Creating A Faculty Culture of Student Success

7/29/2019 Creating A Faculty Culture of Student Success

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Creating a FaCulty

Culture oF Student SuCCeSS

College exCellenCe Program


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Copyright 2013 by The Aspen Institute, College Excellence Program

The Aspen Institute | One Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 700, Washington, DC 20036

Published in the United States of America in 2013 by The Aspen Institute

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America

Publication Number: 13/002

The Aspen Institute and Aspen Prize for Community College ExcellenceTe Aspen Institutes College Excellence Program (CEP) works to identiy and replicate college practicesand policies aimed at signicantly improving student outcomes. A central way CEP pursues this goal isthrough the Aspen Prize or Community College Excellence. o administer the Prize each year, CEP gathers

quantitative data about student success at the nations community colleges and qualitative inormation aboutwhat is happening at institutions that are achieving high and/or improving levels o student success in ourareas: learning, completion, labor market, and equitable outcomes. Tis guide is one o a series o publicationsthrough which the College Excellence Program will share what it has learned through the Prizes inormationgathering process.

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AcknowledgementsTe College Excellence Program at the Aspen Institute would like to thank our unders or their generous

support. Tis guide would not have been possible without support or the Aspen Prize or CommunityCollege Excellence rom:

America Achieves

Te Bank o America Charitable Foundation

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Te Joyce Foundation

JPMorgan Chase Foundation

Lumina Foundation

Te W. K. Kellogg Foundation

We would also like to thank Rose Asera and Kathy Booth o the RP Group, who worked in partnership with

Erika Falk and Josh Wyner o the Aspen Institute to research and crat this guide.


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Creating a FaCulty

Culture oF Student SuCCeSS

College exCellenCe Program


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Creating a Faculty Culture of Student Success | 1

IntroductIon

Sophia Gra, a beginning algebra teacher at Valencia College in Orlando, had an idea. Te state oFlorida had instituted a mandatory competency test that students needed to pass to enter intermediatealgebra, but only a third o her students were succeeding.

As part o an action-research project that was required or all proessors seeking tenure, Gra had already triedand rigorously proven that engaging her students in more group assignments increased student learning. Sheknew it worked in her classroom. Now she wondered what would happen i she provided students with asimilar opportunity to prepare or the competency test, in groups.

Gra recruited a dozen other aculty members to help esh out her idea. Tey set up a drop-in support tablein the rotunda o the math building, where the opportunity or tutoring would be highly visible, and studentswould understand that they were not alone in needing help. Te aculty members volunteered to take turnswalking small groups o students through the types o questions asked on the test, clariying key concepts, andoering test-taking strategies.

Te aculty team tracked test outcomes over the course o a year and discovered that the approach worked:student passage rates improved signicantly. Ater listening to students, aculty members thought they coulddo even better. Students were complaining about the distracting setting, so aculty worked with administratorsto secure a room in the same building. est results improved yet again.

Faculty members spread the word about the efcacy o the program, and their colleagues on other Valenciacampuses expressed interest. Te college allocated resources to pay aculty to participate. Within ve years,similar centers had become a xture at the main campuses and spread to satellite sites at Valencia. oday,50% o developmental math students participate in these small-group tutoring opportunities, and 70% o thestudents engaged in these learning activities go on to pass the competency test.

When colleges have a culture based on student success, they are capable o this kind o innovation. Facultyand sta consistently invent ways to improve student success. Innovators readily nd colleagues to adopt andthen help improve student success initiatives. And leaders can be counted on to support this good work tohelp make sure that the most eective student success practices are sustained and scaled.

Tis guide describes several community colleges that have achieved a culture in which aculty memberscontinuously improve student outcomes, and provides guidance on how others might build and sustain suchan exceptional culture similar.

Creating a FaCulty Culture

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2 | The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program

An Exemplary Culture: Faculty Improving Student Learning

In 2011, the inaugural year o the Aspen Prize or Community College Excellence, the Aspen Instituteanalyzed student success measures at more than 1,000 community colleges and investigated practices atcolleges achieving the strongest outcomes. Te Aspen Prize Jury selected Valencia College as the winnerboth because it achieves unusually high completion and job placement rates and because Valencia provides

an outstanding example o how deep attention to teaching excellence, review o evidence, and ongoingexperimentation can drive consistently improving rates o student success.

With multiple campuses and centers in the Orlando area, Valencia teaches more than 50,000 students eachyear. Although 70% o students begin in developmental education and 46% o the student population is blackor Hispanicgroups that tend to experience lower achievement levelsValencia exceeds national averages orgraduation and transer rates.

Fity-one percent o ull-time, rst-time students complete or transer within three years o entry,compared to the national rate o 39%.

Forty-seven percent o Valencias underrepresented minority students complete or transer, nearly thesame rate as other Valencia students, and at much higher rates than the national average (28%).

Although many programs and processes contribute to this success, Valencias achievement is grounded inlarge part in a shared culture that is strongly ocused on student learning. President Sandy Shugart expressedthe idea at the center o this culture simply and clearly as the belie that [i] students learn well, deeply, andintentionally, more will complete.1 But while leaders, proessors, and sta at other community colleges sharethe goal o improving student success, Valencia has embedded that goal into a culture that regularly inspirespositive improvements inside classrooms and beyond that result in strong student outcomes.

