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February 13, 2023 Special Meeting...
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I'm going to call the special session, new
board member orientation, to order.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Good afternoon, Chairperson Riel and
board members, colleagues. We are very happy and very excited to be
here on behalf of academic affairs to share all of the exciting work
that we are doing and have been doing.
This is our roadmap or agenda what we are going to be doing
today. I think you received, yes, the PowerPoint. Excellent.
So with that, I'm going to go to the next slide. This is our
office of the provost leadership. So joining me today is the
leadership team. We will be introducing ourselves as we go along
through the presentation.
My name is Dr. Dolores Duran-Cerda, and I'm provost and executive
vice chancellor for academic affairs at the college. I have been at
Pima College for 20 years, and I started off as an adjunct faculty
way back in '97, and then in 2002 became full-time faculty in the
world languages department at the Downtown Campus.
I've got a lot of history here, and I have seen the evolution of
Pima College. Enjoyed it very much. Now I have the honor and
privilege of serving as the provost of this institution, and I'm
very, very excited about that, as well.
So academic affairs, as you have probably seen, is the largest
unit at the college. It's large, it's complex, and we've got a lot
of things going on, but it's all exciting and we are leading, moving
the needle to where the community needs us to go. I'm honored to be
here with my colleagues. At the table is Dr. Morgan Phillips, our
vice chancellor for academic excellence.
Behind me are the rest of our leadership team. We have Kate
Schmidt who is over faculty affairs. Wendy Weeks behind her, who is
our AVC of accreditation and curriculum and quality improvement. In
front of her is Dr. Vanessa Arellano, who is our acting director of
provost initiatives and assistant to the provost.
We have other team members, but they are not here today. So
other team members I oversee are the deans, the academic deans, we
have eight of those, as well as the academic directors, the
department heads, and the faculty.
So having come from faculty, I remember what it's like, so I'm
able to keep that hat on and remember what it is that faculty, what
the needs are of faculty, which have also been evolving too.
In addition, we have part-time faculty, full-time faculty,
department heads, discipline coordinators, adjunct faculty, and staff
instruct ors.
So it is an exciting time with all, you just came back from the
ACCT conference, right, so you are seeing how things are changing,
the landscape is changing in higher education. A lot of it is due to
the pandemic, results of that, the demographic shift. Different
factors. Technology advancements. We are in the capacity of meeting
the needs of our students, our learners here at the college. We are
very happy to be leading that. It's an opportunity. So coming out
of the pandemic, we are seeing opportunities.
Let me continue here with the next slide. Thank you. So just as
a refresher, we all know what our mission is: Empower every learner,
every day, for every goal. As you notice, we are changing our
vocabulary a little bit. Instead of saying students so much, we are
using the term learner. We are thinking of lifelong learning, which
never ends, right? Student, it gives the connotation of a beginning
and an end, but we are really here to help our community achieve
their goals.
The mission of community colleges is open access and to take our
students and learners where they are from and where they want to go,
whatever goal they have for themselves and for their families. It is
our responsibility in academic affairs and the college as a whole to
be student-ready. Many times we hear folks say, oh, we need our
students to be college-ready. Well, we are thinking the reverse. We
need to be ready.
So what is it that we need to make sure we have the tools for our
students to be ready for college and to succeed? That is our role,
to be innovative and visionary. In addition, I think the pandemic
brought up a lot of inequities. We knew there were inequities. But
it really highlighted the need to address certain things.
So in talking to faculty and other administrators, we see that we
have to help our students holistically. So it's not just teaching
and learning in the classroom, but it's also those supports like
childcare, like mental health, like transportation, food and
security. We have food pantries now. We are taking care of the
student holistically.
We have created our own vision, the office of the provost. My
team and I collaborated on this vision. It leads to us being a
social justice institution, which means we are providing economic
mobility for our students.
Our leadership is equity-minded for all academic endeavors. You
are seeing new models emerging like FastTrack, and later we will talk
about PimaFlexTrack for PimaOnline. We are seeing what is it that
students need? Out of the pandemic we saw there were declines in
enrollment, but it's also because people were wanting jobs or got
laid off of a job.
So what is it we need to prepare them? Maybe offering short-term
classes. Instead of the full 16-week, maybe 8-week, maybe shorter,
to get more stackable credentials for our community and to serve our
community.
So as I said, having been here for 20 years, I have witnessed all
of the initiatives and, through the chancellor's leadership and the
vision, how we have been transforming Pima.
So let's go on to the next slide, please. I would say this is
our theme. If you look at the orange triangle, it's preparing our
learners for jobs through an equity lens. That is preparing
equitably our learners is our vision, our mission.
We are preparing them for the workforce or if they choose to
transfer to a four-year institution, and that leads to economic
mobility. You can see surrounding we have student success, of
course. That is our principal goal. But also equity and community.
Our partnerships with the community are essential. We are a
community college. We are the heart of the community. So we are
taking the community and bringing them here and helping as much as we
can as a comprehensive community college.
As I mentioned, there are many issues that we are dealing with,
such as a demographic shift, technology, globalized economy, so the
needs of education are changing, constantly changing.
My personal mantra is I seek social justice for all students
through teaching and learning, and I take that very much to heart as
well as my team. We collectively work on that.
So you can see partnerships. We work with our K-12 partners,
with the universities, specifically the U of A but also with ASU and
NAU, we will talk about that a little bit later, and business and
industry.
Before we kind of neglected the side of business and industry,
but now we have been partnering very, very closely, looking at career
needs and apprenticeships and things like that.
Then of course technology. We learn that technology is vital to
preparing our students. We learned that through the pandemic and
beyond. That means Industry 4.0. I mean, there are some students
don't even know how to use e-mail or use the calendar. So we are
providing, we have a task force that's being led by some of our deans
on literacy and fluency in technology, digital technology.
The Teaching and Learning Center that Kate will be talking about,
that has been essential. That actually was established six months
before the pandemic hit, and when we pivoted to virtual and online,
it became the hub for our adjunct faculty and full-time faculty.
That has provided professional development and connection and support
for each other that we are very proud of.
So our institutional targets. These come from the strategic
plan. These goals were created with equity as a foundation and
creating equitable outcomes. So for the first one you see, increased
completer counts to 6,000 by 2024-2025, I will give you a status on
that.
In 2021 and 2022, we had 3,103 completers, and our goal was 3,800
completers, so we fell short but we are getting closer.
Target 2, double the completer counts of Hispanic or Latino,
American Indian and Alaska Native and Black or African American
learners also by '24-'25. The status of that is that our goal for
the Hispanic Latino population was 1,493, and we had 1,372
completers.
For American Indian and Alaska Native population, the goal was
95. We had 60 completers. For Black or African American population,
the goal was 168 and we had 110 completers. So all of our
initiatives lead to reaching these institutional targets, and working
with the community is vital to that.
So the chancellor had asked for me to talk a little bit about the
comprehensive community college, and I wanted to zero in on the
evolution of Pima College as well.
So as we know, the comprehensive community college is a two-year
institution that provides academic programming but also skills
training and prepares students for the workforce or for transferring
to a four-year institution. That's a definition from the Aspen
Institute.
So in 1901, the Joliet Junior College was established, and
everybody looks at it as the very first community college. Then in
1947, the Truman Commission report really solidified the urgency to
educate our community, especially with the veterans that were coming
back from World War II.
But with the evolution of Pima College, as we know it, it started
in 1966 when then we constructed the West Campus. The next
generation, the college became a local agency that sponsored for the
skills center and played a role in IBM's move to Tucson. So that was
instrumental. Also, we signed a transfer agreement with the
University of Arizona.
In the next generation, we have Desert Vista and the Northwest
Campuses opening, and then the Center of the Arts open at the West
Campus. We continued to grow our Pima and U of A partnership and
also expanding to the other state universities.
2006 to 2015, that's when the recession happened. That's where
we had our peak enrollment. But we also were preparing our learners
and the community for Industry 4.0. That's when we started looking
at mobile technology, AR/VR cloud computing, et cetera. Also, this
laid the foundation for our centers of excellence that you are now
seeing that are coming into fruition through the education and
facilities master plans.
Then this current generation that we are in right now, you are
seeing the centers of excellence coming and the reimagining of higher
education, what we just talked about, and what does that mean for our
community and the country as a whole and our university partnerships.
So right now we are going through a gen ed refresh, so we are
looking at how we can further develop our general education outcomes
as well as the AGEC reimagining, and I will touch upon that in a
little bit.
Any thoughts or questions at this moment before I pass it on to
Dr. Arellano?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: What is it that we are doing differently
now to meet those goals for the '24/'25 school year, doubling our
completer counts for the different minority groups?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: That's a very good question. We
have our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan that's being drafted
now, the next version of it, 2.0, I guess I would say, looking at,
and we are also looking at data very carefully, success data of our
students in those demographic groups and reaching out to the
community.
We are also partnering with Excelencia in Education, augmenting
use of data and sharing with other institutions what are we doing as
a Hispanic-serving and as a minority-serving institution, so we have
various initiatives in place to help with the population and making
sure our administrators also are helping with faculty to understand
disaggregated data and what it is that we need to do.
So, for example, more supports in the classroom. We have success
coaches that are embedded in some of our classes. The dev ed
redesign has shown to be very, very successful for all students but
in particular for certain groups.
We have extended our partnerships with the Hispanic Chamber of
Commerce. Also with the African American networks that we have here,
the local chapter, the NAACP, partnering with them, and also the
Pan-Asian groups too.
So I think more presence, and also looking at our hiring
practices of faculty in particular, because it's important for
students to see themselves in the front of the classroom. So we are
being very careful and thoughtful in our hiring practices, not only
of faculty but of administrators too. So that helps incentivize our
students for completion.
And focusing on our advising as well. Not only through student
affairs but also faculty advising, because faculty are the ones that
are with the students on a more regular basis, ensuring them and
telling them what it is the next step they have to do to be
successful, to get the sequence of the class, to make sure they get
the advising, reminders of deadlines to enroll. All of these pieces
are part of what have that is.
Morgan, do you have anything else to add regarding initiatives?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: A lot of the initiatives that we are
working on right now are connected to our partners, either the high
schools we are working with or our university partners. We have been
very successful in our CTE workforce programs and connecting with our
area employers. One of the places that we are trying to advance that
now is these students, as they want to continue their lifelong
learning, how do they take that CTE degree and turn it into a
baccalaureate degree. So we're working on developing those pathways.
The students that are in high school that maybe never thought
about something past high school, how do we get them to understand
that certification, certificates, degrees are things that are going
to help them in the workforce and help them to be successful. So
really, a lot of those connections are the things that we are working
on right now.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Actually, this slide, before I pass
it on to Vanessa, demonstrates that. So strengthening the
partnerships with our superintendents and principals and the teachers
there, K-12, adult basic ed programs, Pima FastTrack certificate,
AAS, our reskilling and upskilling and skilling initiatives, and
transfer.
So all of this leads to enrollment, persistence, retention,
completion, and postcompletion. That's something that we haven't,
colleges as a whole, haven't really focused on, that postcompletion,
making sure they are getting the job or transferring. So all of this
leads to economic mobility and student success.
With that I will now -- sorry. Dr. McLean?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What is your definition of completer?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Completer is that they have
completed their program, so they graduate with their associate's. So
we have an issue with students graduating with their AGEC and then
leaving -- AGEC is the Arizona General Education Curriculum. So it's
a block of courses that students take.
It's a statewide agreement with the three state universities.
Our students complete the AGEC, and they can transfer this whole
block of classes to one of the state universities. But they complete
the AGEC, but then they don't complete Pima College.
So that completer isn't counted, even though they finished their
AGEC. So we want to make sure that they get their AA degree,
associate's degree. That's what we will count as completers.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So what typically are they deficient in when
they do the AGEC and they don't do the degree?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So the AGEC is general education,
the foundational courses, but they are missing, like if they're
getting an AGEC-A in the arts, or business, they are not completing
what the business program has, let's say if it's AGEC-B. Or AAS,
which is the one for sciences, they are not completing all of the
requirements that that particular degree is asking for. They are
just completing the gen eds, not the rest, if that makes sense.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So they get additional credit at the state
universities for those other courses?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Well, if they haven't taken those
courses, then they have to take them at the university. For example,
if they don't take a particular science class that would have led to
completion at Pima College, they have to take it at the university
when they could have taken it all here and then just directly
transfer all of those credits, or most of them.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So those courses that they have to take at
the university, could have taken here, does that designate them as
deficient in those areas?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Well, I don't know if that's the
word they would use, but they require them to take it and use their
financial aid, for example, to take it. That's why we are
strengthening our partners with the universities so there is more
transfer applicability. But also, making sure that our advisors and
our faculty, all of us, are reinforcing and encouraging our students
to complete their degree versus the AGEC only.
So in a way, deficient or lacking of credits, yes, that is true.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So are we going to hear about the success
rate of our students once they hit those state universities?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: I don't know if we have that today,
but we can certainly get that. We have that data and we can share
that with you.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Where do you get that?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: We have it here. The STAR unit
helps us get that data, because we have data-sharing agreements with
the universities, so we have that. We also know what our top three,
and I'll talk a little bit later, the top three transfer programs.
