PREPARE, DECLARE, TRANSFER — Vice President of Academic Affairs Kathy Tyner tells the governing board about college strategies to improve transfer rates and speed students through SWC in two years.
Kristina Saunders/Staff
More than ever before in American history, college is essential to economic success and a chance to live in the middle class. Well-paying careers for people with high school educations have all but vanished in the United States. A college degree is more critical than ever.
Students at Southwestern College who enroll with the intention of earning degrees are struggling big time. Though the college lacks reliable data, the most optimist estimates for successful transfer is less than 30 percent. Many councelors and some candid administrators say that it could be less than 10 percent.
Statewide the transfer statistics are better, but still low, according to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office in Sacramento. Transfer rates for community college students is less than 50 percent. Once a student is accepted to a university, rates increase slightly to about 58 percent.
In an effort to improve these rates and to move students more quickly through community colleges, a panel of educators prepared the Student Success Initiative that was soon after passed into law by the California State Legislature. SWC President Dr. Melinda Nish was a panel member.
Southwestern College has been working to align itself with the initiate. Dr. Angelica Suarez, vice president of student affairs, said the college is trying to help students understand the initiative and its new requirements that aim to push them through in two years.
“We at Southwestern have organized a lot of different forums, student success and completion forums, inviting students and staff to talk about what we are doing inside and outside the classroom to help students feel directed, valued, connected, engaged, nurtured and focused,” she said.
These six factors are what students have identified as helping them succeed according to the RP Group of the California Community Colleges. Research concludes that students need to feel involved with the campus to feel motivated. Students who feel connected to their college and professors have higher success rates, the research shows.
This spring, SWC had a forum focusing on student success based on the SSI’s six factors for success. SWC innovations included implementing a degree audit, analyzing completion rates by program and creating a first-year experience program. College administrators also pledged to work on the counselor shortage at SWC and find ways to help students meet with counselors.
Students currently must see a counselor to create a Student Education Plan (SEP). Step one would allow students to access to their SEP online through Web Advisor.
“Students want an electronic SEP,” said Suarez.
Class schedules and units per course are being scrutinized as well, according to Vice President of Academic Affairs Kathy Tyner.
“We are going to look at every program that we offer here and the percentage of students that are actually getting through and we’re going to look to see if there are any obstacles,” she said. “For example, if we were always offering a physics class at the same time as chemistry and students need to take them both. Those are the things that if we knew about them, we could fix them.”
Programs are going to be scrutinized, altered or dropped according to how well they are covering the necessities of students.
Student Success Initiative #3 addresses students who come to SWC without college level skills in reading, writing and mathematics.
“If students place in college-level classes, then 63 percent of students finish within a six-year period and if they place into basic skills then it is 36.5 percent,” said Tyner. “It shows how important it really is to come prepared for college level courses.
She said at SWC there are a lot more students with who enter below grade level than who enter prepared to do college work.
SWC is exploring a first-year experience program like those in place a other community colleges and universities, said Suarez.
“It is to try and help students get a refresher on the math skills they learned in high school so that it can improve their placement on the assessment test thus not needing to take additional levels that they don’t need,” she said Suarez.
Suarez and Tyner both said that wof the math courses they have already taken in high school. They said a proposed Summer Math Boot Camp will help more students test into college-level math and avoid years of remedial math course.
Sweetwater Union High School District graduates would voluntarily enroll in a two-week, one-unit summer course if they score at least two levels below their last completed math course. Aside from a math refresher, incoming freshmen would receive success skills, study skills, time management, test taking strategies, college support services and goal-setting skills.
All of the components of the initiatives are still in conversation, but the Summer Math Boot Camp is scheduled for the summer of 2014. Other colleges, such as Riverside Community College, have implemented similar strategies with clear success.
Tyner said lack of funding has prevented SWC from increasing student completion rates as much as desired.
“We don’t have a whole lot of resources,” she said. “But it’d be nice if all incoming students were participating in (the math Boot Camp)”
Student Success Initiatives are still works in progress, but SWC is working significantly harder to provide students with ways to reach their goals, said Suarez.
“We know that there are a lot of things in students’ lives that makes it difficult,” she said. “(There are) things not within our control, but certainly for those that are within our control and within our ability to impact, we want to do so.”