When students do not succeed at Valencia, aculty members routinely respond with theories o changeregarding how proessors and advisors could amend their practice to improve what students experience.Rather than viewing poor student preparation and competing lie demands as insurmountable barriers tosuccess, aculty members are deeply engaged in analyzing how their own actions can drive stronger outcomes;

they understand how their teaching and student learning are inextricably linked.

How did this happen? What are the lessons that can be taken rom Valencias past and present that mightinorm other colleges eorts to develop a culture centered on student achievement, one that consistently leadsproessors to signicantly change their practice to improve student learning?

Valencia achieved its culture in substantial part through a process o aculty development that otherinstitutions can replicate. At its core is the Valencia tenure process, which is built around a system thatrequires aculty members to use data and experiment with their own teaching in ways that will improvestudent learning, and supports them along the way. Ts s w Vc ss ss css w w c cs v w s c c c cs v cs s sccss.

o help determine how to replicate such a culture, this guide describes the change process at Valencia andother colleges in our steps:

Step One: Establish a Broad Demand or Change

Step wo: Build the eam

Step Tree: Determine and Execute a Plan or Institutionalization

Step Four: Evaluate, Reect, and Continuously Improve


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Te sections below explain each stage as it played out at Valencia, supplemented at each step with additionalexamples o how other successul colleges have gone through similar processes. Although we recognize thatno two colleges are identical and that the path to change at each will vary, our hope is that the descriptions inthis guidealong with discussions o common obstacles and strategies or addressing themwill aid othercolleges as they seek to build stronger cultures around student learning.

Step 1: eStabliSh a broad demand For Change

When we started, we were student-centered. We loved our students. Ten we were learner-centered, becausethat said a little more about their participation. Ten we came to understand that students have to learn,and aculty members have to keep learning. We became learning-centered.

Helen Clarke, ounding director o the eaching/Learning Academy, Valencia College

Dual Triggers at Valencia College:Student Learning and Faculty Tenure

At Valencia, the process o developing a new tenuresystem began with the recognition o two seriousproblems. At other colleges as well, changes inaculty culture oten start with an igniting event,such as the presentation o data showing clearpatterns o poor student perormance or a criticalaccreditation report. Building consensus that thesenegative results must be reversed can be a powerulmotivator or reorm.

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At Valencia College, the broad demand or change began with two challenges: aculty dissatisaction with thetenure process and a growing understanding that many students were not learning.

Te realization that there was a problem with student learning grew out o work unded through ederal itleIII and itle V grants to create proessional learning communities in which aculty members read literatureon learning, discussed problems they saw in their classrooms, and thought about how to improve teaching.As part o this work, aculty members began looking or data that would indicate how well Valencia studentswere learning and were soon conronted with a serious, undeniable problem.

According to Helen Clarke, a proessor engaged in those conversations who would go on to become a learningleader on campus, beore aculty saw data, the prevailing attitude was that i the students ailed classes, theyshould just take them again. Tey would learn the material by being exposed to it a second time. However,data, provided by the institutional research ofce o the college, pointed to an entirely dierent conclusion,as students oten did worse the second time they took a class. Because aculty members were also readingabout and discussing how to improve learning, they not only acknowledged that there was a serious problembut also believed that it could be resolved. Tey began to think o the problem as something they themselvescould change instead o being the result o immutable characteristics inherent in their students.


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At the same time, aculty members were unhappy with the tenure process, which as ar as they could tellawarded tenure based largely on how many hours they sat in various orientations and met with program headsand administrators. I an orientation meeting conicted with a scheduled class, recalls Valencia theaterproessor Michael Shugg, We were expected to cancel the class.

Te process seemed to proessors entirely disconnected rom their reason or coming to the college: to teach

students. Te tenure process did not help them become better teachers. Making matters worse, i a candidatewas denied tenure, there was no explanation or eedback, leading proessors to suspect that tenure decisionswere unrelated to their teaching ability. In other words, a process that proessors themselves believed shouldhave been based on teaching was disconnected rom that goal, and aculty members understood neither whythat was the case nor what criteria were being used in place o teaching excellence.

Tese two elementsdissatisaction with tenure and a drive to improve student learningmerged to createdissatisaction with the status quo and an opportunity to shit the culture at Valencia College.

The Impetus for Change at West Kentucky: Students Low Reading Scores and VaryingFaculty Expectations

A similar shock about poor outcomes in student learning triggered change at another Aspen nalist, WestKentucky Community and echnical College. West Kentucky serves 9,000 students in a sparsely populatedregion marked by high unemployment, low educational attainment, and little economic growth. AlthoughWest Kentuckys rate o credential attainment increased by more than 20% rom 2004 to 2009, the collegestill struggles with low graduation rates or underprepared students.

