider:

Establish a clear definition of student success in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-

transfer outcomes and begin working to infuse that definition and related goals into Ivy Tech’s culture.

Create broader, more intrusive, mandatory advising across students’ tenure at Ivy Tech.

Track students’ progress throughout their time at Ivy Tech and intervene with students who are

experiencing academic or related difficulties or falling off-track in their program of study.

Integrate stronger mandatory advising and pathways/degree audit functions into a “student success

system” of onboarding and advising that provides scaffolding for students from entry to exit.

Scale up existing financial aid strategies with promising results where appropriate, and link these

strategies to efforts developed by the Wraparound Services group addressing financial stability issues.

Ivy Tech has successfully implemented (and continues to refine) some of the most promising evidence-

based reforms in the field today, including the redesign of developmental education into a co-requisite

model and the shift to math pathways aligned to program requirements. Ivy Tech’s ability to implement

these reforms in a relatively short period of time with strong faculty buy-in and ongoing support is a

testament to the institution’s commitment to improving student outcomes. These reforms, in addition

to Ivy Tech’s implementation of mandatory orientation, student success courses linked to meta-majors,

the planned redesign of gateway courses, and changes to advising, provide a strong foundation for the

next phase of student success work.

Ivy Tech has the opportunity now—particularly under new executive leadership—to forge an even

stronger culture focused on continual improvement in student outcomes. While past reforms have


brought about important structural changes, there remain vestiges of a culture focused on enrollment

rather than student success. For example, when asked to complete the phrase “Ivy Tech cares most

about _____”, two of the most common responses across groups of faculty and staff were “the

numbers” and “enrollment management.” There is work yet to be done to reorient the College’s culture

around student success (see #6 below).

There is also a strongly held belief among faculty and staff that Ivy Tech’s primary mission is to help

students achieve whatever educational goals they had when they entered, regardless of whether having

met those goals amounts to measurable improvements in labor market success or post-transfer

outcomes. This belief is codified in Ivy Tech’s current strategic plan, which has as Strategy 1: “Ensure

students meet their educational objectives.” This enduring belief relates to one of the most common

refrains heard during the site visit—that state-level completion metrics do not capture the value that Ivy

Tech adds for students. While it was likely not the intent of the strategic plan or its authors to imply that

helping students complete is not an important priority for the College, leaders must recognize how

powerful the existing narrative is as a cultural benchmark among faculty and staff. Student success—

particularly defined in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes3—has

not yet infused into Ivy Tech’s culture as the guiding value and priority for policy and practice.

For Ivy Tech to leverage the strong reform efforts already implemented and sustain momentum for

improvement will require both additional structural changes and intentional culture-building to

support those changes. Culture change is always difficult, but is especially so in organizations as

complex as Ivy Tech. However, by building on the successes of existing reform efforts, Ivy Tech’s

leadership can work to create urgency and cohesion around a focused vision for student success defined

as completion with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes.

One initial challenge is for Ivy Tech to engage faculty in both vocational/technical and transfer-

preparatory programs of study in defining strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes in the

context of Indiana’s regions and benchmarked to both state and national averages. The Aspen Institute

recommends defining these outcomes as follows:

Some of the specific strategies Ivy Tech may wish to consider include:

Build on the commitment and energy of the existing Student Retention & Success, wrap-around

services, and diversity committees by renewing their objectives and responsibilities with clear

links to a shared student success plan and greater role clarity. Leaders should empower these

committees to work together and get broad buy-in, create distinct timelines and deliverables to

help provide structure and accountability to their work, and reinforce their importance to a

broader set of goals for improving student outcomes.

Extend the improvements made in onboarding and advising by creating additional advising

requirements throughout students’ tenure at Ivy Tech. Consider a hybrid of hi-touch/hi-tech

solutions for providing more intrusive advising for students and tracking students’ progress

throughout their programs of study, with systems for catching and rerouting students who fall

off-track.

3 We provide more discussion of the processes Aspen Institute recommends colleges use to define and set goals around these student success outcomes in the sections on transfer and labor market outcomes below.


Ivy Tech may wish to engage in a new college-wide strategic planning or other vision-setting

process through which to establish a new set of goals and definitions for student success.

Though Ivy Tech’s faculty and staff are deeply committed to students, the culture currently does

not broadly appear to reinforce practice or policy focused on completion with strong labor

market and post-transfer outcomes as a college-wide goal.

WHERE TO LOOK for institutional exemplars in completion strategy Miami Dade College and Valencia College for integrated student advising systems. Both MDC and Valencia College have strong, pathways-centered onboarding and advising systems supported by mandatory, intrusive advising practices and technology that helps identify students when they fall off track. Santa Fe College for intrusive advising systems to help students stay on track. Santa Fe has developed its early alert system, part of its “Navigating the College Experience” initiative [link], with clear expectations of what actions will ensue, by whom, when an alert is made.

City Colleges of Chicago for culture-change oriented to student success. City Colleges’ “reinvention” process incorporated a broad array of management strategies designed to reinforce a new system-wide vision of student success focused on completion with strong labor market outcomes. Though the robust set of management processes and tools implemented at City Colleges may not work at every institution, the attention leaders there have paid to building a new culture to reinforce completion goals are noteworthy as an example for leaders of other large, complex community college systems. AACC Pathways Institutes [link]. AACC and partners (including Achieving the Dream and Aspen Institute) are supporting 30 institutions in three years of intensive work to implement guided pathways as a reform strategy and set of design principles for dramatically improving the student experience. The guided pathways model is based on coherent programs of study aligned to requirements for labor market and post-transfer success. Programs, support services, and instructional approaches are redesigned and re-aligned to help students clarify their goals, choose and enter pathways that will achieve those goals, stay on those pathways, and master knowledge and skills that will enable them to advance in the labor market and successfully pursue further education. The AACC Pathways website contains valuable, freely available resources developed for the Pathways Institutes and other pathways redesign efforts.

