May 12, 2014 | SharkAdmin [image 2]As you know, one of NVC’s three strategic objectives is Completion. One of the issues we recognized when we created this strategic objective four years ago was that the majority of incoming students did not even know we offered degrees and certificates. Over the past three to four years, we have focused on marketing our associate degrees and certificates and the benefits, helping first time in college students in the SDEV course understand and explore career and degree options and create degree plans and; improving graduation information and processes. The chart below shows the progress we have made from 2009 to 2013. [image 1] College-wide efforts have resulted in significant progress. Annual graduation numbers are improving as are state published graduation rates. That is good, but we need to keep improving. A year ago we began a new phase in our NVC Completion journey, establishing an action plan to improve and expanding advising. Last summer the E-Team created a goal for every NVC student to have a validated degree plan as one step in the process of students achieving their goals and the college continuing to improve graduation results. We have been working behind the scenes to make sure we have the infrastructure to support that initiative. This spring, in an effort to focus on improving graduation numbers across the district, a completion initiative has been launched across colleges and district support entities to increase graduation numbers. In an effort to get focused and execute completion goals throughout the organization, Alamo Colleges' leaders are being trained on a tool, called the “4 Disciplines of Execution,” also known as 4-DX. In essence each team or workgroup builds a wildly important goal (WIG) using a lead measure that they can influence to impact the lag measure of degree completion (or persistence from semester to semester or all students with degree plans). Then each person on the team commits to an action each week toward the teams goal. We have some teams that have begun this process. All Student Success groups have built goals around an initiative call “NVC Completes.” In my message next week I will share with you some examples of the work teams have begun. Learning Communities Video We had intended to show a video about one of the NVC learning communities classes that integrates government and sociology. Unfortunately, we could not get the sound to work. If you would like to view the video click on this link: https://www.facebook.com/carly.gomez.735#!/NVCLC. It will take you the learning communities facebook page. When that page comes up, click on the photo of the class with Robert Marbut. That will take you to the video.