Te rst time West Kentucky students took the Educational esting Services Prociency Prole,administrators were surprised: Only 40% o their students were capable o basic reading skills, compared to60% o community college students nationally. Beore then, there was no awareness that students throughoutthe college had such serious reading challenges.

d s k cs c ss q ws cc, c s c ck c v s .Faculty members across all disciplines were encouraged and trained to teach students a set o specic readingstrategies alongside the content curriculum in courses. Tey were provided opportunities to join learningcircles with 15-20 other colleagues (ull time and adjunct) to discuss how to make this work. For a ull yearaculty members in these learning circles met to learn new skills, compare classroom experiences, and shareideas. Tis program has evolved into a mandatory part o new aculty orientation at West Kentucky.

Te same kind o data-driven change was triggered at the departmental level as well. For a long time, WestKentuckys remedial writing instructors were deensive when they heard complaints rom English 101proessors that students were arriving in the college-level class poorly prepared. o take measure o the problem,Maria Flynn, the dean o remedial education, assigned each remedial writing instructor the same set o student

essays to grade. Te teachers gave the essays completely dierent gradesand two weeks later, when they wereasked to mark the essays again, only one proessor gave the same grades that she had given beore.

Such stark results inspired instructors to change the status quoin this case, to work together to develop acommon, rigorous standard or student competency in entry level English, reected in a grading rubric thatwould be used or all assignments in both remedial and college-level writing courses. Although it took time,early interdepartmental antagonismwhich meant that many members did not talk to each other, much less


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collaborateeventually melted away. So much o our growth has been driven by taking the ego out o thingsand really thinking about who matters most, and its our students, said English Proessor Kim Russell. As atValencia, the ocus on students at West Kentucky began with a deep dissatisaction with the status quo.

Prepare to Create Demand for Change at Your Institution

1. Gather evidence that indicates a specic and pervasive problem in student learning. For example,

gather quantitative patterns that show a problem with how much students are learning within

programs or at a college-wide level. For broad demand to be created, these data must relate to

student performance beyond a few individual courses to college-wide measures of success.

2. Plan a campus-wide campaign to share this information with a wide range of people. Start by using

existing campus events, committees, and department meetings to discuss what these data mean.

Questions to ask include the following: Where are students succeeding best? Where are they not

succeeding? What is working? What needs attention? How do we explain the divergence between

what works and what does not?

3. Allocate additional resources to support the work. Although grants and external funds can help

jump-start the process, senior leaders can signal their commitment to improvement by visibly

reallocating existing resources to begin and advance the work.

Here are a few things you may hear along the road to change, and how you might respond.

We have been talking for an entire semester, but the conversation does not seem to be

going anywhere. Although the change process can take time, establishing a critical mass of support

at the outset will enable success to be accelerated and sustained over the long term. All people need

time to ask their questions and come to make sense of the issue themselves. However, it is also

important for college leaders to set clear parameters for investigating why the problems exist and set

deadlines for devising and implementing solutions.

Everyone is convinced the problem is the students. Present data showing that even under-

prepared students can succeed. Ideally, such data come from within your institution, but also explore

studies from other institutions with similar students that have achieved high or improving levels of

student success.

People keep insisting that we cannot improve until we have more money and people. Make

the cost of the status quo more apparent by referring back to student success data. Strong leaders

make clear that the institution cannot afford existing levels of student failure and will nd the money

for approaches that are shown to result in higher levels of student success.

People say we already have programs to address these problems. Point to data on student

success across the institution, making clear that existing programsno matter how effective for the

students they servehave not led to high enough levels of student success college-wide. Then ask

people why existing programs have not been fully effective at eliminating the problem and what can

be doneincluding what they could themselves doto further improve student outcomes.

Sticking PointS


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Step 2: build the team

I strategically selected a group o people who had buy-in, who really understood what it meant to be learning-centered, and who really knew teaching. I selected people rom dierent disciplines with dierent personalities.

Helen Clarke, ounding director o the eaching/Learning Academy, Valencia College

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Instead o assembling a team by simply includingone representative rom each division oradministrative unit, Valencia and West Kentuckyrecruited and developed groups that had at theircenters people who were open to examining the

eectiveness o existing practices, deeply cared about

implementing change to improve outcomes, and werelikely to be inuential with other aculty and sta. Tese

champions became the leaders and participants in designteams, task orces, and strategic planning groups ocused on

improving practice. Tey were the rst to implement learning improvement strategies, demonstrating toothers what could be accomplished in practice. And, ultimately, these champions became responsible orbuilding a college-wide approach to action. At both colleges, this meant thinking about who on campusneeded to be included, raming the issue so it elt vital to these constituents, integrating redesign work intoexisting college processes, sharing inormation broadly, and processing eedback.

Valencia: Reform from the Ground Up

o begin the process o examining student learning, over 200 individuals at Valencia spent time in learningcommunities, creating a broad understanding o the challenges. Faculty and sta wrote papers that exploredthe colleges strategic learning goals and were given release time or proessional development activities thatbrought a range o ideas and experts to the campus. Trough this process, numerous aculty members weregalvanized to believe that aculty development was important. It was rom these aculty members that asmaller group emerged to help lead reorm to the next level.

Roughly 20 aculty members ormed an inormal leadership core that started discussing how to improveteaching and learning across the institution, discussing among other things the limited connection betweenthe tenure process and student learning. With ederal grant support ending, they knew that proessionaldevelopment activities might cease; they needed support rom leadership to prevent this rom happening.