WHERE TO LOOK for resources “Designing a System for Strategic Advising” [link]. This Community College Research Center (CCRC) brief explains the merits of an integrated system for student advising.

http://www.sfcollege.edu/qep/

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Resources/aaccprograms/pathways/Pages/Resources.aspx

http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/media/k2/attachments/designing-a-system-for-strategic-advising.pdf


Part 2. TRANSFER

*National average data come from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center Signature Report 9, Transfer & Mobility (Figure 8, p. 16 & Appendix C Table 10), and are based on the Fall 2008 cohort of students entering two-year institutions who transferred to a four-year institution within six years of initial entry.

Strengths:

Indiana’s TSAPs show great promise for creating clear paths from community college to completion of a

four-year degree and for building a stronger transfer culture.


Enhance transfer pathways, expanding on TSAP model, with specific regional four-year institutional

partners. Transfer pathways could be better embedded in advising and communicated to students, who

currently appear to do a lot of “shopping around” to get courses from Ivy Tech, Vincennes, and other

institutions to piece together the foundations they need to transfer into a four-year institution.

Improve transfer advising, especially in non-TSAP programs.


Establish more 2+2 programs with regional four-year institutions and communicate clear pathways for

students through those programs.

Create a stronger value proposition for students to complete the associate’s degree before transfer (for

example, through transfer guarantees with specific four-year partners).

Work with the National Student Clearinghouse to track baccalaureate outcomes of Ivy Tech transfer students and use that information to improve structured pathways, teaching and learning, and student advising.

Like many community colleges nationally with histories as primarily career and technical education-

focused institutions, the structures, practices, and culture needed to ensure strong transfer outcomes

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%


Ivy Tech State College System

National Community College Average*

Cohort Analysis: All Students (Full-Time & Part-Time)

Completed at Institution and Transferred to Four-Year Institution

Transferred to Four-Year Institution without Completion at Institution (but w/ at least 12 credits)

https://nscresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/SignatureReport9.pdf


are still emerging at Ivy Tech. That said, the rates at which Ivy Tech students transfer to four-year

institutions are on par with those of community colleges nationally. The state’s work building TSAPs in

key program areas, in addition to the statewide general education core (STGEC), provides a strong

foundation of curricular structures to support ongoing improvement in transfer outcomes. It remains

too early to tell how effective these structures alone will be for easing the transfer-student experience,

however. Most research nationally suggests that strong transfer student outcomes (measured not just in

terms of transfer-out but as bachelor’s completion after transfer) depend on intentional efforts by

community colleges to build partnerships with specific four-year institutions supported by careful data

analysis. In other words, creating strong transfer pathways for students requires not just a supportive

state policy environment but deep change in practice and culture within institutions.

One of the most common narratives site visitors heard at Ivy Tech was that students who intend to

complete a four-year degree leave the College prior to completion of an associate’s degree. The data

(shown above relative to the national average and to community colleges who applied for the 2017

Aspen Prize) show that, indeed, 23 percent of students seeking a four-year degree transfer after

accumulating 12 credit hours at Ivy Tech but without completing a credential compared to only four

percent who transfer with a credential from Ivy Tech in hand. There are several commonly held

assumptions we heard from faculty and staff at Ivy Tech about why this happens: that there is abundant

capacity at regional four-year institutions; that students have no need to complete an associate’s degree

before transfer (and therefore Ivy Tech should not be held accountable for ensuring they do so); and

that students are effectively selecting the courses from Ivy Tech or other institutions to complete

developmental education requirements and/or assemble general education credits needed in order to

transfer into a four-year program. There may be truth to these assumptions. However, there was little

discussion about Ivy Tech’s role in either communicating a value proposition to students for completion

of an associate’s degree before transfer, or in creating clear pathways to specific four-year institutions.

Many faculty and staff assume that the TSAPs and general education core are adequate for ensuring

that students can effectively navigate the transfer process.

Students told a different story. Echoing recent research by Public Agenda on transfer students’

experiences in Indiana, students described having to go to four-year institutions to find answers about

which courses would transfer and how best to build a program of study that would transfer directly into

their chosen majors. Some students described learning too late that the advising they received at Ivy

Tech was incorrect, resulting in unnecessary credits and costs. And they described the process of

transferring as unclear, requiring them to piece together course schedules based on best guesses rather

than definite information. Clarifying the process of transfer, providing stronger advising around that

process, and better establishing the value to students of completing a credential at Ivy Tech prior to

transfer would all help Ivy Tech surge ahead of national averages and fulfill its critical role as an on-

ramp to the baccalaureate for thousands of students who might not otherwise have that opportunity.

