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Accreditation to college: Advising needs work
The Advocate
Out of the four recommendations made during a 2007 accreditation visit that Mt. Hood Community College needed to address, only one still needs work: advising.
Marr Carr, from Spokane Community College came to MHCC Monday to inspect and observe changes that had been made at the college in the past two years. Carr gathered her data and will file her report to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities within the next two weeks.
Carr was given a focused interim report during her visit, which explained in detail the changes the college had made since 2007 and the progress still being made.
The focused interim report, which can be found on the MHCC website, said, “Structures need to be established that encourage meaningful participation of faculty and staff in a collaborative effort to strengthen advising support to students.”
“We can’t lie about (it.) Why would we hide it?” said Szofran.
The report said the college is committed to providing quality advising and a vice president for students success and enrollment management (SSEM) would help close the gap between faculty advisers and staff advisers.
“We don’t have the process well defined yet,” said Szofran.
Associate Director of Human Resources Sheri Mosher sent an e-mail that explained that a screening committee for the vice president position will interview candidates Monday and will identify finalists for the position by the end of the day.
On Tuesday, finalists will participate in employee forums.
There have been two interim vice presidents for SSEM and “it’s hard to get something done,” said Szofran.
Szofran said there has been progress in collaborating between faculty and staff advisers, but “it’s not enough and we’re going to do more.”
The group advising is well liked, according to Szofran, and the college is now exploring the option of case management.
This would include a report of every time a student comes to an adviser and linking this to the student’s records so when the student comes in for further advice the adviser will have previously reported data on file.
Szofran said, “It would be good to develop something like that.”
The three other recommendations made following the 2007 accreditation were regarding strategic planning, facilities maintenance and educational assessment.
Szofran said that the facilities recommendation was great.
According to the focused interim report, the due date for assuring the Deferred Maintenance Recommendation Committee and Facilities Planning Committee are comprehensive in their memberships is Saturday, but Szofran said that it is in draft form right now and the due date was to illustrate that the college is working on the project.
Szofran said the process should not take much longer and that the committees are finalizing chairs and co-chairs.
“We talked about it on Tuesday,” said Szofran. “We’re going to make sure students are on future facilities committees.”
The focused interim report said, “State stimulus dollars (the “Go Oregon” initiative) in the amount of $3.85 million have funded several deferred maintenance projects.”
Some of these projects have included an upgrade in classrooms, labs and restrooms as well as reconfiguring classroom space to better suit students needs and upgrading HPE facilities, the main theater rigging system and stage and replacing floor covering at the Maywood Park Campus and replacing the HPE roofs.
The summary of the focused interim report said, “For the first time in its 43-year history, MHCC is developing an inclusive and systematic process to identify, record, assess, prioritize and track the many and varied deferred maintenance projects it faces.”
Another recommendation was strategic planning, which made significant progress, according to Szofran.
“Since the accreditation visit, the College has fully engaged in developing and continuously improving its planning processes,” said the focused interim report. “The use of WEAVEonline helps the college community analyze data, assess activities, create synergistic opportunities among peers and establish and evaluate unit and department goals.”
WEAVEonline is a web-based software application, which manages and supports assessments, resource allocation, improvement processes and planning at all level of the college.
WEAVEonline is a tool also used in regards to the fourth recommendation, educational assessment.
Biology instructor Lee Mitchell said he uses WEAVEonline to keep records of changes and how effective the changes are.
Szofran said, “Lee (Mitchell) is so passionate about this.”
Mitchell and Szofran both said that curriculum can be modified to meet the needs of the students within a certain program and that this is very beneficial to the students.
The remainder of the focused interim report focused on the changes that have been made since the last accreditation process two years ago.
One of the changes has been hiring President John Sygielski.
Szofran said that the main change that Sygielski brought on was a change in attitude throughout the college.
Asked if she was worried about MHCC not being accredited, Szofran said, “We’re not anywhere near that. We’re in good shape.”
Szofran said accreditation is very important to a college because when a college is not accredited, they lose the ability to give students financial aid, among other things.
The accreditation process is about peers helping peers, according to Szofran.
Szofran explained that the representative is purposefully changed to avoid bias.
Szofran said she expects that the report will talk about continuing to work on advising.
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