In 2000, Sandy Shugart became president o Valencia College. He enthusiastically supported the ideas ocreating a learning college and redesigning tenure, and he asked Helen Clarke to redesign the tenure processwith a ocus on better teaching (and in the long run, learning).


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When Clarke, an English proessor, put together a ve-member design team, she selected people rom avariety o disciplines and campuses who had already shown a commitment to creating a learning-centeredcollege through their work on the ederal itle III and itle V grants. Tey included a humanities proessor;the head o proessional development, who had a political science background; a math proessor; and alongtime counselor.

Te design team began its work by discussing the goals o the tenure process, agreeing that preparation ortenure should be a welcoming induction that was supportive rather than adversarial, should invite growth, andshould be rooted in the idea that candidates who care about improving their teaching should be given tenure.

Te design team did not work alone in eshing out these ideas. o determine how the nal tenure decisionswould be made, the team helped organize a tenure summit, led by the Faculty Council president. At thesummit, everyone was in the room: the president, deans, academic chairs, Faculty Council members, recentlytenured aculty, and some aculty members who were seeking tenure. Developing the tenure system involvedmany more meetings and took three years because everyone rom the president to aculty and sta membersreviewed and had input into the plan. Ultimately, though, it was invented by the academic community, andstill today, any signicant proposed changes to the tenure process must be brought to the Valencia aculty.

West Kentucky: Appointing Ambassadors

At West Kentucky, once administrators became aware o students poor reading skills, they began to builda team or reorm. Administrators took a deliberate approach, careully choosing a handul o acultymembers to be the rst to implement new teaching strategies. Tese ambassadors, rom a wide cross-sectiono departments, believed in continuous improvement, were respected and collaborative, and had positiveattitudes.

We were very intentional about how to go about identiying that rst group, said Kevin Gericke, aneconomics proessor involved in the initiative. Tey wanted teachers who wereabove all elseopen enoughto change to have a good chance o implementing new strategies to achieve higher levels o student success in

their classrooms. Most important, Gericke recalls, the recruits had the passion or their students and wantedto learn what they could do to keep helping them.

Tese early adopters were trained in how to teach reading, using the same approaches regardless o theirsubject matter, and began incorporating reading skills into their courses. Ater the rst-year pilot, theadministration invited the entire aculty to a celebration showing how scores on reading prociency tests hadimproved and how students, according to surveys, were reporting greater homework completion and comortwith assignments. Quotes rom students ashed on the screen, like I enjoy reading a lot more because I eellike I understand things better and Tis is one big textbook, but Im not scared o it now!

As outcomes kept improving, this sort o presentation was repeated annually, and enthusiasm or theinitiativeand thus participationgrew among aculty members. By starting with a ew orward-thinkingaculty members and then bringing more into the process over time, West Kentucky was able to train nearlyeveryone in a new way o teaching reading skills.


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Build, Support, and Monitor the Team

1. Identify the champions who will lead the effort and establish the design team, paying attention

to positions, expertise, and personalities. Include some who have demonstrated their leadership

abilities in other types of improvement efforts. In addition to obvious enthusiasts, identify people

who are neutral on the issue, open to change, andonce on boardare likely to be inuential with

colleagues.

2. Make sure the team is working well. Senior leaders need to sit in on meetings at times, check

in with team members, and make changes if the team is off-track or getting bogged down, possibly

adding new leaders to the team to help set deadlines.

3. Ensure that the group has access to data and to people who can collect, help interpret, and clearly

present student success information. Ensure that the institutional research ofce is supportive and

responds in a timely way to data requests.

We agree on the need to change, but we cannot agree on what to do. Be sure to explore the

reasons for disagreement over strategy, invoking data to resolve varying positions whenever possible.

In the end, however, leaders must maintain urgency by referring back to shortcomings reected in

student success data and setting deadlines for developing a strategy.

There is a group on campus that is working to sabotage the process. Rather than view the

opposition as a monolithic group, seek to understand concerns of specic individuals. Identify people

who may be more open to change and nd out more about the nature of their concerns. Look for

opportunities to address their concerns, but do not risk the success of the initiative in the process.

Sometimes this means spending limited time with naysayers and forging ahead with those on board

with change.

The design team is excluding particular constituencies. Accusations of bias or exclusiveness

may be isolated to a few unwilling individuals or may signal that a broad consensus has not been

achieved. Determine whether entire groups feel left out and, if so, nd out the specic nature of their

concerns. Then respond in a way that visibly demonstrates that they are being heard. For example, if

many members of an administrative unit feel like they have been left out of the conversation, senior

leadership should share student success data with them, invite their reections on the causes of

limited student success, and invite them to participate in specic planning activities that implicate

changes to their jobs and responsibilities.

Sticking PointS


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Step 3: determine and exeCute a plan For inStitutionalization

At rst, I was a respiratory therapist who was teaching. Te tenure process taught me that I had madea change in proession. Now I was a teacher who had worked in industry. Disciplinary knowledge issecondary to the art o teaching as a proession.

Wendi Dew, director o aculty and instructional development, Valencia College

Once the team has been created and initial eortsbegun, colleges that have been successul atbuilding new cultures have ollowed a clear pathto institutionalizing change.Vc c cs s c c c s c c sc s cc c v c, ss (c sc c) s cs s c ss v -.