The most notable quality of community colleges nationally that have strong transfer outcomes is a

culture in which faculty and staff feel accountable not just for the success of students in transferring to a

four-year institution but in earning a bachelor’s degree in a timely period after doing so. This culture is

typically enacted through a number of concrete practices that Ivy Tech may wish to consider:

Analyze post-transfer outcome data, by transfer destination and program of study.

http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/indiana-regional-transfer-study


The Transfer Playbook, by the Aspen Institute, Community College Research Center, and

National Student Clearinghouse, recommends starting with two fundamental analyses to

establish baseline indicators of transfer student success and to set ambitious goals for

improvement tied to specific institutions and programs of study:

1. Using data from your student information system, quantify which currently enrolled

students are seeking to transfer and identify the programs those students are in. Identify

who within the college is responsible for monitoring transfer student progress.

2. Using data from the National Student Clearinghouse (or state data tied to data on

starting cohorts at your community college), identify which four-year colleges your

students transfer to, the rate at which they earn bachelor’s degrees from each

destination, and the fields in which they earn them. Plot the number of transfer students

from your college by the number of college-level credits they earned before they

transferred from your college; calculate the percentage of these students who earned a

certificate or associate degree from your college before they transferred.

Forge strong partnerships with four-year institutions that serve as primary

transfer destinations. Community colleges with the strongest post-transfer outcomes for

students have formed strategic partnerships with the regional four-year institutions that serve

the majority of their transfer students (or that have the best outcomes for those students) –

partnerships that include faculty working together to create curricular alignment, as with the

TSAPs, but with clarity and buy-in around the value of those pathways at both institutions. The

“Transfer Playbook,” outlines essential practices for building strong transfer

partnerships, including formal 2+2 programs.

o Strengthen transfer advising. Create dedicated transfer advising offices or centers staffed

by advisors who are trained in the specific requirements of 2+2 or other

partnership/articulation agreement programs.

Many of these practices may be emerging or already in place in many of Ivy Tech’s regions. Over the

next five years, scaling and institutionalizing these types of strong transfer-focused practices—with the

goal of creating a more robust culture of accountability for transfer student success—is one of Ivy Tech’s

most promising areas of opportunity.

WHERE TO LOOK for institutional exemplars in transfer Lorain Community College and Maricopa Community College for transfer pathways. Lorain and Maricopa both have strong agreements in place to provide guaranteed transfer to four-year institutions for students who complete required courses and associate’s degrees at the community college before transfer. These pathways options and requirements are clearly communicated to students to eliminate guess-work and minimize the advising burden. Valencia College for strengthened partnership with four-year institutions. The DirectConnect partnership [link] between the University of Central Florida, Valencia College, and three other community colleges is a national model for a large-scale partnership that dramatically increases the number of students who transfer to and earn bachelor’s degrees from four-year schools. Valencia publishes clear curriculum maps that lay out the



http://regionalcampuses.ucf.edu/directconnect-to-ucf/


skills required in each program and in what classes they are developed, has an annual summit with UCF and other DirectConnect schools to analyze outcomes for transfer students, and is developing a tool with Civitas Learning to allow faculty at all institutions to see where students struggle and work together to create better alignment. [“Partnerships in Student Pathways” chapter in Transfer Students in Higher Education].

WHERE TO LOOK for resources

The Transfer Playbook [link]. This practice-focused guide from the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and CCRC provides concrete guidance based on extensive research into the practices and policies that lead to stronger transfer pathways and greater rates of bachelor’s degree completion after transfer.

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/transfer-playbook/


The Business Case for Regional Public Universities to Strengthen Community College Transfer Pathways (With Guidance on Leading the Process) [link] & The Promise of the Transfer Pathway: Opportunity and Challenge for Community College Students Who Seek the Baccalaureate Degree [link]. These reports, from the Maximizing Resources for Student Success initiative and the College Board, explore the barriers to transferring to four-year institutions and analyze ways that colleges can improve the process for students. Improving Transfer Pathways for California Community College Students in CTE Programs [link]. This paper focuses on the impact of CTE pathways that facilitate transfer to four-year programs in California community colleges. What We Know About Transfer [link]. This report from the Community College Research Center examines recent research on transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions: the trends, challenges, benefits, and more. Transfer Students in Higher Education: Building Foundations for Policies, Programs, and Services That Foster

Student Success [link]. This book, from the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience at the

University of South Carolina, explores the role of the community college (as well as other partners) in

ensuring strong transfer pathways.

http://hcmstrategists.com/maximizingresources/images/Transfer_Pathways_Paper.pdf

http://www.jkcf.org/assets/1/7/promise_of_the_transfer_pathway.pdf

http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ975089

http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/what-we-know-about-transfer.html

https://www.nrcpubs.com/p/104/transfer-students-in-higher-education-building-foundations-for-policies-programs-and-services-that-foster-stude


Part 3. LEARNING

Strengths:

Ivy Tech has unusually strong faculty support and buy-in for co-requisite development education reforms

and gateway course redesign.


The strong buy-in of core faculty could be leveraged by creating stronger support for faculty teaching

improvement, including adjunct faculty.

The College would benefit from more extensive practices of using learning assessment and post-

transfer/labor market outcome data to improve teaching and curriculum.


Improve alignment of professional development to student success goals.

Create stronger professional development opportunities for adjunct faculty.

Create more opportunities for cross-region sharing of promising practices.

Create greater clarity about central control versus local autonomy in curricular design (textbook choice,

assessment, etc.).

Teaching and learning assessment practices are highly localized and difficult to assess at the system level.