So our students, what are they going to study at the U of A? So,
for example, we have business, psychology, and computer science,
those are the top three of our students that go to the University of
Arizona.
But I will talk a little bit more later on about that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So when we get that report, how is the data
used?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: That's a good question. We look at
it in academic affairs. We also share it with our deans, and the
deans trickle it down to the faculty.
So we are working on what we call productive grade rates. It's
also known as DFW rates, but that's kind of not the asset-minded,
looking at ABCs. So DFW rates is commonly known as students that get
many Ds or Fs or Ws, withdrawals. We want to find out what is the
cause for that, the success rates, right?
We are calling it productive. We are looking at the positive.
How can we increase the As, the Bs, and the Cs? That is what our
deans are looking at right now. They have been looking at it, but
they are making a concrete plan that a lot goes into conjunction with
our institutional goals, the two goals about completers.
And then they are talking to the faculty, the department heads
specifically, how is it that we can increase those success rates. So
that's how the data is being used, as well as faculty advising and
then student affairs also on their end, the program advisors, helping
advise our students as well.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yes, you're welcome. Good
questions.
Vanessa, are you there?
>> DR. VANESSA ARELLANO: Good afternoon, Board Chair Riel,
Dr. McLean, and Board Member Taylor. My name is Dr. Vanessa
Arellano, and I'm the acting director of the office of the provost
initiatives and assistant to the provost.
In the spirit of sharing a little bit about ourselves, I am a
proud graduate of Pima Community College. I earned my associate's in
science, and then I transferred over to the University of Arizona
where I earned my degree in biochemistry.
Shortly thereafter, about three weeks after I graduated, I came
to work for Pima Community College, because I was so deeply impacted
by the faculty and advisors that I had here, that really shepherded
me throughout my educational journey, and they made me feel like I
could do it. I believed in myself and they believed in me. So
that's a little bit about myself.
I'm going to be going over our student makeup here at Pima
Community College. What we see here is we have diverse populations
here at Pima Community College. We have our K-12 where we have
strong K-12 partnerships through our dual enrollment and our
concurrent enrollment. We also have our adult basic education
students, as well, who do not have a high school equivalency yet.
Here in Pima County we have over 82,000 Pima County residents that do
not have a high school equivalency. We at Pima Community College
serve these students.
We also have our career and technical education students through
our PimaFastTrack, our certificate, and Associate of Applied Science.
So these are students that want to get the skills that they need as
quickly as possible to get a job so that they can support themselves
and their family.
We also have our reskilling and upskilling opportunities with our
business and industry partners. In order to remain employed in
Industry 4.0 in the era of automation, artificial intelligence, what
we see is that we need to have strong partnerships with our business
and industry so we can truly catalyze our economy and keep it strong.
We also have transfer students such as myself where Pima Community
College is the first milestone, it's the first stepping stone to
getting a bachelor's degree and higher.
That's one of the most incredible things here at Pima Community
College. We serve diverse needs, and the thing is is that not all
institutions are able to serve all of these different populations
that we serve here at Pima Community College.
So I'm going to tell you a little bit about our student
characteristics here at Pima Community College for spring '23 credit
term. We have 62% non-White students. As our provost stated, we are
a Hispanic-serving institution, so 47% of our students identify as
Hispanic Latino. 5% identify as Black or African American. 2%
identify as Native American or Alaskan Native. And the remaining
identify as two or more races.
We are seeing the impacts of our demographics shift, our
shrinking K-12 population, and also 41% of our students are now 25
years and older. Within the next 5, 10, 15 years, we expect this
percentage to increase. This is really in alignment to what we're
calling this new majority learner. Before we used to term them as
nontraditional learner. These are our new majority learners now.
The average age of the Pima Community College student is 28 years
old. 57% of our students identify as female, so what we are seeing
is that we match the national average where more female students are
entering postsecondary education than males are. We are also looking
at that strategically in looking at our data in terms of how we can
not only obtain more male students but also graduate them.
68% of our students attend Pima Community College part time, so
they are juggling additional responsibilities outside of the
classroom, outside of online learning. They work. They could have
children. They have worked part-time, full-time, taking care of a
loved one. We saw that more than ever during the pandemic.
One interesting fact as well is that 51% of our students are
taking at least one online or virtual course. Back in 2014 -- so I
have been here since 2008. So back in 2014 when our chancellor
started his term, he was very visionary, and he asked us to grow our
PimaOnline, embracing the trend of online learning.
In 2017, only 20% of our students were at least taking one online
course. Fast-forward to now. 51% of our students are at least
taking one online course, and when we ask our learners why that is,
what we are seeing, it's because we offer the flexibility. They can
drop off their child at work. They can take care of their loved one.
They can do school after they put their kids to bed.
This is an area where we will continue to see expansion,
especially in the post-COVID era. I just have to say this is one of
the most incredible things here at Pima Community College where we
have the infrastructure through our centers of excellence, through
our PimaOnline, our transfer partnerships, and our K-12 partnerships,
where we are really serving the needs of our community.
I'm going to pause there for any questions or comments.
All right. I'm going to pass it back over to our provost. Thank
you.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Dr. Arellano.
Next we are going to have Dr. Morgan Phillips talk about dual
enrollment, which he oversees.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: Thank you so much. It's good to be here
with you today, Chair Riel, Dr. McLean, Board Member Taylor.
My name is Morgan Phillips. I'm currently serving as the vice
chancellor for academic excellence here at Pima Community College. I
came here almost nine years ago to serve as a campus president under
Dr. Lambert. At that particular point in time, Pima operated six
semiautonomous campuses. So the world has changed several times
since then.
In my academic excellence role, I support Dr. Duran-Cerda now,
working primarily with our dual enrollment programs, our online
programs, and these partnerships that I was talking to you about with
the universities and trying to increase students to be able to
transfer to these universities and get baccalaureate degrees.
I have a long background in community colleges. I actually
started as a Student Life coordinator/developmental math instructor a
little over 35 years ago in two-year colleges. I worked in multiple
institutions, in Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, and now here in
Arizona.
As a youngster, I was actually a dual enrollment student at my
local community college where I got my associate's degree while I was
in high school. So dual enrollment is something that's very
important to me.
My family, between all of us, we have 10 community college
associate degrees, and some of those are during high school, some of
those are later in life or transfer, and then some of those are
professional development as we are reskilling and upskilling.
I have taken a lot of classes myself here in Pima focused on how
the younger generation thinks, and Spanish for this particular area,
which, as a deaf person, is challenging sometimes. But I work hard
at it. I'm excited that that opportunity is available for people
here at Pima.
Let me talk to you a little bit about dual enrollment. Our dual
enrollment program has grown tremendously over the time that
Dr. Lambert has been here. It's growing exponentially. It started
off slow, but we have been continuing to build each in each year.
We have 43 high school partners that we are working with right
now. Some of those are new partners that we have just now convinced
to begin offering dual enrollment courses. Some of those have been
involved with the program since the time that I came to Pima and now
have very large programs offering over two dozen different types of
courses for students attending those schools.
Any students participating in dual enrollment, we know from the
data that those students are much more likely to matriculate to
higher education. We know that 18% of May 2020 dual enrollment
graduates actually came here to Pima Community College after they
finished with high school. That number is twice as high as the
percentage of students that had no dual enrollment experience that
came here to Pima Community College.
Dual enrollment, we also have partnerships with the universities,
because we want to be able to help all of the students, even if that
student is saying that, you know, I don't think Pima Community
College is something I'm thinking about, but I would like to be able
to get some credits, we want to make sure that we are offering things
that transfer well for those students to wherever their destination
is.
The number of students attending higher education is really part
of our goal. AZ 60, which is 60% of Arizona adults that are of
working age will have some type of postsecondary certification is one
of the things that we are working toward, and we can't do that alone.
We need to be working with our university partners to accomplish
that. So we are working on that effort.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Morgan, if I can chime in.
Our dean of dual enrollment in high school programs partnerships
is a former principal from Santa Rita High School. I don't know if
you're familiar with him, James Palacios.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: So in our next slide, you can see this
is -- on our next slide (smiling)... There we go.
You can see this is the data since James has been working with us
for dual enrollment. We have the head count and enrollment for
students that are participating in dual enrollment. Head count is
simply the number of actual students that are taking at least one
dual enrollment class. Enrollment is how many classes are being
taken.
So when you see the number there, which is around 10,000 for the
current year for enrollment with about 5,000 for head count, that
means we've got about 5,000 students each taking two classes. That
would be on average for that.
But you can see just over the last three years, that's basically
doubled the numbers that we have had. When you think about this is
the time during the pandemic, one of the things that's happened
because of the partnership between dual enrollment and PimaOnline, we
were able to grow this particular area, because a lot of our public
school partners were looking for ways to support their students with
online and virtual offerings that they did not have the experience
delivering that we had here at Pima. So we were able to continue to
grow, even though pandemic was something that was causing other
enrollments to decline.
PimaOnline is working to meet the needs of diverse learners that
we have. So one of the advantages with our online and virtual
classes, and Dr. Duran-Cerda mentioned that before, is the
flexibility for the students to be able to enter those programs and
to take something that meets their needs that may not require them to
come to the campus in the way that they have in the past.
One of the challenges for this is this is a new area, so we have
to focus on delivering high-quality learning, and PimaOnline's
primary focus is how do we deliver the best experience we can for our
students to help them be successful.
PimaOnline has been recognized nationally now for the past three
years for different courses and different employees and different
students that have been involved in that program.
We mentioned that enrollment has increased from 20% of students
taking some type of virtual or online class back in 2017. Through
the pandemic it was actually very high because we were closed down,
but now after the pandemic, students found that, well, in many cases
I really like these virtual and online offerings. We are still
running 50% in that area now that we are after the pandemic.
One of the new things that we have put in place for PimaOnline is
what we call PimaFastTrack. This is a program that allows us to
deliver courses in eight-week blocks, so a student can come in, they
take six to seven credit hours, two courses in an eight-week term,
and over nine terms they are able to finish their Associate's degree.
The big advantage that makes it FlexTrack is any of the
eight-week terms, we have five of them spread out over course of the
year, they can choose something that's in any of those nine blocks
that they need. So if the student is able to come for eight weeks,
but because of job or family situations I can't come the next eight
weeks, then I can just come back the following eight weeks and pick
right up where I was before in block No. 2.
So they can come in and out of the program and get done as
quickly as their schedule allows them. They are also very focused
because they are only taking a couple of classes at a time, so they
are able to look at those.
This is very similar to the model that Arizona State University
uses for their online programs. This means that Pima Community
College can deliver the first nine blocks in an Arizona State
baccalaureate degree, and the students that like that model can shift
to Arizona State and continue to using the exact same methodology at
ASU to finish up their four-year degree.
Let me skip down to open educational resources. I think we
talked about some of the rest of this in a previous person. We have
had open educational resources we have been developing for our
students. This is where we locate resources that are available.
Free public domain that students can use in their class rather than
having to buy an expensive textbook. So far with open educational
resources, we have had students save about $8 million in textbook
costs over the past five years since we have started that program.
This is another one of those areas that we started off slowly,
but it's been growing rapidly. We are really focused on finding how
can we save students money. The students have told us that I really
don't like signing up for a class and then finding out I have to pay
a couple of hundred dollars for a textbook. I'd rather know up front
what the costs are going to be and to be able to address that to
begin with.
That's an advantage of our PimaFastTrack program. It's all
included in the cost. This OER program allows us to have courses
that everything is included in the cost of the course.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Morgan, I will just chime in a
little bit here.
We want to scale up OER and low-cost materials, so we have a task
force working on that. Hopefully we can assign a staff member to be
the coordinator and the liaison to the bookstore as well.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: On this slide we have a list of the
different types of curriculum programs and courses that we have kind
of to align with the way students actually progress through the
courses.
I'm going to talk through this from the bottom up so you can kind
of see how things fit together. Students, they have the ability to
engage here with us at Pima through specialized training at their
location. So that might be at their job, at GEICO, or that might be
at the high school that they are attending.
Any of those kinds of places that we have now partnered with,
students can get connected to Pima Community College and start their
experience with us. A lot of these, especially in industry, are
noncredit courses, because the employers are interested in the
students acquiring the skills that they need to have. They are not
necessarily initially looking for the degrees for the students. They
just want to get them to know the things that they need to know to be
able to be successful.
Our adult basic education students, these are ones that are
pre-high school, can come in and work in what we call IBEST or IET
programs where they're working on their GED or GED equivalent at the
same time they are doing courses with us at Pima. So they are able
to get the workforce training they need to be able to get a job at
the same time that they are finishing high school. So kind of like
adult dual enrollment is what we doing we are doing with those.
All of these offerings are stackable. What that means is when
the student takes that course with their local employer that we are
offering there, the student takes those classes as a dual enrollment
class or as an IBEST class. If they decide I want to go on and get a
credit certificate or a degree at Pima, the things that they have
completed now transfer into that program, and they are given credits
for what they have learned.
So we have mapped out the competencies from the noncredit
offerings to the competencies in the credit courses. So if, in the
noncredit class, you've got certification for network plus
certification for IT, when you have the course that's the network
plus certification course, you just get credit for that course right
off. You don't have to sign up for it and take it again. You don't
have to pay for the full amount for the course. You just have that
information that transfers that.