Valencia: Linking Tenure to Improving Instruction

Ultimately, Valencia agreed on a plan or institutionalizing the new tenure approach that included threecomponents: dening a set o seven educator competencies tenure-track instructors were expected to attain(listed on page 12), creating a revamped tenure review process built around a commitment to high-qualityteaching and measuring what students learn, and establishing a new eaching/Learning Academy (LA),designed to support and guide the aculty through the tenure process. ogether, these initiatives make clearto all new aculty members that the college has specic expectations regarding teaching excellence, expectsevery member to work to make their teaching better, and will provide the resources needed to enable that tohappen.

Initially, three years o unding or the LA was requested and provided through one o the colleges internalgrant processes. Ater that, President Shugart decided to support the LA through a line item in the regularbudget, rom which unding has been provided ever since.

Valencias three-year tenure process is centered on what the college calls an Individual Learning Plan (ILP),which each aculty member develops to pursue growth in seven educator competencies. Among otherelements, ILPs must include at least one action research project, designed by each proessor to test the efcacyo new teaching strategies. Specically, all tenure candidates must:

Prepare Individual Learning Plans during their rst year on the job, identiying the educator

competencies they aim to improve, and detailing specic things they will do in urtherance o thatgoal.

ake 50 hours o proessional development seminars, which ocus on the seven educatorcompetencies.

Implement specic changes in their teaching, along with a specic plan to evaluate whether thosechanges led to higher levels o student success.


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Evaluate whether the changes in teaching result in improved student learning or completion, andsubmit their research or review by an interdisciplinary and intercampus panel o administrators andtenured aculty.

Write-up the research and results, presenting ndings to other aculty members and including theresults in a ormal portolio or tenure review.

Te LA has a sta o acilitators who guide aculty members through this process. Tey sponsor classes andworkshops, work individually with candidates on preparing their ILPs and portolios, and provide support onpedagogy, course design, and student development. Te LA also trains aculty members who serve on thetenure review panels, some o whom received tenure prior to development o the new tenure system. Involvingsenior aculty members, who did not receive tenure under the new system, has helped to spread understandingand support o action research at Valencia College.2

In the tenure process Valencia adopted, candidates are not judged based on whether the learning interventionsthey try succeed or ail, but rather whether the they are committed to improving student learning, trying newideas, measuring learning outcomes, and sharing innovations across the college. Valencia designed the processwith the understanding that sometimes aculty inventions work, but sometimes they dont. Te tenure process

reects the core belie that eorts to improvetogether with rigorous assessmentscan lead to understandingand growth as long as aculty members genuinely engage in the process based on a commitment to improvetheir teaching.

Te rst group o aculty to go through the LA process completed it in 2004. O the 46 aculty memberswho started, 40 successully completed and earned tenure. In the seven years ater that, 174 more candidatesearned tenure and 55 did not. O those 55, only 10 did not receive tenure ater submitting their portolios.O the 45 who did not make it to the point o submitting a nal portolio, hal chose to leave and hal werereleased by the college or perormance reasons.

Patrick Henry Community College: Using Graduation Rates to Engage Faculty

At Patrick Henry Community College, a 3,000-student college in Martinsville, Virginia, the three-yeargraduation/transer rate in 2004 was only 19%, a central reason the college joined the national reorminitiative, Achieving the Dream (AD). Trough an AD grant, aculty looked or data that might explainwhy student success rates were so low as the starting point or determining how to improve student outcomes.

Data rom the Community College Survey o Student Engagement indicated low levels o studentengagement in the classroom, leading aculty and leaders to hypothesize that changing this dynamic couldimprove graduation rates. Te college chose to improve student outcomes by adopting cooperative learning,an instructional method centered on hands-on group work.

Tree aculty members volunteered to go through an external training program on incorporating cooperativelearning strategies into the classroom. When they returned rom the training, they spent a year conducting

inormal workshops to teach other aculty members what they had learned. In the second year o the grant,three new aculty members joined the team, and the training expanded.

Ater a ew years o this voluntary process, all o Patrick Henrys ull-time aculty members had been trained inthe cooperative learning approach. Te aculty assessment committee charged with improving student learningoutcomes began to promote the idea o institutionalizing the change by making the training mandatory.


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When Amanda Saxman was a tenure candidate at

Valencia, she chose to focus her action research

project on a specic lesson within one of her

courses. Students in her Intermediate Algebra

class did not seem to grasp parabolas, a concept

crucial to the next course in the sequence,College Algebra. Saxmans students would

correctly apply formulas in their homework, but

then frequently misunderstand when to use the

formulas during tests. Saxman decided to replace

her typical lecture on the subject with a more

hands-on method of instruction.

She developed an innovative lesson based on

a story about a castle in a mythical land. The

students needed to calculate the time and

distance required to catapult boulders over the

walls of the castle. After the initial exercises, the

class was divided into small groups, in which theyhad to engage in exercises about parabolas in

applied settings.