However, the faculty from across regions with whom site visitors met were notably committed to improving

their own practices to improve student outcomes. Especially remarkable was the positive attitude faculty had

with respect to the redesign of developmental education into the co-requisite model. Compared to dozens of

colleges Aspen site visitors have been to nationally, Ivy Tech’s faculty were unusually positive about these

reforms. Even in the context of general frustrations faculty and staff expressed with what was described as

“initiative fatigue” in the College over the past few years, when it came to teaching and learning innovations

faculty were enthusiastic and supportive. This positive commitment and enthusiasm is a valuable resource

that should be thoughtfully leveraged moving forward.

With respect to learning, the site visit team looked in particular for evidence of two major sets of practices

that are common at colleges that achieve exceptional outcomes for students. The first is systematic and

widespread use of data at college-wide, program, and course levels to improve teaching and curriculum

design and to set goals for learning improvement. This incorporates both data from assessment of learning

and about specific skills required in the labor market. The second major area of effective practice is the

intentional structuring of professional development, at scale, to help faculty (including adjunct faculty)

improve their own teaching. At many prize-finalist colleges, this also includes aligning tenure and promotion

decisions to demonstration of improvement in teaching in ways specifically aligned to student success goals.

Though difficult to evaluate within particular regions, at a system-wide level site visitors found little

evidence of a widespread culture of using assessment of learning outcomes to improve teaching. In CTE

programs nationally, the use of information from the labor market to improve curriculum and teaching

practices is typically much more entrenched and widespread, and the same is true at Ivy Tech. But, as in


many other community colleges, the same is less true for programs at Ivy Tech that are conventionally

understood as transfer-preparatory. Finding ways to create more systematic routines of data use to improve

teaching will be critical for Ivy Tech as it looks to the next phase of student success work, and this is an area

where the commitment and enthusiasm of faculty involved in gateway math and developmental education

reform (if that commitment is recognized and commended by leaders) is likely to be a valuable resource.

A related and equally important opportunity for Ivy Tech is to better align professional development

resources to reinforce student success goals. Aside from some targeted support around the developmental

education and gateway math reforms, most faculty felt under-supported in professional development. These

perceptions varied notably from region to region, however; in fact, some faculty in our focus groups were

surprised to learn of professional development opportunities described by their colleagues in other regions.

This variation is not inherently bad, as professional development is an area of practice that may function

best when locally cultivated and faculty-driven rather than prescribed at a system level. However, the system

has a critical role to play in creating structures through which that professional development can be aligned

to shared student success goals. Central office leaders also have the unique ability to create cross-region

opportunities for shared learning and collaboration. Faculty from across regions expressed a strong desire

for more structured opportunities for such cross-region learning.

Ivy Tech has a great opportunity in the wake of successful developmental education and gateway math

reforms to build a strong culture of improvement centered on ensuring that students are learning. To do so,

the College may wish to consider scaled implementation of several key strategies:

Increase availability and use of learning assessment information and information about student

success after transfer or entry into the labor market.

Develop a Center for Teaching & Learning initiative system-wide with incentives for local innovation

and structures to share promising practices across regions.

Enhance professional development opportunities (including for adjunct faculty) and ensure they are

aligned to student success goals.

WHERE TO LOOK for institutional exemplars in improving learning

West Kentucky Community and Technical College. West Kentucky’s faculty-led approach to measuring, and

responding to, student learning outcomes is a national model. Every section of every class has common

assessments graded according to common rubrics; professors measure not only college-wide learning

outcomes but key course and program learning outcomes, and they adjust instruction accordingly. Also,

after the college defined improvement in reading skills as students’ foremost need, faculty were organized

into learning circles to learn and test out teaching strategies to institute in the classroom. [What Excellent

Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success (chapter 3), link; “Faculty Learning Circle helps

teachers connect with each other, students,” link].

Valencia College. Valencia’s nationally recognized system of professional development and tenure is built around faculty investigating—and, with support, improving—their own teaching practice. [Building a Faculty Culture of Student Success, link].

http://hepg.org/hep-home/books/what-excellent-community-colleges-do

http://www.ccdaily.com/Pages/Opinions/Faculty-Learning-Circle-helps-teachers-connect-with-each-other-students.aspx

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/ccprize/BuildingaFacultyCulture.pdf


Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. When the state dismantled the tenure process, NWTC developed an

Instructor Preparation Academy [link] to enhance full-time faculty’s professional growth.

Patrick Henry Community College. Patrick Henry has established a faculty culture that emphasizes

experiential, hands-on learning and ties it to student success goals.


Building a Faculty Culture of Student Success [link]. Among other things, this Aspen Institute guide explains

how Valencia College defined the qualities of effective educators and used that framework to guide human

resources practices.

Collaborating for Student Success at Valencia College [link].This case study from Ithaka S+R documents the

creation at Valencia of a faculty-led culture centered on teaching and learning improvement.

https://www.nwtc.edu/NWTC/media/About-Us/IPA.pdf

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/content/docs/ccprize/BuildingaFacultyCulture.pdf

http://www.sr.ithaka.org/publications/collaborating-for-student-success-at-valencia-college/


Part 4. EQUITY

Strengths:

Innovative financial aid strategies, though not all institutionalized or implemented at scale, offer strong

systems of support for students with financial instability to help them complete.

The wrap-around services committee has an explicit objective of developing scaled interventions to

support low-income and part-time students; though just emerging as a strategy college-wide, the

College’s explicit attention to such interventions is a critical first step.