Our certificates work the same way. So a Level I certificate is
one that any student can come in and they can start in that
certificate from day one. There is no prerequisite coursework they
have to do, no developmental coursework that they have to do. They
can start working on getting workforce-ready from the very first
minute that they walk in.
A Level II certificate is a little higher level. That one
normally requires some type of prework. Sometimes it's the Level I
certificate. You do Level I and then you can go into Level II.
Again, everything transfers into certificates so the student's not
losing credits. Then the student can move into the degree program.
The AAS degree is designed to be our workforce degree. Those are
tied to employment outcomes the student is going to be able to meet
when they finish their associate's degree. Those Level I and Level
II certificates transfer into the AAS degrees.
Now, another certificate that's down there says postgraduate.
That's actually a workforce certificate that's after degrees. So if
a student goes through and they get their degree from the University
of North Carolina in humanities, and through the things that they
learned they decide, wow, I really want to focus on working in a law
office to help people with social justice and I need some skills,
they can come to Pima and do a postgraduate certificate in paralegal.
They can become skilled to work in a law office and doing that as an
addition to their baccalaureate degree.
They decide they want to be a teacher. They can come and they
can get teacher certification through us through our teacher
certification program.
We have several of these postgraduate certificates that students
can add on at the end of their baccalaureate degree to give them
certifications they need.
The AA, AS, ABUS, AFA associate's degrees are connected to
university programs. So those are for students that come to Pima
that say I'm going to get my general education, the AGEC that Dr.
Duran-Cerda was talking about. I'm going to take some courses that
transfer into my program at the university. Then I'm going to
transfer. Those have different names just because of the different
areas they are going to: arts, sciences, business, or fine arts for
each one of those.
We are developing, have developed in some cases, still developing
in some cases, guided pathways so we can tell students right away, if
you're interested in business at the University of Arizona, here's
the best things for you to take at Pima so you can get full credit
for everything that you take here, and those degrees at Pima are
stackable into the degrees at the university in the same way that our
certificates stack into our degrees. So we are trying to make sure
that's happening in each one of those cases.
The last degree on here mentions the AGS. That's kind of our
optional, you-can-do-other-things-with-it kind of degree. That's
primarily used or going to be used for students doing reverse
transfer, because what that degree allows us to do is if the student
transfers before getting their Pima degree, we can transfer back
courses from the partnered university that student has completed, and
then we can award them an AGS from Pima so they have a Pima degree.
The AGS would also be useful if the student is transferring
somewhere that's not an Arizona institution, so they don't recognize
AGEC, they have some special requirements. One of our advisors could
work with the students to figure out, how do I actually set my degree
up to transfer to Loyola University or wherever it is the students
want to go.
All of those things we are working on building the pathways, so
students from wherever they are at, high school, pre-high school,
adult education, in the workforce, that they can get into our
programs, move through those programs at a pace that works for them,
and they can reach the goal that they are trying to reach. That's
really the place where the number for success doesn't necessarily
indicate that all the time like Dr. Duran-Cerda was talking about,
but that's really for the students in their mind what they are
thinking is success is I got what I came for.
I think that's the end of my slides here. Any questions you want
to ask?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: You said you had 43 high schools enrolled in
dual enrollment programs?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: 43 high schools offer Pima dual
enrollment courses, yes.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Are they all in the county?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: No, they are not all in the county. We
have a few that are in Santa Cruz County because of our partnership
with the Santa Cruz Provisional Community College District, and the
high schools in that county that Santa Cruz is not able to provide
courses for them. We occasionally will have courses in Pinal or
Maricopa County because one of the schools indicates they'd like a
program that Central or Maricopa are not able to deliver.
The number of those has actually went down since I came here to
Pima, so we are almost entirely Pima County and Santa Cruz County at
this particular point with very few to the north of us anymore.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So those 40-some-odd schools, how many
school districts are included?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: All of the public school districts have
schools that are on that list. The charter school districts, we are
at a high percentage of those. I would have to get James to tell me
the particular number for that, because I don't know the exact
percentage. But that's one of the things that we are working on is
each one of the school districts to be exposed to general education
and have that opportunity.
Dual enrollment, the blocks for us to be able to deliver dual
enrollment actually are on the school side because they don't have
credentialed faculty that they need to have to be able to teach the
dual enrollment courses. They have to have master's degrees to be
able to teach those courses in whatever the content area is or a
significant amount of graduate credit in the content area, or we have
had some districts that have said we just don't see our students as
Pima students, so we don't want dual enrollment.
We have continued, though, some of our new schools that we have
dual enrollment with are actually ones that we were able to provide
data to them that shows a significant proportion of your students,
one out of six, actually come to Pima, and so when they saw that
data, they said, oh, okay, well, maybe dual enrollment would be okay.
Those have been new schools that we have added. But we are trying to
get all of them.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So we have all the major high school
districts in the county participating?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: All the public school districts are
participating.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: As I sit here thinking about the lack of
qualified teachers in high school classrooms, then I think you impose
a master's degree requirement on that to be able to teach a Pima
College course, what does the future look like with that model?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So that is actually in Higher
Learning Commission, HLC, our accreditors, that's their requirement,
that the faculty have either a graduate degree, master's, in the area
they are teaching in. I think we talked about before, like, for
example, math, it has to be in math. It can't be in higher education
or teacher ed. It has to be in that discipline or 18 credits.
So because of the pandemic, there was an extension for expanding,
an extension for faculty to be in a plan so they can acquire those
degrees. I think Kate will be touching upon that later.
Sure, why don't you go ahead and do that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Can I ask another question related to that?
Back to my question -- I don't care who requires it. Higher ed
commission is not always the smartest group in the world. But back
to the model, is it sustainable the way it is without having changes
in the requirements that the teacher must possess?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: The model is certainly sustainable.
That level of expansion that we could do could theoretically be
impacted. We are working with university partners to get high school
teachers graduate credits in the areas that they need, so we have
some university partners that have agreed to offer graduate-level
courses to those faculty members to help out.
The other thing is we can send Pima faculty members, either
virtually, online, or physically to those particular schools to
deliver courses with reimbursement from the public school district.
So some of them, the charter schools particularly, have been doing
that a good bit, because they don't have the faculty members, but
what they do is rather than having one of the faculty members at
their charter school, they use the funds there to hire Pima faculty
members to come and teach dual enrollment classes for them. So we do
have some techniques that we can use to try and work through that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Back to the universities offering the
graduate credits classes, that's very, very expensive. Do you see
our public school districts paying for those teachers to go take
those courses to be qualified to teach the dual enrollment courses,
or is that not happening?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: It's happening some. The main thing
with the universities is we're trying to work with them to have
discounted rates for students that are in the public schools, and we
have found some partners that are willing to do that. We are trying
to move forward. I think that's one of the things --
>> KATE SCHMIDT: I don't have information about those
partnerships, but I was just going to explain that accreditation
piece. But we have dual enrollment faculty on plans, because they
now have, from our accreditor, we have an extension until 2023 to
bring dual enrollment faculty up to those accreditation standards.
So it's a master's degree either in the discipline they are
teaching, and this is when they are teaching a transfer class, which
is most of the dual enrollment classes, or a master's degree in
anything. So many of the K12 faculty with master's degrees end up
with a degree in education, leadership, or curriculum development.
So a master's degree in anything, and then those 18 credits in that
discipline area, so 18 math credits at the graduate level.
And with that extension from the Higher Learning Commission, you
know, we are obligated to meet those requirements, sort of helped
give us some time, kind of a glide path to bring those faculty up to
speed. They are able to teach the dual enrollment classes now as
long as they are continuing to progress.
I know that these relationships, and there was some state funding
helping pay for those classes, I'm just not the expert on those
details. But Morgan and James can get back to you on that.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: You said 2023, which is now.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: Fall '23. This is the last semester. This has
been about five years that we have had that extension.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Thank you.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: I'm addressing this under faculty
qualifications too, because this is a major concern with this ongoing
initiative, is that we have this disconnect between the requirements
for K12 and the requirements in higher education, and so these plans
are to help connect those two. It's like we speak two different
languages. We answer to two different accreditors.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I understand. I don't know if we need an
agenda item to direct those that will attend the HLC Commission
meeting coming up to make them change this so we can have more
students enrolled in dual enrollment at the high school.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: Right. We are not the only school that
struggles with that. I absolutely applaud any, to urge any kind of
policy change.
But one of the accommodations the HLC made for all higher
education institutions was this idea of having a time frame in which
the faculty could meet that, so we didn't have to say no, we can't
offer those classes. We can say we can offer those classes as long
as we are seeing the high school faculty continuing their education
and adding those disciplinary courses.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I'm remembering just a sentence that
somebody said in another meeting, so I'm wanting to reaffirm it.
To what Dr. McLean was saying, that's an HLC requirement, but my
understanding from that sentence that was uttered in another meeting
is not all of the accrediting bodies have that requirement.
Is that correct? It's just --
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: That is correct. We are under the
Higher Learning Commission, so we have to follow their -- that's
their particular requirement. That's correct.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I just want to -- what do the initials
AAS stand for and AGS? What are the words that are associated with
those?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: AAS is Associate of Applied Science, and
AGS is Associate of General Studies.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you very much, Dr. Phillips.
So the next slide, please.
So Dr. Phillips talked about the student journey, the academic
journey, which culminates in this slide, the awarded degrees and
certificates. So what you have here are the top 10 degrees or
certificates that Pima awards.
You can see the numbers there. That's data from 2020/'21.
Dr. McLean, you see the first one, Arizona General Education
Curriculum. That's what AGEC stands for. We just say it faster that
way. AGEC-A, that's for the arts. You'll see it again for the S.
That's for the sciences. Then B for business.
These are our most frequently awarded ones. It's complex work,
and one of the chancellor's goals, you will see under academics, the
very first goal, is to do a gen ed refresh.
That is because the ABOR, the Arizona Board of Regents, changed
their policy and revised their standards for general education for
the universities, which means that impacts the community colleges.
So that's why we are doing a review of that as well as the AGEC
reimagining. It's an opportunity. I mean, it's intense work and
it's statewide work, and we have Pima representatives on the AZ
transfer committee and subcommittees, but as I said, it's an
opportunity where we can really instill the 21st Century skills that
are needed.
We talked about the changing landscape of higher education, it's
not so much of the knowledge of the content of the material but also
how it's going to be applied and those 21st Century skills of
collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, research,
analysis, being flexible, et cetera, that employers are looking for
as well as will prepare them for four-year institutions.
So as we talked about AGEC before, AGEC is a block of classes,
it's a statewide agreement through the three state universities of
lower-division general education requirements that transfer directly
to the U of A, ASU, or NAU.
Of course, as I mentioned before, too, we want our learners to
complete their degrees before transferring, associate of arts, fine
arts, business administration, or science degrees.
So it's part of our strategic plan in completing those
institutional goals of completion, but maybe when you're out talking
to your constituents, if you can also clarify that too about what a
completer is, as you asked, that means completing the entire degree,
not just the AGEC. The more we can promote that, the better it is
for our institution and for our community.
These are our diverse approaches in instruction. You have a
question?
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: It just occurred to me from that last one,
are those numbers, if I'm understanding, are those numbers
unduplicated? For example, you said they had to complete that AGEC
on the way to the associate's.
Could that be the same person double-counted?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: That is true. Yeah, it could be.
Good question.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: They are not counted four times.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: With this one, these are different
modalities that we use, so we have been evolving with the technology
changes. We have the traditional classroom, of course. We saw there
was a need students wanted to be engaged in person, so we have
increased those numbers of sections.
We have the online asynchronous delivery, and asynchronous means
they are basically on their own. The virtual classes is like being
in class at the same time with everybody with the instructor there,
but it's virtual, it's online.
We have internships and apprenticeships, as you see there.
Program learning. PimaFlexTrack that Dr. Phillips talked about with
PimaOnline, eight weeks. Cohort programs such as aviation and the
health professions. Prior learning assessment, which is where we
give credit to those students who have worked or have gained prior
life experience in that area.
We offer hybrid classes, and then also HyFlex, which is pretty
new and it came out of the need for, after the pandemic, this is new,
it's innovative, we are going to have professional development, we
are currently for faculty, because it's based on what the students'
needs are. As Dr. Arellano talked about, they may be dropping off a
kid at school, their school, which may be by the Northwest Campus,
but they usually take all of their classes at West Campus. Instead
of driving all the way to West Campus, they can beam in from
Northwest Campus to West Campus where the class is, so the faculty
will be teaching different modalities simultaneously. And that
requires professional development to be able to manage all of that.
So we have approximately about 130 programs at the college, and
academic affairs oversees all of that. One piece of interesting fact
that I wanted to share with you is that we were very, in some ways,
prepared for when the pandemic hit because we were proactive in some
features and some things.
So, for example, our learning management system is D2L. That's
what students and faculty use to teach or to take a class online.
Well, back in January of 2020, I had required that every single
faculty member, full-time or part-time faculty, have a D2L shell so
they could post their grades there, because high school students are
used to getting immediate feedback, knowing live time what their
grade is. So grade books, also course syllabi, instead of having to
ask for what is their grade from their instructor.