To assess changes in student understanding,

Saxman designed pre- and post-tests that were

administered in her class, as well as in another

Intermediate Algebra class that did not use story

lessons. In addition, she compared post-test

scores with nal exam scores of her students

from a prior semester. When the course was

over, she examined her results and extracted

implications for her ongoing practice. Students

who worked through the story lessons with

graphic representations demonstrated a betterunderstanding of quadratics, and the post-test

scores of her students in the experimental group

were signicantly higher than students in the

control classes.

At the end of the year, Saxman presented her

results to a panel of tenured faculty that included

math and non-math professors. Saxmans study

and examples of her lessons were then shared on

the TLA website and through presentations to her

peers.

Her action research project was held up as anexemplar, but even if the intervention had not

worked, Saxman would not have failed. She still

would have shared with her peers what she

learned to inform their own experimentation.

Most importantly, the serious, rigorous manner in

which Saxman engaged in the project would have

aided her tenure review application regardless of

the success of the actual intervention itself.

At Valencia College, Professional Development is for Everyone

Valencia: Improving Understanding of Algebra through Action Research

The TLA and Valencias Ofce of Faculty and

Instructional Development provide professional

development services to all Valencia educators,

including full- and part-time faculty, counselors,

and librarians. Combined, the two departments

offer more than 300 courses in formats that

include face-to-face seminars, online classes, and

hybrid courses.3

Whether or not they are on the tenure track,

all educators have the opportunity to create

individual learning plans and participate in

action research. This investment provides a clear

demonstration that high-caliber teaching and a

focus on continuous improvement are essential

characteristics of the larger culture. It also helps

build a strong pool of candidates for permanent

faculty jobs60% of the tenured hires at Valencia

are drawn from the ranks of internal, part-time

faculty.

oday, all ull-time aculty members must complete a two-day training in cooperative learning, and the collegehas incorporated the use o cooperative learning into the ull-time aculty job description and evaluationprocess. Although adjunct aculty members do not have to complete the training, doing so improves theirchances o being invited to return to teachat least 80% have done so, administrators estimate. By 2009just ve years ater beginning the reormsthe three-year graduation/transer rate at Patrick Henry had nearlydoubled, rising rom 19% to 35%.


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Assessment

Valencia educators will develop student growth

through consistent, timely formative and

summative measures, and promote students

abilities to self-assess. Assessment practices

will invite student feedback on the teaching

and learning process as well as on student

achievement.

Inclusion & Diversity

Valencia educators will design learning

opportunities that acknowledge, draw upon and

are enriched by student diversity. An atmosphere

of inclusion and understanding will be promoted

in all learning environments.

Learning-centered Teaching Strategies

Valencia educators will implement diverse

teaching and learning strategies that

accommodate the learning styles of students and

that promote both acquisition and applications of

knowledge and understanding.

LifeMap

Valencia educators will design learning

opportunities that promote student life skillsdevelopment while enhancing discipline learning.

Through intentional inclusion of growth-

promoting strategies, instructors, counselors and

librarians will facilitate the students reection,

knowledge, and appreciation for self and

others; gradual assumption of responsibility for

making informed decisions; and formulation and

execution of their educational, career, and life

plans. As a result, students can transfer those life

skills to continued learning and planning in their

academic, personal, and professional endeavors.

Outcomes-based Practice

Valencia educators will design curricula that align

elements of student learning toward growth in

the Student Core Competencies and progression

through course sequences, by the demonstration

of Program Learning Outcomes.

The goal of outcomes-based practice is student

learning. The two key questions posed are What

will the students be able to know or do? and

How will you know they can do it?

Valencia has established what students should

know or do upon their graduation through

the Student Core Competencies (Think, Value,

Communicate & Act) and Program Learning

Outcomes (e.g., General Education Outcomes,

AS, AA, Honors, Certicate Programs, etc.).

Valencia educators will facilitate student growth

in the Student Core Competencies to include

thinking critically and creatively across different

contexts and domains of human understanding;

communicating effectively in different modes andacross different settings; articulating and applying

personal values, values of various disciplines,

and values of others; and applying learning and

understanding effectively and responsibly in their

lives as students and educated adults. Valencia

educators also will facilitate educational growth

in and demonstration of essential knowledge,

abilities, attitudes and/or dispositions as

articulated in Program Learning Outcomes.

Professional Commitment

Valencia educators will stay current andcontinually improve their knowledge and

understanding of their discipline. They will

participate in activities that promote Valencias

learning mission, including serving on campus

and college-wide groups, attending professional

conferences, and/or participating in other

community organizations.

Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Valencia educators will continuously examine

the effectiveness of their teaching, counseling,librarianship and assessment methodologies in

terms of student learning. They also will keep

abreast of the current scholarship in the elds of

teaching and learning.

Essential Competencies of a Valencia Educator


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Pierce College: Developing New Systems During Negotiations

Tere is no one path to building a aculty culture o continuous improvement. Pierce College Fort Steilacoom(PCFS), located in a suburb o acoma, Washington, demonstrates a dierent path.

In 2006, Pierce College administration and aculty were reviewing both the salary structure and the increasing

need or aculty proessional development. Te administration saw an opportunity to couple these issuesduring contract negotiations with the aculty union. Te result was a Master eaching program that providesaculty an opportunity to explore pedagogy, showcase eective teaching, troubleshoot instructional problems,and test curricular changes.