$0 $10,000 $20,000 $30,000 $40,000 $50,000 $60,000 $70,000



Median Family Income of College Service AreaSource: U.S. Census

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%



Percent Non-Traditional Age (25 & Older) StudentsSource: IPEDS

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%



Percent of Students Attending Part-TimeSource: IPEDS

7%10%

2%

9% 10%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

American Indian Asian Black/African American Hispanic/Latino White

Completion rate: completed a degree/certificate within 150% of timeSource: IPEDS


The developmental education and gateway math reforms are dramatically boosting early course pass and

success rates, directly impacting the most academically underprepared students.

Ivy Tech’s Diversity Committee, the Office of Professional Development and the College’s Talent

Development division have taken or plan to take a number steps to increase the diversity of faculty and

staff and to focus upon the retention and development of minority employees through efforts such as the

African American Leadership Institute and the creation of a training module emphasizing diversity and

inclusion.

Area of opportunity:

Increase focus on reducing achievement gaps between white and underrepresented minority students, as

well as gaps between other groups (full-time/part-time, low-income and non low-income, etc.).

Make equity in outcomes a stronger focus of the College’s culture, encouraging accountability for equity

in outcomes but allowing flexibility for the regions to define equity in terms of the most salient disparities

in access and outcomes within their economic and demographic contexts.


Scale innovative financial aid strategies currently used in some regions, including efforts such as “first

class free” or tailored scholarships, as well as centralized programs like Push to Complete or “Fall / Spring

/ Summer Completion” that provide support to SAP-maxed students near the end of their programs.

Create greater collaboration and clarity of purpose between the wrap-around services committee, the

diversity committee, and the SRSC.

Ensure that disaggregated student outcome data are regularly distributed among faculty and staff and

task key committees with examining disaggregated data to identify needs for targeted support of

underserved populations.

Ivy Tech is more advanced than many colleges nationally in using its limited financial aid resources

strategically to support students most at-risk of dropping out because of financial instability. This innovation

in the use of financial aid appears to be a mix of both thoughtful central office strategy and flexibility by the

central office in allowing regions to use financial aid resources in customized ways best suited to their

populations. These innovations in financial aid are critical given the demographics of Ivy Tech’s students,

who are on average more likely to be from very low-income families and to attend part-time compared to

community colleges nationally. Ivy Tech’s leadership would benefit from carefully examining the range of

financial aid strategies currently in place across the state and then scaling those that are most effective.

Additionally, the developmental education and gateway math reforms are likely to have disproportionately

positive impact on Ivy Tech’s most academically at-risk students. The College should make it a regular

practice, where it isn’t already, to collect and report disaggregated data of students’ academic progress to

understand how well these reforms are serving as tools for reducing achievement gaps.

With respect to equity in access and outcomes, the site visit team looks for evidence of several practices and

qualities. The first is simply that a college’s leadership makes equity a priority, and that faculty and staff

throughout the college perceive it as such. This commitment is evidenced not only by its explicit statement in


key artifacts like strategic plans but also in routines of examining disaggregated data, expression in leaders’

communications, equity-focused internal accountability metrics and budget review protocols, and so on. The

second factor site visitors examine is whether a college has well-designed interventions to provide targeted

support to those students who the data reveal are experiencing the lowest rates of access and success.

Aside from innovations in financial aid administration and the state’s accountability measures focused on

closing achievement gaps, equity did not emerge clearly as an institutional priority at Ivy Tech, either in the

current strategic plan or in the perceptions of faculty and staff. This may be in part because those in the

College, as in many community colleges nationally, understand the mission as fundamentally one dedicated

to equity—in other words, equity is taken for granted as an institutional value. But colleges that achieve

strong outcomes for the most marginalized students in their communities view equity as a value that must be

explicitly stated and attended to through policy and practice, and not taken for granted. They examine the

postsecondary attainment rates of the whole region in which they’re located and consider it their

responsibility not just to enroll a student body representative of their community but to disproportionately

enroll students from those groups with least access to education. These colleges develop intentional, data-

informed interventions targeting groups with the lowest rates of success, and they examine the equity impact

of all reforms by consistently disaggregating data on access and outcomes.

Though not apparently widespread as a routine practice, Ivy Tech faculty, staff, and leaders do have access to

and monitor data disaggregated by race/ethnicity for outcomes on which data is regularly collected and

disseminated. As leaders work to build IR capacity and construct a student success-focused research agenda

(as described in part 1 above), they should ensure that disaggregation along key demographic variables is

prioritized and that the College’s major student success goals include those for closing achievement gaps.

More generally, as Ivy Tech develops a new vision for student success, its leaders should make equity an

explicit priority. Moreover, as the College works to further build a culture of inquiry and improvement

around student success, equity should be foregrounded in data analysis, professional development,

budgeting, and other institutional practices and policies. The current SRSC, diversity, and wrap-around

services committees should be given clear equity objectives and be tasked with collaborating to develop at-

scale, system-wide interventions to support the most at-risk students.

WHERE TO LOOK for institutional exemplars for equity

Georgia State University [link]. Georgia State dug deep into its data to understand weaknesses in retention

among minority students and has developed a wide array of advising and integrated student support

structures, resulting in elimination of achievement disparities for racial/ethnic minority students.

Century College. Century created an equity plan that includes intensive professional development in

culturally responsive pedagogy and understanding students’ needs, a dedicated focus on equity at all major

faculty and staff meetings, and new social services for students.

Central New Mexico Community College. The college’s CNM Connect [link] provides bundled services that are

purposefully connected both on and off-campus, allowing students to tailor plans to address financial

literacy, budget development, tax preparation, benefits assistance applications, and food supports. The

college offers training to other colleges that wish to learn how to build successful financial coaching

http://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PracticeGuide1.pdf

https://www.cnm.edu/student-resources/get-help


programs.