And so because every single person had a shell, when we pivoted
to virtual and online, they already had the framework to teach
online. So that saved us a lot of time.
But I commend the Teaching and Learning Center that Kate oversees
and also PimaOnline, because they collaborated with faculty to get
that professional development during spring break. If you remember,
we closed on the Friday before spring break started and that whole
week we shut down, we had to pivot immediately. Faculty just rolled
up their sleeves, didn't complain, just delved into it, and helped
each other, how is it that we can deliver this new mode of
instruction to our students so they can complete it.
I was so proud, it was a proud moment with our faculty and our
staff and administrators who worked collectively to focus on student
success in such a very scary time. Because before, I mean, with
other initiatives, you can ask somebody, a provost, I could ask
somebody in Kansas, what are you doing? Well, nobody knew. We were
flying the plane as we were building it. It was really gratifying to
see the collaboration among everybody.
Okay. I'm ready to pass it back to Morgan if there aren't any
questions.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: I just want to briefly mention a few of
the programs that we have here, so you can kind of see how the things
that we are talking about work. Teacher education program that we
have, this was developed in conjunction with the Arizona Department
of Education to allow us to certify more teachers in the State of
Arizona. The program was created as one of these postbaccalaureate
certificate programs so the students are coming in with a bachelor's
degree indicating they're interested in doing teacher education.
The students frequently are students that are already working as
teachers in the school districts. They are allowed to have what they
call emergency certification because I need someone to teach my math
class today. So this individual can go into the class and work on
teaching math, but while they are working on teaching their math
class they can sign up for this program with Pima so they have
someone that's supporting them in the classroom, they have someone
that's going through online material with them, and they are able to
get their certification while they are actually employed and working
with the school district.
So this is a partnership that we have with all of the local
school districts, and it's been very successful for us. On here we
have the highest pass rate on the licensure exam among any of the
state teacher education programs, the lowest student net cost. So
you had mentioned about the cost of going to the university. This
allows the students to do the same thing that you would be doing in a
graduate program at the University of Arizona, for instance, by
coming here to Pima and doing the certification program through us.
This program has also been recognized as a Bellwether finalist
for this year, and I know, Chair Riel, I think you are going to the
meeting coming up in a couple of weeks where we are presenting that.
This is something there is national interest in, and we were
approached by the State of Illinois for us to potentially deliver
this program in the State of Illinois in the same way. Online
content with practitioners in the classroom working with the students
to be able to get their certification.
Automotive technology, you probably had an opportunity, I hope,
to see our new automotive building. This program, when I first came
to Pima, when Mr. Lambert first came to Pima, was not one of our most
forward-looking programs. And yet now it's a model nationally for
what an automotive center might look like.
They have the FastTrack program that's connected to automotive
that can be completed in three months. So you can come in and say, I
don't have any skills, I need to get a job. Three months later you
can be done with that FastTrack program, and we have connections with
the industry so that they are waiting for people to come out of that
program so they can hire them.
Our biggest challenge with this actually is the ability to get
faculty members to be able to run more groups to go through the
program. So we are working on scaling that up and moving forward.
We are hoping as people go through the program, eventually we start
to build a group of people that have experience that can come back
and be future teachers for the program too to help out their area
employers.
There is sponsorship available through the employers, so the way
this works is I go through the FastTrack program, I get a job for one
of the employers, work with them for a little while, and then they
will send me back for a semester, and maybe I finish up a certificate
at Pima, go back and work for the employer for a little while, and
then come back and maybe I'm able to get a Level II certificate and I
can go back and forth to be able to finish my degree. We have
already got a partnership with Northern Arizona University where, if
the students complete their AAS degree and do their AGEC classes,
they can transfer up to 90 hours, so that's three years' worth of
coursework, into the degree at NAU, which means they only have 30
hours, one year of coursework to complete, and they have their
baccalaureate degree done.
So this is a real great opportunity for us to be able to increase
the number of people with these baccalaureate degrees through these
kind of partnerships.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: What does one do with a baccalaureate degree
in this?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: The way the baccalaureate degree is set
up, you're a technician working in an automotive shop, and now the
boss has decided that Greg guy is pretty sharp, he can be the floor
manager for me, so I need him to have some leadership skills, some
business acumen besides just the technology kinds of pieces so he can
actually be the manager for my shop.
The courses they take at NAU are primarily leadership-type
courses. So your degree that you end up with would be a bachelor of
applied science in industrial leadership or an engineering
technology. They've got like three different flavors, but it's
focused on that leadership component of being now I'm the shop
foreman or now I'm the floor manager, one of those kind of things.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: I also wanted to add something.
What Morgan is discussing, these programs really feed into the
centers of excellence. It's not only about enrollment but also about
retention and employability, such as partnerships. For example, Ford
ASSET is now a partner with us, so that is retaining our students as
well. JTED, we offer classes in the automotive center as well.
We have been told it's a real-life job experience to be in there.
The cleanliness, the uniformity, it really gives students a taste,
like student teaching in a classroom, but this is automotive
technology, and it prepares them and they see what it is like in the
real workforce, so it prepares them. There is a lot of ROI that
doesn't have to do with dollars.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: It's kind of interesting related to what
Dolores just said. On Facebook I had made a post about the
automotive technology program. Had a student that sent me a note and
said, that's really cool, I want to come to Pima. I thought, wow,
automotive technology gets a student based off of my Facebook post.
The student said, I'm really looking forward coming to Pima. I
want to be a music major. It's like, but you said automotive. And
the student said, yeah, but if you're that forward-thinking, all the
stuff that you do must be really cool and really great. So I just
want to go to a school like that.
So the ability for us to impact lots of people with these centers
of excellence, it's there. It's one of the things where people see
this is something that Pima is doing that shows they are trying to
meet the needs of students. So it spills over. Impacts other
people.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Let's go to our last example.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: We have one more example here. A lot of
similarities. This is cybersecurity, which is where our East Campus
center of excellence is. They also have a FastTrack program.
It's a little bit longer because of the types of content that's
in the program, but through that program, you get industry
certifications for Google IT support, CompTIA A+, Net+
certifications. Also have industry partners that are interested in
bringing in people for internships and apprenticeships.
So that prior learning credit impacts this because I can go and I
can do the FastTrack program, I can start working, and as I'm
working, I can actually use my work experience to count for credits
for classes. So maybe I'm not even coming to Pima campus to take
those classes, but I'm still getting the credit that I need.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Do you see all of us nodding your heads?
One of our students, Melissa, went with us to Washington, D.C., and
she is the student that runs the data center. So it is an amazing
program. We heard her explaining it to all of the congressmen and
the senators. So we are familiar with how that works. Just if you
don't want to go into all of that again.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yeah, thank you. Isn't she the
co-founder of Raices? It's a local chapter of, yeah, cybersecurity
for Latinos. That's fantastic, yeah.
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: So I had the honor of being at East
Campus at the particular point in time we started doing this. That
was always one of my favorite things was go over to the live fire
cyber warfare range and talk to the individuals in there about what
they were doing. I took some Pima IT classes because of the
connection for this, and wanted to know more about, so how does this
stuff actually work? It's a great program.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: It is.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: May I just jump back.
Morgan, on that last slide, you said they could transfer 90
units. Prior, I thought we could only transfer 64. Is that the
universities decide how many units they will accept? So NAU has just
realized this is a great way for students to learn more and we can do
all of the hands-on automotive, and they can just go to NAU for the
leadership? Is that why they are taking 90?
>> DR. MORGAN PHILLIPS: So the way it works is the universities
are using an HLC provision that's kind of related to this prior
learning assessment we are doing. Through prior learning assessment,
you can award up to 75% of whatever degree it is you have.
So for us, we are limited to 45 credits, but that means at the
university theoretically they could do 90 credits. So what they are
doing is they are block-crediting students for, oh, you have
completed an AAS degree at Pima, so you have some industry, some
technology experience. We'll give you a block credit of 60 hours or
whatever their number is for that.
Then they add in their AGEC, which is 30-some hours that they get
for their AGEC. Those actually are transfer courses for them, and
then they have to do the last 25% at the university because that's an
HLC requirement.
Our other university partners do similar kinds of things, but the
number of credits for each one is a little bit different. Right now
University of Arizona has a bachelor of applied science program, they
do 75 credits transfer into theirs. So just depending on the area
the students are going into, we've got a really good University of
Arizona partnership for this program, that's a 75 credits going-in
program that they have. But variations on that same theme. 90 is
the maximum, though.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: So part of my role as provost, which
I love doing, is building relationships with the community, and that
includes K-12, superintendents, for example, three state
universities, and because I'm a provost I have established
relationships with their provosts and also the chief academic
officers with my fellow colleagues in the Arizona community colleges.
So this slide shows you who our largest transfer partners are and
the credits, the 12 or more credits that Pima can transfer. So these
are what you see here, the top ones, largest transfer partners.
I wanted to share with you what are the top three areas from each
one. Really quickly, University of Arizona I think I mentioned was
business and also psychology and computer science. Education and
computer science are actually together.
Arizona State University, it's social work, business, and
nursing, among others, but I'm choosing the top three.
NAU, it's nursing, business hospitality, and education. Grand
Canyon, nursing, elementary education, psychology. Southern New
Hampshire University, business, computer science, psychology. So
you're seeing a trend here of the common ones. And then University
of Phoenix it's just two, business and computer science.
So we are keeping in mind of that, and we also receive data from
Bank of America. The top 20 occupations in this area, in Pima
County, and a lot of it is related to the health professions. So as
we forecast ahead and we are building our center of excellence in
health professions at West Campus, we're keeping that in mind. What
are the needs of this community?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I'm not going to have you answer this now,
but I would like to meet with you at some point to talk about it, is
you said social work was one of the top three that transferred to
ASU, but I heard recently we ceased offering that program at Pima
College.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: No. No, we continue to offer it.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Oh, okay.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Yeah, that's something that needs
clarification, but I'll be happy to explain it.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: You're welcome. I want to make sure
we have enough time with Kate Schmidt and Wendy Weeks.
Kate, you're up with faculty affairs and development.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: Welcome. I'm excited to talk about the work
that I do. I tried to think about what are the things the board
would really want to know about faculty affairs and the programs that
we have?
I did want to mention I started here as an adjunct faculty in
2000. I was hired as a full-time staff in 2005 when my daughter was
two-and-a-half years old. So she grew up with Pima.
After her freshman year in high school, started taking classes
here at Pima, both dual enrollment and through, with my employee
benefit. Graduated from high school in '21 with 36 Pima Community
College credits. I was so excited for her to go to one of our state
schools and have all of them transfer in, but she surprised me and
decided to move to New York City.
She started at Hunter College in Midtown Manhattan in the fall.
Hunter took 30 of Pima Community College's credits, so she started
off as a sophomore there. We have a great product that is
recognized, our courses are recognized as meeting requirements for
other schools too.
My home position is executive director of faculty affairs and
development. I started that in 2018. I'm currently doing a little
bit of an out-of-class role under the provost with a few extra
duties, but for the most part, I have retained these areas. I have
the faculty hiring and qualifications, which we have discussed
briefly. The Teaching and Learning Center. Faculty services and
resource centers, as well as scheduling.
I want to move on to faculty hiring and qualifications. I have a
team that's responsible for the process of hiring the full-time and
part-time faculty. I have two members of that team that have the
SHRM certification, nationally known human resource certifications.
We work in partnership with the human resource department, but
really as the academic, it's really sort of an academic HR talent
acquisition function. There are a couple of things I think are
probably important for the board. One we have talked about already,
the challenges with qualifications that we have to have with those
academic areas. We have to have a master's degree in the discipline
or a master's degree in any discipline and those 18 credit hours at
the collegiate level.
One other kind of nuance there that comes up a lot is that
education classes at the graduate level, like a math education class,
typically will not have the content at the collegiate, the math
content at the collegiate level. So we have to look really carefully
with our discipline coordinators, the syllabus from those classes to
make sure that the math that's being covered in those classes covers
a collegiate-level math so that we can add those to the
qualification.
The second thing that I think we are responsible for that often
comes up is this idea of having a diverse faculty body. That can't
happen with a magic wand. The only way we can continue to diversify
our faculty body is through the hiring process.
One of the things in 2018 that we put together with our DEI
officer at the time was a framework for inclusive hiring, which
included really looking at, well, how we advertise, expanding the
pools, how we write the job description, and making sure that we have
bias training for anybody that's participating on a committee, and
opening up those committees.
There had long been a policy where the only people that could sit
on the hiring committees were the faculty themselves. We have now
moved towards an AP, which I think might be going to the board at the
next meeting, where those committees can be the majority of faculty
but we can bring in others from the institution to sit on that
committee, which can help us diversify.
We did have, for the first time, students sitting on the hiring
committee for faculty, which was a longer story for another time, but
was a really great opportunity both for the students and for us as a
college.
I want to talk a little bit about our adjunct faculty body. Our
adjunct faculty typically prepandemic were teaching about 50% of the
courses. One of the things that occurred to me when I took over this
position was we didn't have structures in place for looking at that
adjunct faculty workforce as a workforce.
I think we sort of thought of the adjunct faculty as kind of
one-offs or somebody who might be on their way to a full-time job.
