An ongoing concern at De Anza College, in this environment of Performance Based Accountability, is to know if the things we do actually make a difference or help us achieve our planning goals.
At the 1998 De Anza College Student Services Retreat, the group decided the primary goal of student services was to ensure our students accomplished their educational and/or career goals, because of what we do, rather than in spite of what we do. We decided to exam our programs and services to identify any barriers to students reaching their goals.
In order to accomplish this goal we acknowledged the importance of partnerships among student service programs and with instructional divisions. We had a number of successful partnerships between programs and services, but we needed to spend time developing partnerships or cooperative programs with targeted instructional divisions. In order to agree on what we wanted to accomplish as a unit, we decided it was important to define some of the key terms we frequently used. By defining these terms we anticipated we could more specifically define (qualitatively and quantitatively) the goal of ensuring each student was successfully moving toward accomplishing his or her goals.
We developed the following definitions of terms to guide our planning discussions.
Student Success
Student goal attainment, student satisfaction, placement rates in workforce, degree/certification completion, transfer rate and number, fall-to-fall persistence, success after transfer, success in subsequent coursework, course retention and personal growth and development.
Student Centered
Student centered is to know the instructional and support needs of our students and performing assessment and evaluations to ensure that what they think they want is actually what they need to complete their educational or career goals.
Seamless Delivery of Services
If we tell a student they must do something or perform a task, we must ensure they are able to do it, and our structure accommodates them accessing and completing the activity easily and sequentially.
Our effort was to agree on a definition of terms for use at De Anza College. We were not attempting to develop a broadly acceptable definition of terms. An important aspect of defining these terms was the discussion and the process for reaching agreement. Over the years we have been able to ask ourselves how we were doing in accomplishing our primary goal by using the lens of student success, student centered and seamless delivery of services. And we have a common understanding of what these terms mean to us at De Anza College.
In 2000-01 we redefined the goals of student services to be access, outreach and retention. We felt by focusing on these three indicators we could have greater control and success in helping students reach their academic and/or career goals. We did not eliminate or ignore other performance indicators (transfer, graduation, certification, etc.). We divided our effort into two phases. The first phase was to create a clear relationship between access, outreach and retention. We believed our outreach effort needed to have a direct relationship to our retention efforts. The second phase is ensuring a clear relationship between retention and transfer, graduation and certification. We believed this particular focus would give us the greatest ability to control, sustain and replicate our work with students.
We believed our efforts would represent some aspect of organizational change, therefore it was important for us to use established planning practices. As a group we reviewed and discussed information and literature related to learning organizations, strategic planning and systems thinking as a way to guide our planning discussions. As a result of our review and conversations, we reiterated our commitment to partnership, however this time we examined partnerships in context to our definitions of student centered, seamless delivery, factoring in our conversations on system thinking and strategic planning.
All of our discussions, review of literature and planning shifted from conceptual to actual, when we started discussing which services would be located in our new Student Services Building. We determined the new building needed to reflect our concept of student success, student centered and seamless delivery of services. We felt the building should invite and support “First Contact” with potential students and community members and should be intuitive to continuing students. Based on this discussion, we identified and agreed on functions, rather than programs or services that needed to be located in the building in order to address our concept of “First Contact”. As a result of starting our work by identifying functions first, the scope of the building grew. It no longer felt comfortable to call it a Student Services Building, so we changed the name to the Student and Community Services Building, as a way to invite our community to use the building as a point of “First Contact”. We visited other campuses and found that most student services buildings were designed using the concept of “One Stop”. Although we thought the concept of “One Stop” worked for many institutions, we wanted to ensure our building helped us accomplish our student success goals.
We proceeded by listing all services and programs we felt were important to have in the building based on “First Contact.” These included A&R, Counseling, Facility Rentals, College Information Service, DSPS, Community Services, Business and Industry Institute, Career Center, Testing and Assessment.
We then identified what relationships or partnerships existed between services and programs and how we could address student success by locating programs and services in the building based on our definition of seamless delivery and student centered. An example of an existing partnership includes, the transfer center, a program for undecided majors, a Minority Transfer Program, EOPS, and Puente. This process allowed us to identify critical relationships and help determine what services and programs needed to be located in the building and where.
When the sub committee shared its decisions and rationale, with the members of student services, there was broad acceptance and endorsement of the recommendations, based on our agreement to focus on student success. On first glance of the building design and location of services, it may appear to be normal, although if you overlay our student services goals (access, outreach and retention) and our focus on Performance Based Outcomes, you can see how we have addressed our definition of student success, seamless delivery and student centered. We are entering the 100% design stage of the new building; we are now focusing on student flow and communication among programs and services.
As a result of our work to design a new building, I believe what we do does matter, and our investments in strategic planning does pay off. The most exciting aspect of this project was the “ah-ha” moments and the conversations that were held among the members of student services. Our discussions have been an asset in clearly articulating our goals/work to members of instruction and creating partnerships with targeted instructional divisions aimed at increasing student success. As an institution we value the partnership between student services and instruction as a means of helping our students reach their educational and career goals. We have a lot more to do, but we have a foundation and common understanding to guide our discussions and help us focus on the outcomes/performance we want to achieve. What we do does matter; how we do it makes a difference to the students we serve.
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