LaGuardia Community College. LaGuardia takes a comprehensive approach to student financial stability,

including mining FAFSA data to identify students and automatically screen them for public benefits.

Winners of the ACCT Charles Kennedy Equity Award. This award recognizes colleges with governing boards and chief executives who have made a commitment to achieving equity in student outcomes and increasing diversity in staff and faculty. A list of past award-winners is available on ACCT’s website [link].


Beyond Financial Aid: How Colleges Can Strengthen the Financial Stability of Low-Income Students and Increase Student Outcomes [link]. This toolkit from the Lumina Foundation provides a self-assessment so colleges understand steps they can (and must) take to build a comprehensive set of supports to make school affordable for students, beyond traditional financial aid strategies. Do Support Services at Community Colleges Encourage Success or Reproduce Disadvantage? [link]. This report, from the Community College Research Center, shows how the students who need support services the most are often the least likely to seek them out. Single Stop [link] and Achieving the Dream’s Working Students Success Network [link]. Both organizations provide colleges with the training, resources, and supports to develop partnerships with community organizations and social service agencies to provide students with a wide range of nonacademic benefits and services.

http://www.acct.org/files/Awards/2015/Assoc_Awards_Archive%202015.pdf

http://www.luminafoundation.org/resources/beyond-financial-aid-guidebook

http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/publications/do-support-services-encourage-success.html

http://singlestopusa.org/

http://achievingthedream.org/resources/initiatives/working-students-success-network


Part 5. LABOR MARKET SUCCESS

Strengths:

Ivy Tech is historically strong in career and technical education and continues to have a strong culture

supporting workforce development. This culture can be leveraged to build a broader shared vision of

student success as completion with post-transfer and labor market success.


Even within strong CTE programs and for the College as a whole, Ivy Tech could improve its use of labor

market projections, student outcome data, and employer feedback to inform program design and

offerings.

Increases in the availability of state-level labor market outcome data offers Ivy Tech the chance to both

get better where outcomes are weak and demonstrate value where outcomes are strong.

Integration between academic (traditionally pre-transfer) and career/technical programs could

strengthen practices in both, and fostering shared knowledge about effective practices across “silos” of

these and other divisions within the College could help reinforce college-wide commitment to a single

shared set of student success goals.


Ensure that career and technical education is incorporated in broader improvements to advising and

onboarding, and that key reform efforts don’t isolate CTE programs from other areas of the College.

Collect formal wage and employment data to inform program improvements and to help students make

informed choices about programs of study.

Ivy Tech’s career and technical education programs ge are among the College’s strongest areas in terms of

student outcomes. Over 70 percent of the College’s credentials awarded are in vocational/technical fields. In

career and technical education there a number of programs in high-demand fields from nursing and allied

health occupations, cybersecurity, and advanced manufacturing, to engineering technology, logistics, and

others. The College has a comprehensive apprenticeship program in a number of trades such as

boilermakers, bricklayers, carpenters, electricians, millwrights, plumbers and pipefitters, and sheet metal

workers. Not all of these programs lead to high-wage, high-demand careers, but many do. Additionally, the

Achieve Your Degree program is a notable and innovative partnership to simultaneously increase access and

add employer value. Ivy Tech’s experience, capability, and capacity in workforce training and education is its

strongest characteristic and should serve as a leverage point for enhancing student outcomes in other areas

of the College.

With respect to labor market outcomes, the site visit team looks for evidence of several practices proven to

support strong post-graduation success for students:

That a college’s definition of student success includes strong labor market outcomes based on

annual monitoring of data about graduates’ employment and wages relative to averages in the


region. As outlined in our publication “Using Labor Market Data to Improve Student Success,”

we recommend using Unemployment Insurance wage data available from the Indiana

Department of Workforce Development to help the College understand and set goals for

improving labor market outcomes. Typically, we recommend that institutions look at rates of

employment relative to unemployment overall in the region, and annual wages of their

graduates 18 months following graduation in comparison and average wages of all new hires in a

given regional economy. We also recommend another wage analysis five years after graduation

compared with the average wages of all workers within a regional economy.

Individual campuses align program offerings with projections of labor market demand for jobs with

good wages in their regions.

Employers are given an active role in curriculum design and improvement.

The system and individual campuses monitor students’ post-graduation success in

employment/earnings and use that information to improve offerings.

Individual campuses regularly seek honest feedback from employers about student performance and

use that feedback to improve teaching.

Campuses have strong advising resources and practices that clearly illustrate to students which

programs of study lead to careers in high-growth/high-wage fields.

Many of these factors are difficult to assess at the state level, as strong practices tying program improvement

to labor market outcomes are by definition regionally variable and locally developed. Not surprisingly, in

what site visitors were able to discern about such practices at Ivy Tech, there was significant variation by

region. Generally, however, it was not clear that Ivy Tech campuses currently collect and analyze post-

graduation earnings of students and use that information for program improvement or advising. Beginning

July 1, 2016, the state’s Department of Workforce Development will share with Ivy Tech its wage and

placement data. Making strategic use of this data will be critical to Ivy Tech’s ability to tell its story and

leverage its strengths in workforce development.