We had, in the last three years, 2,200 different individuals teach
for us as adjunct faculty, and we had 51 full-time faculty openings.
It's clearly not just a pathway to a full-time job. We really wanted
to look at how do we ensure we have a quality product, that we have
quality education happening in the classroom when we're using this
part-time workforce.
So one of the things that actually the board in 2018 signed our
approach to the Meet and Confer process to be that All Employee
Representative Council, and for the first time I think probably in
the history of Pima, adjunct faculty had a seat at that table to
start talking about what are the working conditions and wage issues
for adjunct faculty so that we could start developing policies around
that. Many of the policies you'll hear that come out of that AERC or
I'd say probably the majority are specific to the part-time faculty.
In the past few years, we have expanded that tuition waiver. It
used to just be the individual part-time faculty member. Now it's
anybody in their family or their dependents can take the Pima classes
at the discount.
We instituted this summer a tiered pay system, so a part-time
faculty member who has taught for us for a certain number of years or
a certain number of credits and has done some of the required
professional development is actually compensated at a higher rate
than somebody who is just newer to us.
We started with the Teaching and Learning Center, which I will
mention later, compensating those part-time faculty for the time that
they're doing professional development. You have heard the kinds of
rapid changes in the way that we are teaching and the way we are
offering our curriculum. We need to make sure that everybody in the
classroom is up to speed on what we are trying to do and the best
practices.
So there is no way to do that without professional development,
and if we have those part-time faculty dedicating the time, we want
to make sure they are compensated for the time to come to those
trainings.
We had never had in the history of Pima an onboarding process for
brand-new adjunct faculty. We now have the adjunct faculty
institute, which is a semester-long process of helping adjunct
faculty acclimate to Pima.
I think that's all I want to talk about. Moving on to the
Teaching and Learning Center. The Teaching and Learning Center was
founded really through faculty interest in having a place where they
could focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning and continue
to professionally develop.
It was created through the faculty and administration in 2019. I
think Dolores said that was one of the factors that we believed
helped with the success of our transition into virtual during the
lockdown, that that was already in place. That continues to evolve.
In 2021, the Teaching and Learning Center put together a
certification program so that many of these workshops could start
adding up to something that might be of greater value and would sort
of signal the kinds of things that we want faculty to be focusing on,
so we have implemented so far five of these certificates. We have
offered 368. There have been 368 awarded over the last couple years.
We can continue to add to those.
That's really a continuing education unit sort of model, a CEU
model. It's not a particular curriculum but a collection of
different workshops, and once you take a certain number of hours you
earn a certificate. That allows us to be flexible in the types of
things that we can offer.
You've probably read some of the articles lately about ChatGPT,
which is really going to turn higher education and other industries
on their head in terms of students being able to access and have
artificial intelligence write their papers. So we were able to very
quickly put into place some panels and trainings on that so we can
continue to have that college-wide conversation about how do we
embrace this new technology and what does this mean for the
classroom. All of those workshops then can count for faculty members
towards their particular certificate.
You saw the numbers and sort of the frequency that we have these
training opportunities for people. Every single campus also has a
faculty services and resource center. It's a physical location at
every campus that's been there for years to help support faculty.
Those were all unified under the provost again in 2019 and early
spring 2020.
I think there were many faculty or people at the college that
thought of those as sort of the copy center, the place you would go
get your photocopies of your syllabus or your exams. The fact that
they were centralized allowed us to really look at that staff and
make sure we had staff and the skills there to help support faculty
in this new reality so that we now have, as people left, we
literally, in the summer of 2020, had a position that was called
printer operator, and it was a woman who worked in a room with two
copy machines. She retired, and we were able to repurpose that
position into an instructional technologist. So we have somebody
with a higher-level understanding of the kind of instructional
technology that faculty need support on.
Those are our FSRCs. And then as part of this work that I'm
doing now for the provost, we are really looking at the opportunities
and how we lay out our schedule to help meet student needs. So even
prior to the pandemic, we started looking at common start times so
that at a particular campus a student could take more than one class
in a day because they weren't overlapping. It seems basic, but we
hadn't really established those in the past.
Do you remember what year that was? Was that 2018?
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: I believe so, yes.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: We are also using software to optimize rooms so
that we can match the size of a class with a classroom so that it
doesn't have to be manually and we can create some efficiencies
there.
We are doing a project right now with the deans where we are
looking at the course fill rates and making sure we have set those
appropriately, that we have targets on how full a class should be and
how we might be able to schedule them in a way that would ensure that
they get to that level.
We're looking at the shorter terms. Morgan talked a little bit
about the eight-week program through PimaOnline. We have eight-week
courses already in the schedule, but we are looking at creating these
completion tracks so that a student could take an entire program in
an eight-week term.
We do always need to be cognizant of what the data is telling us.
When we started hearing from other schools around the country that
they were moving to eight-week terms, Nic Richmond pulled some data
for us, and we actually see higher success rates in our current
eight-week classes for the first eight weeks but lower success rates
in the second eight weeks.
We are working on why is that and what can we do to overcome
those lower success rates so that we are not putting a program into
place that doesn't actually have a student set up for success to the
best of our ability and knowledge.
I think I might have covered it all.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: I think you did. Thank you so much,
Kate.
>> KATE SCHMIDT: Any questions for me? Thank you. I appreciate
your advocacy at the HLC level.
>> DR. DOLORES DURAN-CERDA: Thank you, Kate.
We have run out of time. We do have two other areas I wanted to
mention. Wendy oversees curriculum quality improvement and
accreditation, but I think you have been interacting with her often,
so I think we are good there. If not, we can set aside some other
time.
But also under me is diversity, equity, and inclusion. And just
briefly, we don't have an officer right now but we have an acting
officer, Brian Stewart, who is also the liaison to our tribal
communities. There is a DEI strategic plan that's being reviewed at
the moment.
I'd like to thank you very much for listening to our very large
and complex unit, the largest unit at the college, academic affairs.
This wonderful team that works with me, I'm so proud of them and
grateful for their input and their work and leading their respective
teams. We are ever-evolving, we're transforming, trying to transform
higher ed to what the needs of the community and the country are,
looking at the future of education, moving from the industrial era to
the digital era.
We welcome any questions or if you'd like to set up more time
we'd be happy to do so, but thank you so much.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes, thank you, Dolores, for all of you for
coming here. We really appreciate your time. We know this doesn't
mean that you don't have lots of stuff to do back at your desks, but
to get us all up to speed, we really appreciate everything that you
can do to fill us in on what's happening at the college.
Thank you. It's really entertaining. Thanks a lot.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Thank you for all your work and all your
team's work. It's really impactful.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: We are going to recess for 10 minutes. We
will meet back at 12:15. 14 minutes, I mean. 12:15.
(Recess.)
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: (Calling meeting back to order off mic.)
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Thank you. So just really quick
introductions. So for this session we have three topics. We are
going to start off with kind of an overview of the shared governance
model and policy development at Pima College, and that's going to be
led -- that presentation will be led by Seth Shippee. He's the
deputy general counsel.
Then we're going to have Jose Saldamando. He's the head of
internal audit. Give you an overview of how the audit function works
at Pima College and give you a couple of examples of what audit
reports look like. If, for any board member, who serves on the
Finance and Audit Committee, you will see Jose at the quarterly
meetings.
And then we are going to run through the complaint process of how
the intake works and how they are handled. And Anna Townsend with
Office of Dispute Resolution will lead that presentation. Her
colleague, Kelsang Wangmo, hopefully will be here, but she's doing
some interviews related to a review that seemed to be running long.
If she gets done on time, she will join us. Otherwise it may just be
Anna.
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: Good afternoon, new board members. Let me
be the 3,000th person to welcome you to our Pima family here and
thank you for your service to our college and to our community.
I'm Seth Shippee. I'm the general deputy counsel here. I have
been with Pima since 2016. I'm here to talk to you today about our
shared governance structure and a little bit about how the sausage
gets made in terms of our policy development processes.
Referring you to our graphic here, this is kind of a top-down
structure of how it goes all the way from the legislature in Phoenix
down to our individual faculty and staff members at the college in
terms of how our organization is run.
So the Arizona legislature, as you know, writes the laws that
give different communities the opportunity to create community
college boards in districts such as yourselves. Arizona is not
unique, but it is in the minority in the United States of how that
works. There are only three other states with structures like
Arizona's, that being where there is no state-level organization or
administration for community colleges.
We have ABOR for our four-year institutions, but each district is
self-governing. The only other states that do it that way in the
United States are New Jersey, Nebraska, and Michigan.
So from the states passing a law that creates the opportunity to
organize community college districts, we have our governing boards.
The governing boards then have their authority to set their own
bylaws and to hire a chancellor. Moving on again here to the
chancellor here, the chancellor is delegated with the day-to-day
operations of the institution, and the chancellor oversees the
administrators who carry out the functionality delegated to them
under the chancellor's authority which flows down to the chancellor
from the governing board.
The administrators then are responsible for the supervision of
our faculty who deliver our instructional content to our students,
and the staff who serve in a support role to make sure the education
we provide is up to the par that we want it to be. So that's pretty
much the overall structure of it.
I haven't used this clicker before. I will press the big button
and hope for the best. There we go.
Okay. So talking about shared governance, what type of shared
governance information flow is followed at the college depends on the
type of issue that we're discussing, the topic that we are discussing
through the shared governance processes. Generally it breaks down
into three different sections. There's academic issues. There is
college-wide issues, college-wide being things that affect everybody,
board policies and administrative policies, which is basically
everything but the next thing, which is the carveout for personnel
policy issues. Those are going to be wages, hours, terms and
conditions of employment, things that are unique to employees and
their compensation. So everything else that is not part 3 is
subsumed by No. 2 there.
So we will go through each of those a little bit briefly. I know
that you are absorbing a lot of information. So if, at any point,
you have any questions about this, feel free to jump in.
Also, I will say at the end of this presentation, there are some
links to the policies from which this information is derived. Feel
free to look at that at your leisure, and you can always contact me
or Jeff if you have any followup questions.
For academics, our shared governance structure flows starting
from the left and moving to the right. We have our individual
faculty members, and they may have concerns and they may have great
ideas and things that they want to bring to the administration about
our academic standards or curriculum, that kind of thing. That goes
all the way to the top level, the chief academic officer of this
institution, that being our provost, Dr. Duran-Cerda.
So if I'm a faculty member and I have a great idea or if I have a
concern I want to bring to the provost's attention, generally we
follow a mode where they bring that to the next-level person above
them rather than having a queue out the door at the provost's office
all the time.
There are various means that people can do that, and one of them
obviously would be take it to their dean, their department head or
moving to the right but going to the bottom here. Can bring it to
your department chair, to your dean, other academic administrators.
But looking at the top level there, moving to the right, you can
also go to our Faculty Senate. Our Faculty Senate represents the
constituencies within the college. So if I have a representative
senator on Faculty Senate and I have a great idea or I have a serious
concern, I can always bring that to my representative through the
Faculty Senate.
So once we get our ideas moving up into the senate or to our
academic administrator at the level of a dean, department head,
et cetera, then we can move on to what we're just generally calling
academic committees. I don't think that's a defined term anywhere,
but we are trying to make this as general as possible.
Under our academic committees, we have a few different
organizations there that all have the ear of the provost. The
provost meets regularly with each of these organizations, and they
would pass along that information on to the provost.
So basically the idea that we are dealing with the academic
shared governance and with all of them is we are trying to distill
the information down to what we may have a lot of input coming from,
same idea or similar ideas coming from a group of people, having them
kind of reach a consensus about what the concern is, and then passing
it up through the chain to get to the appropriate administrator.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Quick question. What is that first
academic committee, ACOT, what does that stand for?
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: Great question. I just looked that acronym
up before I came here and I kind of forgot it. I was hoping no one
would ask me. My best recollection is it's the Academic and College
-- help me out --
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Campus?
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: -- Campus Organizational Team, I think,
something like that. But yeah, that's a great question. I had the
same one. It just gets referred to as ACOT all the time.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: It's all the administrators, supervisor
types, who deal with...(off mic).
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: The shorthand that was described to me, for
the listeners who couldn't hear Mr. Silvyn, it's like ELT, the
academic side of ELT. Those would be the administrators who would
make up ACOT.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: You're welcome.
Moving on, so that was what we would do when we are talking about
our academic issues. If we are talking about the college-wide
issues, we are going to set aside for the moment, carve out the
things related to employee wages, terms and conditions of employment
and hours, that's a different process or a subset of this process.
But if we are talking about anything, whether it's issues related
to -- over the past years we have had things like the smoking man on
college property go through this process. Really could be just about
anything of college-wide significance. We take our board policies
and our administrative procedures through these, this shared
governance model.
I don't want to speak down to anybody, but very briefly, the
difference between a board policy and an administrative procedure, a
board policy is just what it sounds like. It's something that you as
the board you create and are responsible for. It's very high-level
direction to the college. It can be goal setting, can be a specific
target that the board wants the college to strive for, to achieve.
But it's almost, if you think about this in Schoolhouse Rock
terms, a board policy is like we are talking about the Constitution.
Then if we move down from there, the Constitution sets very broad
goals, standards for the entire country. Same thing with our BPs.
The APs are like our laws of the country. They have to conform
to the board policies, have to follow the direction that they give.