Te program kicks o with a weeklong course, where participants receive eedback rom peers on a project theyhave developed on a specic way to improve their teaching. Over the ollowing academic year, participantsimplement their projects, conducting research on whether they work to improve student outcomes. Finalreportsdocumenting what was tried, how it aected student outcomes, and how aculty members urtherrevised their practice based on outcome assessmentsare reviewed and approved by administrators, posted tothe college website, and shared through college-wide training days. Te new contract provided that those whosuccessully completed the program would receive a $2,500 increase to their base salary.

In the past seven years, 70 o the colleges 120 ull-time aculty members have participated. Troughoutthis period, the program has undergone a number o changes in response to eedback rom participants. Forexample, administrators initially acilitated and recruited aculty members or the program. In the last severalyears, to deepen aculty engagement and ownership, aculty members do most o the recruitment. Facultymembers have become part o the steering committee and eventually will acilitate the program. oday, PierceCollege Fort Steilacoom has a 56% three-year graduation and transer rate or rst-time, ull-time students,compared to an average o 39% or all public U.S. community colleges.

Prepare to Institutionalize the Change

1. Consider the processes through which change will be institutionalized (for example, changingrecruiting and hiring practices, mandating training, altering the faculty evaluation and/or revamping the

tenure process). Consider whether these strategies are likely to move the college culture or create

pockets of activity isolated from the existing culture. Look for institutional structures that make the

program less vulnerable to changes in leadership, the loss of a champion who is doing the work as a

volunteer, or the end of grants that support the infrastructure for the effort.

2. Determine what resources and systems will be necessary to implement and sustain the change.

Develop a strategy for including needed resources in the core budget, including clear reasons why

resources may need to be reduced elsewhere to enable broader change that will improve student

success.

3. Build a comprehensive communication plan into the larger planning process. Update the entire

college community on overall progress, including data and stories that indicate whether the change ishaving the desired effect.


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We do not have the resources we need to support students. How can we justify spending

money on professional development? Consistently frame decisions as part of an overall effort to

improve student outcomes. Make explicit the links between preparing faculty members to be more

effective at teaching and improving learning outcomes for students. Highlight examples where facultyresearch or training has yielded demonstrable improvements in learning at your institution.

Making programs mandatory increases resistance. Faculty may be resistant to mandates that

relate to how they teach. One approach is to make new approaches mandatory for a small group

rst, such as new faculty, while encouraging and funding voluntary participation by already tenured or

senior faculty.

People are interested but do not think they will have time to participate. Find ways to

provide incentives for participation. Senior leaders can give high-prole awards and other recognition

to those who participate in an exemplary manner. If funds are available to reward those engaged in

targeted practices, make larger salary increases possible, offer release time, or create a competitive

process for funds to support activities.

Step 4: eValuate, reFleCt, and ContinuouSly improVe

Were always working on it. We dont say Weve got that in the can. Were all teachers and want toconstantly improve our teaching. We want people who constantly think, How can I make this better? Weconstantly revise. We want that outlook o sel-refection.

Celine Kavalec-Miller, current director o the eaching/Learning Academy, Valencia College

Valencia and other colleges successul at

changing the aculty culture understand thatthe drive to improve means never standingstill. Tey know that when the culture hasevolved so that aculty members continuouslystrive to improve student success, thecollege itsel must respond by reecting andsupporting that culture.a c s fc wc c c s v v s sccss w s vc c ss v s cs.

At Valencia College, improvements to the tenure process have led to important changes in its hiring process,including revising its criteria and language regarding what is expected rom aculty, based on the educatorcompetencies. Valencias LA also continues to improve. For example, when LA leaders recognized thatnew aculty members were unclear about what compiling the tenure portolio would entail, sta created asyllabus or tenure candidates that laid out clear expectations or each year o the program, just as students geta syllabus on the rst day o class. Tese materials have been paired with a template on how to put together

Sticking PointS


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a portolio and opportunities or tenure candidates to get together and share their implementation plans andportolios with each other. As the director o the LA notes, We are modeling what should be happening inthe classroomoering incremental supports to the process.

Because o its strong culture o continuous improvement, Valencia aculty and leaders are today able to tacklechallenges that might prove too divisive at other colleges, including how to handle post-tenure review o

aculty perormance. Tey address new problems as they arise, such as how to better engage the increasednumber o adjunct aculty members in their learning-centered philosophy, as a way to protect and strengthenthe institutional culture as conditions change. Tese are challenges leaders, aculty, and sta believe canbe resolved, built on a shared pattern o behavior which demonstrates that they can actindividually andcollectivelyto improve what they and so many others working in community colleges care about: studentsuccess. Tat, at its core, reects the incredible strength o the aculty culture built at Valencia College.

Refect and Improve on the Change

1. Consider whether the culture has changed. Are faculty members talking more about student

learning? Are they sharing data and stories about student successes and failures? If the change did not

work, what steps are next?2. Establish a regular review cycle for the outcomes of the programs. Consider including not only

measures of student success, but ways of assessing the evolution of faculty members attitudes

towards changing their practice.