While workforce training is Ivy Tech’s strongest capability, it is also not clear that the College has systematic

practices in place across regions or at the state level for aligning programs with projected labor market

demand in high-wage occupations. Where these practices exist, they should be scaled; where they do not

exist, Ivy Tech’s leaders should look to exemplar colleges nationally and find ways to leverage the current

policy efforts in Indiana to create stronger links between workforce and higher education data systems.

Finally, one of the strategies Ivy Tech has employed to both increase completion rates, add value for

students, and increase the number of credentials awarded is to create one-year certificates or “stackable

credentials.” There is evidence nationally that such strategies can provide momentum and a safety net for

students who are likely to leave before completing a longer-term credential. However, it is not clear

(nationally or at Ivy Tech) that these stackable credentials have independent labor market value. These

credentials should be validated with the use of labor market data on graduates who earn them, and advising

practices should make clear to students which of these credentials provide stand-alone value.

Where to Look for institutional exemplars in labor market success

College of the Ouachitas. College leaders target specific employment sectors and regularly gather data on

labor market outcomes by program.

https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/labor-market-data-improve-student-success/


Broward College. For each program field, Broward’s new college catalog [link] lays out jobs in demand in the

region using a variety of data sources.

Walla Walla Community College. Walla Walla has achieved exceptional labor market outcomes for students

by designing programs to align with labor market projections, advising students into programs based on

assessments of future labor demand, and engaging employers in curricular design and review.

Stark State College. Stark State designed tools and strategies to help health pre-selects make smart decisions

and stay on track to a worthwhile credential. Tools—and frank advising—are customized for students with

different GPAs, given their differing chances of acceptance. [Stark State College’s New Approach to Pre-

Nursing Students, links to part 1, part 2].

West Kentucky Community and Technical College.West Kentucky has developed a health science technology

associate in applied science degree, so that students awaiting admission to a selective program can attain

credentials aligned to regional entry-level workforce needs even if they don’t get in to the program of their

choice.


Career Coach [link]. This online tool allows students to explore the job prospects, earning potential, and

current openings for a variety of careers, and colleges can use the amassed data to analyze student interests.

Using Labor Market Data to Improve Student Success [complete document]. This Aspen Institute report

highlights how several colleges help students choose a realistic career path.

Workforce Preparation and Employment Outcomes [complete document]. This Completion Arch research brief

from RTI International illustrates how community colleges in Tennessee and California report labor market

outcomes of their graduates in certificate and degree programs.

http://issuu.com/browardcollegecatalog/docs/1516_college_catalog__sections_iv_a?e=17305406/13248191

http://completionbydesign.org/blog/stark-state-college%E2%80%99s-new-approach-to-pre-nursing-students-part-1-of-2

http://completionbydesign.org/blog/stark-states-new-advising-strategy-for-pre-nursing-students-part-2-of-2

http://www.economicmodeling.com/career-coach/

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/using-labor-market-data-improve-student-success

http://www.completionarch.org/uploads/Workforce.pdf


Part 6. INSTITUTIONAL CULTURE

Strengths:

Ivy Tech benefits from strong faculty and staff commitment to student success and a perception among

students that the campuses are “like a family.”

Area of opportunity:

There is an opportunity under new leadership and through a new strategic planning process to develop a

strong student-success centered culture anchored in clear, ambitious goals for improving completion

rates with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes.

A new student-success centered culture could be supported by more strategic balance between central

office and regional autonomy.

All of Ivy Tech’s regions would benefit from more structured opportunities for cross-region sharing of

promising practices.


Use the strategic planning process to create a new definition of student success in terms of completion

with strong post-transfer and labor market outcomes, and set clear goals linked to that definition.

Build a student success research agenda at the system leadership level framed with key metrics that focus

on completion, learning, equity in access and success, and labor market outcomes.

Be intentional about integrating future reform initiatives into a coherent student success agenda.

Engage faculty in inquiry about student outcomes and empower them to improve teaching practices

through professional development.

The need for a culture that supports continuous improvement in student outcomes appears throughout these

recommendations and is perhaps the most important thing Ivy Tech’s new leadership will need to attend to

moving forward. As noted above, we recognize the complexity of Ivy Tech’s governance structure and the

ways in which this structure makes culture-change both more critical and more challenging. Hopefully, these

recommendations make clear some of the strategies other colleges have used to build cultures anchored in a

strong, shared vision for student success defined in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-

transfer outcomes.

All of the recommendations above incorporate strategies for building a student-success centered culture

based on practices of communication, planning, data use, resource allocation, and professional development

that have shown to be effective at high-performing institutions nationally. Of course, we caution against

adopting “best practices” from other colleges and implementing those at Ivy Tech without consideration of

local contexts and needs. One of the core tenets of culture change is that faculty and staff should be

intentionally and authentically engaged in defining the vision and strategies by which student outcomes will

be improved. That said, there are a number of common pillars of highly effective, student-success centered

cultures. Specifically, these include:


Building a robust institutional research capacity coupled with strong routines of data use and

analysis guided by a few focused questions about student outcomes;

Defining student success clearly in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-transfer

outcomes;

Integrating advising and student support services under the umbrella of a coherent “student success

system” designed with the student experience in mind (and perhaps using one of the national

frameworks such as Completion by Design or Pathways as a blueprint);

Routinely disaggregating key outcome data by race/ethnicity, Pell eligibility, age, and other key

demographic variables to address disparities and set equity goals;

Ensuring that all reform initiatives have a clear focus on the end goal, defined in terms of completion

with strong labor market and post-transfer outcomes, and that data about those outcomes are used

in planning and evaluation.