They have to be consistent with it. But they are more specific, and
they carry out the specific direction that the board gives in the
form of the board policies. The APs are officially under the
chancellor, and the chancellor delegates that authority out to make
the administrative procedures that carry out the direction given to
the chancellor and the college through the board policies.
If somebody has a great idea or concern about something that's in
a board policy or they think should be or in an administrative
procedure, again, starting from the left, if you're an employee, you
can take these just like you could with an academic concern. If
you're an academic employee, you can take it to Faculty Senate, or if
you're a staff member, which is everybody who is not on the academic
side of the house, they can take it to their Staff Council and have
these deliberations.
We encourage that, because we do want to hear from the
constituencies, but oftentimes if we can have that distilled through
the filter of a committee that already sits down and discusses it,
that's their ideas and where the commonality or points of
disagreement may lie. That's always optimal for us in how we can
incorporate that into the policy development and revision here at the
college.
We also have representation, and we definitely want to hear and
often do hear from our students and their represented officials are
in the Student Senate. Actually don't hear as much from our Student
Senate as we would like to. But when we do, we certainly highly
value their input.
On both the employee and the student side of the house, they have
representation on the All College Council, and the All College
Council is a creation of this board. It is in board policy that says
this college, thou shalt have this All College Council, and it lays
out who those representatives are on that council.
Again, ideally what we want to do is get input from all of the
college constituencies. It comes to All College Council. They
discuss it and then pass their concerns, their ideas, their
suggestions and their input up to the Executive Leadership Team, the
chancellor's ELT, or to specific operational units and responsible
administrators.
So each of our board policies and our APs are going to designate
a sponsoring unit, and a sponsoring unit basically just means who is
the most responsible for carrying this out here at the college? It
could be general counsel's office, facilities, provost. Just depends
on the topic.
Those individuals are then tasked with trying to come up with the
best way to address these concerns and it's not a situation in which
-- ultimately we have a decision-maker who is responsible, and that's
why they have that job, if they are the provost or the chief of
facilities, that they are tasked with being responsible for a
specific area, and they want to hear from their constituents, but the
buck stops with them almost, because then the chancellor still has to
approve something, because the chancellor is tasked by this board
with carrying out the functionality that's been given to him through
his designated authority.
So down at the bottom, just brief footnote of how we make up the
All College Council, that is set in policy, and the chancellor does
serve on ACC but in ex officio capacity. He's there because he's the
chancellor.
Any questions about All College Council or how our board policies
and APs are developed and revised? Okay.
So most of the time you're not -- most things that we just heard
briefly, most of the time you're not going to see these because we
have to do periodic updates on these. That could just be changing
the contact information for a particular office, or if the title of a
particular administrator is changed or modified, we just have to go
and type that call that a minor revision and it doesn't come to the
board. Unless it's a board policy, you'll get notice that something
has been changed if it's a board policy. If it's an administrative
procedure, it doesn't come before you because it's just not that
important.
But anything that is considered a substantial revision will come
to this board. If it's a revision to a board policy, it's your
policy, you have to vote on it. If it is an administrative
procedure, it comes to you as an information item.
So anything that's a new policy, a deleted policy, or a
substantially modified one, will come before the board if it's a
board policy, as something for you to vote on. If it's an
administrative procedure, it's just something for you to be aware of.
I had mentioned before that we have a carveout in our shared
governance process for things that relate to personnel policies.
This does come from a board policy which this board is responsible
for. That's a defined term.
So what is that? What are we talking about when we talk about
the things that are in this carveout? Well, it's issues that are
directly and substantially related to wages, salaries, and working
conditions. There are a lot of things I'm sure at the college that
employees would feel are areas of concerns that maybe should be
brought to the AERC, but there are other avenues for doing that, like
the All College Council and other mechanisms.
The All Employee Representative Council, or AERC, is limited in
the scope of what it does by the board's designation to just these
things that are directly and substantially related to wages,
salaries, and working conditions. That's what we are talking about
when we talk about personnel policies.
Effectively what does that mean? The employee handbook is a very
important one, and most recently the class and compensation work
that's being done, those are all things, all examples of things that
by policy do need to go through the AERC because they are directly
and substantially related to these things.
This is also defined in college policy who serves on that. I put
the footnotes down there at the bottom. We have a certain number of
representatives from various college constituencies. As noted there,
one of those seats or more of those seats, depending on who we are
talking about, is designated for someone from our elected college
representative groups. That would be like PCCEA, AFSCME, basically
the unions.
We can have seats that are set aside for our representatives,
even though by state law we don't have collective bargaining. This
isn't a union shop, so to speak, by virtue of state law, but they do
have representation through the AERC with seats that are specifically
set aside for their membership.
Any questions about that?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Why is that word "total," right before
PCCEA, why is that in parentheses?
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: Oh, just to indicate that that's one rep
from PCCEA from both full-time and adjunct. Sorry if that's
confusing. It's a very shorthand way of saying it's not one from
adjunct and one from full-time. It's all faculty have one seat
reserved for PCCEA.
Like I said, these are some links that you can click on and look
at the policies that lay out these issues that I have been
discussing. I suppose the big takeaway from this is at Pima our
shared governance model is one of input and recommendations and
hopefully collaboration and idea sharing, and that those ideas, that
input, those recommendations get passed up to the designated
decision-makers through these channels that I have laid out.
If anyone has any other questions, I'm happy to entertain them
now. But if you take a look at this and have any follow-ups please
feel free to reach out to me or to Jeff.
Speaking of delegation, the delegation of authority is to the
general counsel for explaining these things and making sure that the
processes are followed appropriately.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> MR. SETH SHIPPEE: You're welcome.
>> JOSE SALDAMANDO: Good afternoon, Chairperson, board, board
members, colleagues. My name is Jose Saldamando. I'm the internal
auditor for the college. Today I'm going to be covering the internal
audit functions, overview of the functions of the department.
I want to start first with the definition of what's the internal
auditing. So internal auditing is an independent, objective,
assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve
an organization's operations by bringing a systemic disciplined
approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk
management, controls, and governance processes.
Some of the roles and responsibilities of the internal audit
function is to assess risks across Pima Community College. Determine
whether internal controls are in place and effective. Make
recommendations to improve efficiencies and effectiveness of
operations. Assess compliance with policies, procedures, laws,
regulations. Consult on application of internal controls.
Investigate and analyze reports of suspected wrongdoing and
noncompliance.
So this is just only a few of the roles and responsibilities of
internal audit.
The organizational structure of the office of internal auditor,
or internal audit, we report directly functionally to the chancellor,
administrative to legal counsel. Then we do have access to the
Governing Board and Finance and Audit Committee.
Regards to the audit charter, so the internal audit is governed
by an audit charter that sets forth internal audit purposes and
responsibilities and gives internal audit the authority to have full
and unrestricted access to all records and property relative to any
function under review or audit.
Obtain assistance from people and units under audit. Maintain
independence free of auditing influence. Have free and unrestricted
access to the chancellor, Governing Board, and the Finance and Audit
Committee.
There is two policies that supports the audit charter and
provides a little bit more insights on the responsibilities and the
roles of internal audit department.
The first one I'm going to go over here, the board policy 7.01
titled internal audits. Basically this policy, this first paragraph,
it basically provides the authority to perform audits and consulting
engagement and related professional services that evaluates and
improve effectiveness of risk management, internal controls, and
governance processes.
The next piece here is the guidance that internal auditor follows
when we perform internal audits. We have to perform work consistent
with the Institute of Internal Auditor international standards for
the professional practice of internal auditing. The next paragraph
it reflects the reporting structure and the independence. Internal
audit has to be independent of an objective, overall.
And then the last part here is to make sure the reporting when
there is engagements, making sure that internal audit presents its
report to the Governing Board and the chancellor at least on a
quarterly basis, or when there is issues or any important situations,
those have to be reported as soon as possible.
The next policy it refers to the administrative procedure titled
internal audits. Here pretty much this procedure provides more
details on the internal audit purpose, on the objectives, the scope
of work. That means how we're going to be performing the work. The
organizational structure, independence and authority, professional
standards, and accountability and responsibilities.
So pretty much goes over the purpose of the internal audit, our
mission, the objectives. How we are going to be doing, what would be
the whole purpose for those reviews and audit engagements. The scope
of work, how we are going to be doing that this. Including here,
some of the definitions. The organization, independence, and
authority. Basically the reporting side of it, the structure. The
independent and authority, basically having access to all records and
without influence.
The professional standards, like I said, we are using the
guidance of the Institute of Internal Auditor, international
standards for the professional practice of internal audit, and then
accountability and responsibilities. This is some of the
responsibilities and accountabilities of the internal audit
department.
The next slide here I'm going to talk a little bit more on the
internal audit, annual risk assessment, and audit plan. I'm going to
start first with defining what's a risk assessment. A risk
assessment is the authentication analysis of relative risks to the
(indiscernible) of organizational objectives in order to determine
how to manage those risks. So in other words, it is an analysis of
what can go wrong.
The purpose for this risk assessment is to assess the likelihood
and impact of the risks to the college by measuring and prioritizing
risks in order to focus management's attention on the most important
threats and opportunities and to determine how to avoid or limit
those risks.
Then the audit plan is developed based on the risk assessment,
basically on the risks and potential exposures that may affect the
organization.
So every year, internal audit develops a risk assessment, and
that risk assessment includes also an audit plan. I'm going to go
over that plan with you here, the risk assessment report.
Like I said, this report is completed on an annual basis. It is
shared with leadership, Governing Board, Finance and Audit Committee.
Like I said, it really includes -- this is one of the areas that the
Institute of Internal Auditors, international practices, standards,
requires that internal audit has to develop a risk assessment and use
that assessment in order to develop the annual plan of the
engagements.
There are several tools that we utilize in order to develop this
risk assessment. The first one is a risk assessment questionnaire
that is sent over to director levels and above staff. This is
basically we get responses in regard to the different areas of
concern within the management area as well as the college.
Another process that we use is the meetings with management and
key leadership just to get a better understanding, what are the
concerns that might be affecting the college, not only the
department, the college itself, as well to clarify some other areas
that were noted on the survey.
Then the other two that we use is to see what other colleges,
higher educational institutions they are experiencing currently.
What are the concerns, what are the areas that they have. Those are
the three pieces that we use in order to develop the risk assessment,
and then from there we develop the audit plan.
So here I'm going to go over just briefly on some of the
categories, some of the sections of the report. Like I said, this
report is presented over in the Finance and Audit Committee in the
month of June. I'm going to go over briefly in some of the sections.
Like I said, this is a standard that is part of the IIA standard
in order to develop the audit plan. Here is some definitions of what
is risk, what is a risk assessment.
Something to consider here that is a good business practice, that
risk assessment is a process that's ongoing and that's the services
and the interviews is only part of that process. So anything can
change in the meantime with that. We have the college here,
objectives, student success, but there are outside risks in there.
Here on the risk process flow, so we have the risk, we have the
responses, this is what management they are going to be responding to
those risks, and then this is going to come out the results, how we
are going to mitigate those risks with that.
Then we come up with scope and methodology. Like I said, there
is different tools and processes that we use. Like I say, one of the
processes is the internal audit risk assessment questionnaire,
interviews, and also the review of the community college internal
audit department's risk assessment processes.
Here, based on the 2022 risk assessment information and results,
this is on the questionnaire, so it lists the top 10 risks that came
up based on that assessment.
You can see we have governance, human resources, advising,
enrollment management, IT, facilities, risk management, provost,
diversity and multi-cultural services, and grants services and
compliance.
Here is basically a snapshot of the results of that survey.
Little bit more information on that.
Then from here, we develop the engagement planning and risk
assessment. So in order to develop the risk, the planning, audit
plan basically, we need to first identify the objectives. What would
be the objectives. Then from there we need to identify what are the
risks in order to meet those objectives. Then we have to measure
those risks. Then prioritizing those risks and then select the audit
and develop the plan with that.
The next section here, it reflects on the risk matrix. So in
here it's basically measuring the risks. The significance of risk is
based on the impact and the likelihood. In here I include a heat
map. It's a risk matrix. This is just an overall, in case, if the
current controls that we have are not working properly or we are
missing internal controls within the different areas, like you see
here, we have information technology as one of the highest areas
here. So if we don't have proper internal controls or missing
internal controls, basically the impact will be very high, and then
the likelihood of having some issues going on that will be very high
too.
Same thing with risk management and compliance side of it, you
know, campus security, as well as the financial reporting. So we
want to make sure we have controls in place and management testing
those controls to make sure they working properly and working
effectively on those controls.
Here is basically the audit resources and engagement plan in
details. Here is basically how internal audit allocates the time.
60% of the hours or time is going to be allocated to audit
engagements. 30% is going to be on external audit support and audit
findings follow-ups. 10%, it's dedicated to advisory services, any
special projects or any assistance to attend any committees or groups
to assess any internal controls they are planning to put in place.
Here is basically the audit plan. This is from, like I said, for
this fiscal year. These are the projects that we are assigned for
this audit plan. Then we have the advisory services. This can come
at any time during the fiscal year, and of course we have the
external audit support and follow-ups.