3. Dont forget to celebrate success! Highlight efforts that have inspired ongoing investigations, even if

they did not generate the expected outcomes.

At the beginning, the program yielded great results, but now it just feels like another

procedure. Consider whether student outcomes are continuing to improve. If so, visibly celebrate

these successes, and use them to remind people that the results come from a deliberate process of

improvement. If not, go back to step one and create a sense of urgency and assemble champions for

reform.

We just do not have the resources to keep doing this. Colleges have limited resources and

must consistently measure the value of maintaining any program. Be clear about the concrete

improvements to student success that have accompanied each program that supports the new

culture and compare these outcomes to results from other initiatives. Also, ask broadly for people to

consider how the college operated before and after each program and how that relates to improved

student outcomes as a way to evaluate its impact.

Our program was developed and championed by one person, who is retiring. How can we

keep this effort going? In the ways noted above, intentionally institutionalizing the effort through

strategies aimed at broad participation and securing funds are important if the program is to survive

leadership turnover. In addition, current leaders need to ensure that core processes are documented

and that the next generation of leaders and champions are being cultivated and taught how the

program has been sustained.

Sticking PointS


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conclusIon

Te our stages describe several ways that community colleges have successully developed strong acultycultures. As administrators begin their own journey, we suggest several other considerations and guidingprinciples.

C c cs v qs ss s ss s vs s s s v s. Faculty members can do wonderul work alone in their classrooms, but creatinginstitution-wide reorm requires a thoughtul strategy. Change eorts are most likely to succeed when leaderswork with the entire college to clearly dene a need, ensure that everyone understands the challenges andtheir role in solving them, and then doggedly make sure that the reorms stay on track. A central part o thatstrategy must be building the support and ownership o change among aculty and sta, especially those at theront lines o implementation.

hks cv c s c, w sks s s s s c. o be truly integrated into the college culture, themessage that student success can and must improve must come rom all levels o leadership, rom the board

and president through the vice presidents, department chairs, deans, aculty, and sta leaders. Supportingand evaluating eorts to implement vital changeeven i unsuccessulare important to building the trustnecessary or people to risk bold and broad new approaches and develop the stamina to pursue strongerstudent outcomes over time.

a c ks , s c k ck. Change is a challengingprocess, even when it is broadly desired and the conditions are ripe. o ensure that change remains on track,it is important to maintain urgency by regularly reerring to data on limited student learning and to setdeadlines or acting. When progress stalls or seems to be sidetracked, leaders need to react promptly, revisitingthe student success challenge that established the impetus or change in the rst place and reecting on boththe progress made and how much is let to do to achieve higher levels o student success.

W sk c cs v s cs, vs v. Colleges that build a culture o continuous improvement pay consistentattention to students experiences and outcomes, examine practice in light o this inormation, designimprovements, and then start the cycle over again. Tis requires that administrators, middle managers, aculty,and student services proessionals have ready access to good inormation, have the space and time to meetand discuss data, and regularly practice the habits o questioning assumptions and examining results. Leaderscan play an important role in the development o this culture by making sure that reliable data are readilyavailable, protecting the resources needed by those engaged in this work, visibly rewarding those who use dataas a jumping o point to improve practice, and consistently modeling the belie in inquiry-based change inront o aculty and sta.

rs ss v s ss. For aculty and sta to examine data and act by

implementing alternative approaches, they need support and proessional development. I, or example, acollege is to mandate classroom action research projects as part o the tenure process, it must understand thatmost new aculty members have not been trained to engage in this practice and that doing so will be hardwork. Proessional development clearly tied to the specic change being pursued can signicantly increasechances that aculty will adopt change at scale.


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Although every community college has many aculty members who care about their students, institutions thatbroadly and regularly embrace change aimed at improving student outcomes are less common. ransorminginstitutions into such learning colleges cannot be orced by edict, and inrequently grow out o isolatedexamples o excellence within an institution. But strong leaders who conduct thoughtul strategic planning,ollow through on implementation, and engage in intensive collaboration to support aculty members as theyimprove student learning can oster such cultural change.

We have learned through the Aspen Prize process that colleges can act strategically to achieve this kind otransormation to the benet o thousands o students. We hope others can learn rom their example, or thebenet o millions more.

EndnotEs

1 Fain, P. (2012, May 29). Facing acts. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved rom http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/29/taking-stock-comple-tion-agendas-benets-and-limits#ixzz1yVhhbxr

2 A more detailed description o this structure can be ound at: http://valenciacollege.edu/aculty/development/programs/tla/Candidate/

3 More about these oerings can be ound at http://valenciacollege.edu/aculty/development/programs/
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/29/takinghttp://valenciacollege.edu/faculty/development/programs/tla/Candidatehttp://valenciacollege.edu/faculty/development/programshttp://valenciacollege.edu/faculty/development/programshttp://valenciacollege.edu/faculty/development/programs/tla/Candidatehttp://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/29/taking


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notEs


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Te Aspen Institute is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is tooster leadership based on enduring values and to provide a nonpartisan venue or dealing with critical issues. TeInstitute has campuses in Aspen, Colorado, and on the Wye River on Marylands Eastern Shore. It also maintains

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Creating A Faculty Culture of Student Success