Many of these strategies are fundamentally about the complex relationship between organizational structure,

business processes, and the effects of those processes on culture and practice. The site visit team strongly

encourages Ivy Tech’s leadership to carefully examine these factors as the College looks to a new phase of

student success reform. The intricacy of these relationships (between structure, culture, and practice) are

currently manifested in the lack of clarity around the roles of key committees and regional leaders, as well as

in confusion about the purpose, longevity, and viability of various past reform efforts—all areas of concern

that emerged during the site visit.

As hard as it is to understate the importance of recognizing and carefully examining issues organizational

structure and culture, it’s equally hard for the site visit team to make concrete suggestions about how to

address them. As external observers, we are reluctant to offer specific recommendations—both because of

our distance from the unique cultures of the regions and because we do not wish to suggest that there is a

short-term easy “fix” for these challenges as opposed to ongoing deliberate and disciplined efforts that will

be required for the College to make progress gradually over time.

We know, however, that other colleges who have successfully engaged in such complex, broad institutional

transformation have found it critical to start the process by anchoring the entire college in its core values:

who are we as a college and what do we want for our students to achieve? Having identified those core

values, successful colleges find it equally critical to then carefully and intentionally engage the entire

community—and especially faculty—in strategic planning that asks for input on how the college will get from

point A to point B in student outcomes. This engagement will be particularly critical and will be a

particularly promising area of opportunity for Ivy Tech’s new leadership to reinforce the value the College

places on teaching and learning as the core of its enterprise.

As Ivy Tech enters a new era of leadership and a new phase of its student success agenda, the whole

institution will benefit from intentional efforts by central office leaders to strengthen the culture around

student outcomes through these and other strategies. For Ivy Tech, building a strong student success culture

will also require carefully considering the current tensions between local variation and central

standardization and accountability. Leaders in the central office should not underestimate the power of the

current culture—which emphasizes “helping students achieve their objectives” rather than completion—in

driving practice at the local level. At the same time, there is tremendous enthusiasm and commitment to

student success among faculty and staff at all levels. This energy must be thoughtfully harnessed to facilitate

innovative practices in learning assessment and teaching, employer engagement, financial aid, equity

interventions, and transfer partnerships with four-year institutions.


WHERE TO LOOK for institutional exemplars

Central Piedmont Community College. Central Piedmont’s institutional research office has done notable work in institutionalizing a culture of evidence—faculty throughout the college understand and use data to improve student outcomes. The Center for Applied Research [link] on campus provides services to the college and others around the country. Harper College and City Colleges of Chicago. Both Harper College and the City Colleges of Chicago have set concrete goals for student success that are regularly reviewed as a way to allocate resources, measure against key performance indicators, and focus conversations about how proposed and ongoing student success initiatives will or are contributing to specific goals.


“Building a Culture of Inquiry: Using a Cycle of Exploring Research and Data to Improve Student Success” [link]. This guide from the RP Group lays out a productive cycle for using data for change, and provides further resources. “Learning From High-Performing and Fast-Gaining Institutions” [link]. This practice guide from the Education Trust, based on the analysis of practices at eight improving universities, lays out ten essential data-centered questions for colleges to frame a completion conversation around. What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success. This book by Aspen Institute College Excellence Program Executive Director Josh Wyner draws on examples from exceptional community colleges to identify key attributes of institutions focused on student success.

http://cpcc-cfar.com/

http://www.rpgroup.org/sites/default/files/CbD-Building.pdf

http://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/PracticeGuide1.pdf


CONCLUSION In large part due to effective leadership and the commitment of faculty and staff, Ivy Tech has made

remarkable advances over the past decade in improving student outcomes—particularly through critical

reforms in developmental education and redesign of the gateway math curriculum. These reforms have laid a

strong foundation and created significant positive momentum for future advances in student success reform.

The immediate challenge for Ivy Tech’s new leadership is to shift the College’s culture to be focused on a

singular shared vision of student success defined in terms of completion with strong labor market and post-

transfer outcomes. A second challenge is to connect and effectively integrate supports and structures that

have been put into place—a process best informed by data on student outcomes, the experiences of faculty

and students, as well as promising practices at exceptional community colleges nationwide. Addressing this

challenge will ensure that Ivy Tech’s dedicated faculty and staff have a clear sense of their respective roles in

advising and supporting students as they enter and progress through the institution. A third challenge

underlying all reform efforts moving forward will be to address the balance between the efficiencies and

cross-state collaboration made possible by centralized authority, on one hand, and the need for regional

autonomy and flexibility in designing strong interventions responsive to local needs on the other. Though

not an insignificant challenge given Ivy Tech’s organizational complexity, the College has the opportunity to

achieve the “best of both worlds” if it can strike the right balance, allowing it to benefit from both local

innovation and the efficiencies of centralized planning and oversight.

The site visit team wishes to thank Ivy Tech’s leadership for the opportunity to conduct this site visit. We are

also grateful to the faculty, staff, and students who took time to share their perspectives with us.

Site Visit Team Trudy Bers, Achieving the Dream Data Coach, President of the Bers Group Mary Fifield, Achieving the Dream Leadership Coach, former president of Bunker Hill

Community College and Harrisburg Area Community College Rob Johnstone, Founder and president of the National Center for Inquiry & Improvement Bob Templin, Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program, former president

of Northern Virginia Community College Keith Witham, Deputy Director, Aspen Institute College Excellence Program

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