The external audit support that refers to any agency, regulatory
agency that comes in and do their audits, so internal audit supports
helps and cooperates with them. And then follow-up on internal audit
findings.
That's pretty much an overview of the risk assessment report and
the audit plan. So going back to the presentation here... I thought
I had it here, sorry.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Was it the 2022 Pima Community, was that
the last one?
>> JOSE SALDAMANDO: This is the audit plan. So I will talk
about -- the next slide, it was related to the internal audit
quarterly report. The purpose for the quarterly report, this is
issued every quarter and is presented over to the Finance and Audit
Committee.
The purpose for this report is to provide an update of all the
activities, the internal audit work during that past quarter. This
report is shared with the chancellor, general counsel, chief of
staff, and the finance committee of course.
There are four sections on this report. It has the general
department update. In this section, pretty much it includes all the
activities that internal audit worked on. One of them is to follow
up on the audit findings, that they are still open. In this case,
what management is doing in order to remediate those items here.
Some other items that are included in this section is the status
of the current or upcoming audits. In here, it's something that the
grants management audit, it's currently being conducted, actually
right now it's on the reporting side of it. The planning on the
human resources department -- those are some of the examples on this
section here.
Also, I include any advisory committees that I attend. I attend
the security and access control group. Basically my role there is to
assess and make recommendations on the effectiveness on existing or
new proposed internal controls, and also assisting with other
departments on college projects with that.
The next section of the report is the audit recap. This section
basically provides an update on what audit findings are still open,
what still have been closed during that quarter, and also provide a
detail on what management has done and what's still pending in order
to complete, finish the remediation process.
There is some matrix here. It includes the name of the audit,
the date of that report, how many findings were issued, number of
findings, if they are still open. Who is responsible for that
findings. The expected completion date. This is basically from the
report. Then the new completion date based on the follow-up that I
complete.
The fourth quarter there were five audits that had one or more
open findings that management is currently working on.
Here in this page here is just a snapshot of the open and closed
findings for all the audits. Then here is basically the audit
finding, implementation status.
This means a quarter of the circle means it's 50% or less has
been implemented. Half completion, half, 50% is 50% but not fully
completed. Then full circle filled means it's fully remediated with
that. Here is just the definitions and description of each of the
tickmarks.
Also in this section I include if there are any findings from my
regulatory agencies or external agency, this is what I include my
follow-up. I do follow-up with any findings that came up from any
external agency.
Here is also I provide an update on the audit plan. I put
information what is the status, what has been completed, what's still
in progress. Same thing with advisory services. This is ongoing.
Sometimes there are things that I need to stop and do a quick
investigation real quick. Then also the external follow-ups here,
external support and the follow-ups here, part of it.
Then something that I included here due to the dynamics and
environment of the college, risk environment, the plan will be
reviewed quarterly and updated as necessary. So this is something
that that's the reason I updated here. I put it as my quarterly
update, so I inform the Fiance and Audit Committee on what's going
on, keep them up to date with that if there is anything coming up.
Then the last part of the report is basically, it's the important
compliance and guiding items. This is just for informational
purposes. This is if there is any new changes on regulation or there
is something that is coming in. I just include it as part of my,
just for informational purposes only with that report, on the report,
quarterly report.
Go back here to the presentation. That's pretty much what I have
for today's presentation. Any questions that I can answer today, or
if there is any questions in the future, just let Jeff know or let me
know.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Can you give us an example of one of your
findings that resulted in a board policy change?
>> JOSE SALDAMANDO: There is no specifically board policy, but
there is an administrative procedure that needed to be implemented,
and that was more related on the IT side of it. That was one related
to the HIPAA requirements on how we're going to be securing the data,
that information, the health information.
That was something that it was not updated or was not
implemented, so that was something that I was working with IT, and IT
created that administrative policy related to that.
But in regards to board policy specifically, I haven't worked
anything related to that specifically. But administrative policy,
yes. There has been findings related to that, uh-huh.
Any other questions? Okay.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you.
>> JOSE SALDAMANDO: Thank you so much. I do appreciate your
time. I think we are next.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Well, I will try to go through this quickly.
I understand we have five minutes left. My name is Anna Townsend.
If you're like me, I remember faces, not names.
I'm one of two investigators that work in the Office of Dispute
Resolution. There's myself and Kelsang Wangmo. I'm guessing she's
still busy in her interview right now.
A little history about ODR, as it's been explained to me. It
started as an HLC recommendation that was implemented in July 2014.
That's when the office started and was instituted.
ODR, the services we provide surround complaints. We are like a
central institution that receives complaints, and we track them, we
monitor them, and I will go through the process as we go along here.
Part of that, I don't want to skip, making recommendations based
on trends we're seeing, we will make recommendations. I will go
through that in a little bit.
We are the central resource for taking in complaints. There is
only a few categories that we actually will do the full investigation
for, and these are discrimination, harassment, retaliation, Title IX
cases, and employee grievances were involved. We are more involved
in those processes.
Oh...that's a little distracting.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: We have been having really weird
electricity problems. Should we just turn that off?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Maybe. That may be too distracting to focus.
So I can proceed? Our process, when we receive a complaint, when
it comes into the office, it can come in via e-mail, phone, we have
an ethics system, which is an online system where you can file a
complaint. So we will get that report and we will review it.
Sometimes we will do an informal intake. We will ask more
questions and interview someone, and it's just informally to get more
information on it.
Then we move on to the investigation process if it's one of those
categories that I just mentioned where we interview the witnesses,
interview anyone that might be involved. The investigation might
lead us to review e-mails that maybe were part of the investigation
or we will work with law enforcement to get more information. So
depending on the investigation, it's going to lead us different ways,
and that's part of the formal investigation.
Then we will make a referral to the decision-maker. We will send
them more findings, and then they will, between them and HR or
student code of conduct, they will make a decision.
So depending on where the complaint came through is where we're
going to send our recommendations to. Usually HR is involved. We
work really closely with them.
Then we will send the respondent and the complainant the results
of our investigation, and let them know how to obtain a copy of our
investigation.
I put on there, I skipped that, this is the ODR process but it
excludes grievances. That's a separate process.
That leads me to grievances. Grievances, it's a procedure used
to resolve a claim that the proper interpretation or application of
the college policy or procedure resulted in an adverse impact on the
employee's working conditions.
So here it is not a discipline, it's not discipline or
termination. If you worked in different fields, sometimes grievances
you think you're appealing a termination. This is not that. This is
strictly surrounding policy, a violation of policy.
So we will review what is sent into us, determine if a policy was
violated or not followed. Then we will send it to the correct
avenue. Usually it's HR. Then those are subject to appeal by an
executive administrator. So it goes through another process.
I mentioned Title IX are some of the cases we investigate. We
will investigate those cases. But when a Title IX comes through,
whether it comes through to us or someone else, it first goes through
the Title IX coordinator, which we know is David Parker and there is
deputy coordinators.
They will determine if the elements of what is being reported
rises to the level of a Title IX. In a Title IX, it's going to be
sexual harassment or gender-based discrimination. If they find that
it rises to the level of a Title IX and they ask us to investigate,
then we will investigate the matter. When we are done with the
report we will send it to them and it takes on a whole other process
outside of us.
Student complaints. I didn't realize you would have links to
this, so I printed out the student complaint matrix which you have in
front of you. It's 3.31.01. That's the AP it falls under.
When we receive student complaints, which is the majority of
complaints we actually get, we look at this matrix. Depending who
the complaint is about, who the student is complaining about, is how
we decide where we are sending it to be reviewed. The reviewer will
look at it, look at what the student is complaining about. They will
come up with an investigation plan of their own, which is usually
interviewing the other party involved. They will come up with their
determination.
They send it back to the student. We ask that they copy us
because we are tracking it through completion. Then when it's
completed, we close our case. We are not really involved. We are
just making sure that it is handled appropriately and that it's
addressed, it doesn't fall through the cracks.
My guess is not only -- I should say my presentation today is
talking about ODR, but also I imagine in your role is you're going to
get complaints, so knowing our process and what we do, I know this is
getting into the weeds a bit, this matrix and everything, I'm not
asking for you guys to ever do this, but this is what we do. You
will see on the first one, it says against the chancellor and/or
Governing Board. If you ever see one, just refer it to us, we are
going to monitor it, and then it would go to the appropriate areas.
Number of complaints per year. So I went through 2019 to 2023
just to show you some of the trends of complaints we are getting.
2023 -- actually, these numbers have already changed. We have
already gone up a little more, but you can see that they are
progressing every year. There is a little bit more.
They are kind of all grouped together too, so it doesn't separate
sexual harassment or those types, but the student complaints,
employee, employee grievances, other, and total complaints.
Do you guys have any questions about this page?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: You want questions on anything or just this?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Yeah, any time you have questions. I still
have more to go through, but any questions you have.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'll wait.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Okay. I just saw you guys observing that one.
I didn't want to skip through it too quickly.
These are more totals, last year, we had six withdrawn. That's
sometimes they will submit a complaint and then decide they don't
want to see through it. A lot of times those are student complaints.
They don't really give us a reason. They just withdraw it.
Insufficient information, a lot of those come from anonymous that
we just don't have enough to go on and no one to talk to. We are
able to, through our ethics program, respond to anonymous complaints
anonymously. They know it's us, but we don't know who they are.
They've actually never responded to those questions. So a lot of
times those ones are really hard to follow up on, depending on the
information we have. So last year we had 32 of those. We still have
7 cases open from last year. I think a few of those are getting
ready to close. We had 3 substantiated cases, 10 unsubstantiated.
These are from the ones we investigate. Reviewed and addressed, 50,
and referred, 39.
This is our contact information. If anyone makes a complaint to
you guys, we ask you to refer them to any one of these options. I
gave you a little separate flier. Just refer them to there, and we
will make sure it gets to the right area. I would say that's the
biggest takeaway is knowing how to refer them to ODR.
Yes, if you have any questions.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Tell me again why this office exists. HLC
recommended it?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: I can answer that, because I was here when
it happened. One of the concerns that HLC raised back in 2013 when
the college was put on probation was that the college didn't have a
clear place where people could go to file complaints, and it was too
confusing, so people didn't always know where to go. That was one
concern.
Another was that there was a concern that for certain types of
complaints, human resources wasn't sufficiently objective because the
complaint might involve an HR process.
So combining those two elements, ODR was created. As a catchall,
if you don't know where to go, you have a complaint or concern, you
can always go to the Office of Dispute Resolution, so that way people
would always have a single point of entry into some system to get
their issue resolved.
And the second reason for establishing ODR was so that it was not
inside the HR department. So if someone had a complaint or concern
about a personnel-related matter or human resources-related matter,
there was some place to go that was completely separate from that.
HLC didn't tell Pima how to address the concerns. That's not
typically what they do. What they did is in their report identified
here's two concerns that we have -- they had more than that,
obviously -- but here's two concerns we have. Pima, you should do
something to address them, and the way Pima chose to address them was
through the creation of the Office of Dispute Resolution.
Is that the background you were looking for?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm curious, what's your background?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: My background? I'm a former police detective
for the Albuquerque Police Department. I worked in sex crimes before
I left.
Then my husband took a job with the State Department. So we
moved overseas, and I worked at two different embassies. I did
background investigation while I was there, but I also helped
organize the community, the embassy American community through
staying safe through acclimating to the country we were in. I was in
Tanzania and Israel.
Then when we moved back here, I worked for the Office of
Inspector General as an investigator, but I worked out of Phoenix,
which was too long of a commute, and odd hours doing surveillance.
Luckily I ended up here.
I left out my banking. It makes me feel old, but I did 10 years
as a bank manager. But my true love was investigations. I told Jeff
I found out that I was in the wrong field when I chased a bank
robber. My heart is in investigations (laughter).
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So for whatever it's worth, the other
investigator in the office is a career Civil Rights investigator, so
she spent most of her career in the State Attorney General's Office
and the Office of Civil Rights. Actually, I met her because I was
representing private clients and she was investigating them. And
then after that she managed Civil Rights investigations for the City
of Tucson.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So when we get a complaint on OCR, we have
to write a formal report. Who does that?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So if we get a complaint, say it's from the
Federal Office of Civil Rights and the Department of Education, OCR,
or if it's from the state, ACRD, Arizona Civil Rights Division, if we
are responding to one of their complaint requests, we always tender
those to the trust. We have outside counsel work with us.
If we have known about it before and sometimes they have been
through a process at Pima and they are unhappy and dissatisfied with
that, so they go file a complaint, there previously already would
have been an internal investigation, and that's among the materials
that gets sent to outside counsel to look at to get their assessment,
did we do enough, do we need to do any follow-up, and then they help
us with that and then prepare the response to the investigating
outside agency.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So our HR department doesn't do those
reports?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: The HR department does not draft reports on
discrimination or harassment complaints. It's done outside of that
unit.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I just have a couple questions. Thank
you for being here.
What's the length of your average investigation?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Our average investigation is -- okay, so
investigation, talking about those categories I talked about, I would
say between 60 and 90 days. But some things are out of our control.
When people take leave, especially faculty, that are not available
during certain times, that usually -- I had said between 60 and 90
days. On the longer end, it's usually things that are out of our
control, meeting with people and setting up interviews.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: And then another thing that I would just
personally like is if you could separate the data, so instead of
lumping all employees, I'd like to see, you know, staff, nonexempt
staff, faculty, I would like to see it, because it just tells a
different story. I'm talking about some of those graphs that you
just had.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: You said staff, nonexempt.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: And faculty. Those are the three groups we
have, right? Are administrators separate from the staff and
nonexempt?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: I don't --
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: We could either count them separately or
include them with exempt staff. You want us to break that out?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yeah, if you could.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Do you want that by complainant or
respondent?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I'm not an attorney, so I don't really know
what you really mean by respondents.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Sorry. Complainant, meaning are you asking
for data breakdown based on who is making the complaint, or are you
asking for data based upon who is the subject of the complaint?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: No, the complaint maker.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: The reporter? We will use that as a term.
Reporter.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes, I like it.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: For 2022?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: No, just any time that you report to us
from this point on.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Okay.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: You know, it would be nice, just because
then we understand where they are coming from instead of just it's
coming from the college.
And then what's the procedure that you use if it is one of those
last ones with substantial allegations, if it has a substantial
allegation? So I would assume that means that you read through it
and you're like, oh, this is serious. What's the procedure you use,
is it different from just one that isn't as serious?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: I'm trying to think and make sure I
understand.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: I think you mean substantiated?
So you're right. There might be a different process depending on
how serious the allegation is. I'm unhappy about a broken light
versus I was a victim of discrimination, that's going to get
different treatment. But I think your question was about
substantiated, meaning they found that more likely than not that the
allegations were true?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: So if it's more likely than not, and we find
it's substantiated, all we are saying is it more than likely
happened, whatever the allegation is.
So our process doesn't change. Our process is always the same.
We are doing our investigations. We found it more than likely
happened. We write that in our report so that the decision-makers
can make their decision. Does it rise to a level of termination,
write-up, coaching?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: So let's say that the subject of the
complaint was a student alleged to have engaged in misconduct. If
ODR finds that it's substantiated, the student will get referred into
the student code of conduct or academic code of conduct process, and
then there are people who are responsible for that process, what's
the sanction, give the student an opportunity to respond, that sort
of thing.
If it's an employee who's found to have engaged in a policy
violation, then it would get referred to human resources and the
appropriate supervisor with the findings and the recommendation from
ODR, and then the supervisor in HR will look at it and say, okay, in
this type of situation, how do we deal with that type of conduct,
what's the appropriate level of corrective action? Is it counseling
and education? Is it some level of discipline, a warning,
suspension, termination? They would then do that assessment, and
then there is a process to impose discipline if that's what the
determination is.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Also to add to that, we are not the
decision-makers. I didn't hear the last part, but we just write what
we found.
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: Oh, sorry, going back to Dr. McLean's
question, the other reason ODR was set up the way it was is that it
was just an independent fact finder. The idea was they don't have
any stake in the outcome. Their job is to just follow the evidence
and figure out what happened more likely than not. Then provide that
information to a decision-maker who accepts that as, okay, that is
what happened more likely than not, and then based on our standards,
what would be an appropriate way to address whatever the issue is?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: And then I was recalling when I was an
employee here and when I was an employee prior to working at Pima,
and there were a few times when I got called in on the carpet for
investigations.
I was a union member, and I always had been, so I knew that I had
a right to always have a representative or another -- didn't have to
be from the union but just another, it's like going to the doctor,
you want to have somebody there is who is listening since you're at
high levels of anxiety.
Do you have a procedure like when you are interviewing people
that they can have a representative with them?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Yes.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Is it something they are told about
beforehand?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Yes. If they are being interviewed, everyone
has a right to have an advisor. Different from the union rep, but it
is an advisor and someone that can be present with them.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you so much.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: I do want to add, all this information, we are
not putting the burden on you to handle complaints or know where to
go. Just send them our way, or anyone that comes to you, send them
our way. And we'll figure out where it's supposed to go. If you
guys have a question, have someone who has a question, just want to
run it by us or talk to us, feel free to contact us.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yeah, we really appreciate that, because
this is a nonpaid job, and we want to make sure that we have all the
work go to the experts instead of us. So thank you so much for doing
what you do.
All of you, I want to say thank you for the information. I'm
sure that we will have questions as this goes through our minds...
Oh, I'm sorry, we do have questions right now.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: So this structure, sort of building off what
Wade was asking, when the HLC said -- was this modeled after
something? Like if you went to Arizona Western or Maricopa or
somewhere else, did they have a similar structure, or was this just
something that Pima came up with?
>> MR. JEFF SILVYN: I'm trying to remember that part. I don't
think it's modeled on a particular place, but we looked at other
institutions to see -- and some of them, there are certainly
variations, and some places it's actually in HR but we made the
decision not to do that.
Does it follow a particular place? No. Did we kind of look
around and look for models and wired what we thought would work at
Pima? Yes.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Then in terms of how you would respond to
the reporter, to use the word you were using before, you're saying it
takes 60 to 90 days, how is that person in the loop during that 60 to
90 days to know where you are in this process and that someone is
working on it? Or is it just kind of like I assume I'm going to wait
a certain amount of time and I get a letter that says it's resolved?
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: We update the respondent and let them know,
and even the complainant, we will let them know, but especially the
respondent. First of all, I will know at the beginning more or less
how many interviews it's going to take. Is it 20 different people
and 20 different schedules? Or is it just 5? And I can give them a
rough estimate.
If it's going past two weeks, three weeks, we start updating them
weekly or biweekly.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Thank you.
>> ANNA TOWNSEND: Thank you for your time.
(Recess.)
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Hi, Nic. Thank you for being with us
today. We are looking forward to hearing all of the information you
have to share with us so we know what we are supposed to be doing on
this Governing Board. Thank you.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me to
speak with you this afternoon and share some information about the
office of strategy, analytics, and research.
Before we get started, I did want to check in briefly about the
time for this. I know it was originally scheduled to finish at 4:00,
and I just want to check in so I can be mindful and respectful of
your time.
When do you need me to be sure I am done by?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: If you need the full hour, we can have you
go the full hour, and then we will just have the chancellor come in
when you're finished.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Okay. Sounds good. I will try and move
forward in a timely way, but I will take the full hour as needed.
Let me share my screen. Give me just a moment to make sure I
have the correct window.
Are you seeing a blue slide saying strategy, analytics, and
research?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Yes, we are.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Good. Because we are over Zoom like this, I
cannot see this. So if any of you are confused, have questions, I
cannot see you to read body language. So please, if you have
questions, please speak up so I can address any questions as we go
along.
I'm here to introduce the strategy, analytics, and research
function at the institution. I will touch on a few different things.
I will start by giving you a general overview of the team, general
topics that we look at and focus on, and then we will talk in a
little bit more detail about mission and planning, data reporting,
engagement surveys, and then a discussion for any questions you may
have.
We will spend the bulk of our time talking about data reporting.
This is, in general, one of the more nuanced, more complicated areas,
and there is a lot of very important details there as we work through
about the performance of the institution, where the institution is
doing well, where we have opportunities to improve.
So we will spend a little bit of time there so I can try and
explain some of those metrics, and especially if you have questions,
please don't hesitate to let me know.
The office oversees a number of different areas grouped in these
three main lanes. So within the strategy function, we focus on
mission fulfillment, strategic planning, all other aspects of
planning actually including the Education and Facilities Master Plan,
unit plans, kind of all of them.
We do some scenario planning work, and we do a lot of monitoring
of external trends. We very carefully monitor signals from outside
the institution about changes that may come and impact the college,
and that's a critical area as we think about long-range planning for
the college so we can be sure we are taking all the different kind of
potential variables into account as we think about recommendations on
the best route forward.
A recent addition in this area of sustainability planning, the
college recently developed its first climate action sustainability
plan, and that's something that runs in the strategy area of the
college because any long-term decisions we make, any long-term
changes we make need to go hand in hand with sustainability to ensure
that we are addressing those considerations as we think of our
strategy for the institution.
Then we have analytics. This is under the purview of institution
analytics, which is a subunit within STAR. This is where we develop
our business intelligence system and provide all of the official data
reporting for the institution.
This includes mandated reports to the federal government and the
State of Arizona, as well as very detailed internal data that can be
used for employees to support operations and to understand at a very
fine-scale level how things like, for example, student course
outcomes change by race/ethnicity in a particular subject code at the
institution. All of those data are produced at the analytics team.
Then through research we conduct a number of college-wide
surveys. Of course the hard numerical data we have through our
information systems is one thing, but we need direct input from our
students. The primary way we do that is through surveys. We have a
number of external surveys we conduct as well as many internal
surveys for specialized purposes.
We also conduct benchmarking and research of that type to bring
information to the institution again so we can compare to other
institutions and also see what best practices may be out there that
we can bring to Pima to help support our learners.
I will start with mission. Mission of course drives everything
at the institution. As you can see on this slide here is our most
recent purpose, vision, and mission statements. These were approved
by the Governing Board in spring of 2021, so they are relatively new
statements. I will talk a little bit about the development in a
moment.
Alongside these statements we also have the behaviors. We added
behaviors new in 2021. Haven't had anything like that in the mission
fulfillment framework in the past, but we felt this was important to
bring in to kind of guide how we go about fulfilling our mission, and
we have a number of key priority areas here, as you can see listed,
and we have some discussions underway for things we may do next year
to more broadly disseminate the behaviors across the institution and
get employees engaged with these.
Mission review itself was conducted by the strategic planning
team. That team is comprised of representatives from all the key
areas of the institution. It's a relatively small group, typically
around about 25 people, with key responsibilities to report back to
their stakeholder group.
Mission review is very broad in scope. We have many avenues for
people to give input. Some of those are through open discussions
held at each of our sites, and then we also have an annual Futures
Conference. And when we're during a mission review year, that's
always a topic we take forward to that conference.
That's something we hold at one of the local hotels. It is
geared primarily towards community members. It gives us a primary
way to hear from the community we serve. There is only one way
through which we hear from the community, but it's a key one for
mission review.
The review of the mission is typically conducted in the year
immediately prior to the development of a new strategic plan, but
sometimes those things run in parallel. But always the conversation
about the mission is first, because we need to make sure we are, as a
group, as a college, as a community, aligned around the mission,
because that has to guide the directions we go as we develop the
plans for the institution.
The mission, as just mentioned, directly guides our planning and
our strategic plan in particular. So if we talk briefly about that
strategic planning process, we use a hybrid approach. It's very
interesting in the world of planning and strategy. There are some
changes in methodologies that we are kind of transitioning to both at
Pima and more broadly.
In the past, planning has been very traditional. It's very
structured. It involves a set of core elements, which I will share
the ones we use in a few moments. But the pace of change in higher
education and other fields is accelerating all the time. It used to
be much more static than this, and change used to be more gradual,
but now it's fast, very fast.
So we need to be nimble in our planning to take those things into
account. Because of that, we use very traditional planning methods,
but we're also bringing in futures methods as well, which there are a
different set of tools and a different set of methodologies that
enable us to look to the future in a very different way which helps
make sure, as we develop our plans, we are doing that in a way that's
going to be very relevant and appropriate for possible future states.
For the traditional side of planning, we use the Society of
College and University Planning's integrated planning model. We use
the first couple of steps of this, which is the planning roadmap and
assessing the landscape. That includes a variety of different steps
as listed here. The primary ones are along the second line here. We
have the environmental scan that looks to the outside world to figure
out what's going on, be it social or technological, political, et
cetera, that may impact the institution.
We have an institutional context discussion, which looks within
the institution, about our history, our culture, things like that,
and a competitor analysis which looks outside college at other
higher-education institutions who operate within either our
geographic space or who are very active in the online space so we can
see how we might position ourselves within that wider landscape, and
then of course the classic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats conversation.
Those are all part of the planning work we do, but enhancing them
now, we have foresight methods from the Institute for the Future, and
there is lots of these, the four details don't matter at all, but
this is a futures tool kit that enables us to look at things like
signals and drivers to build forecasts and scenarios to help us build
out possible future states based on the things and the signs, the
indicators we see today.
To elaborate on that a little bit, we think primarily around
drivers and signals. So drivers are clear and compelling
evidence-based directions of change. One key example I would use
here is the growth of online education.
Nationally there is an increase in people participating in either
online education within individual institutions, participating in
these massive online courses that are available through different
providers such as Coursera, and so these are kind of clear inarguable
trends that are occurring, and as an institution we need to make sure
if we are not ready for them that we get ourselves ready for them.
Then we have signals of change. Signals are small and subtle.
They may be one initiative that's been tried at one institution. But
they are little signs and little clues about the possible direction
things may develop over time.
So we very carefully monitor possible signals of change so that
we can be aware as different things emerge that the college might
need to respond to.
When we think about signals, I will give a little more detail
here, we track this within the STEEP framework, so we track according
to Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political,
which is the same framework we use for environmental scans for the
traditional branch of planning. This involves checking higher
education news, national news sometimes depending on what it is, it
can be things coming to us from conferences, can be announcements
from different entities, but here are two examples of signals that
were identified last month now in the social area.
One is an article from Inside Higher Education, which was a
discussion about whether class participation should be graded. Now,
sometimes for classes it is; sometimes for classes it is not. It's
in the purview of the faculty member leading the class. But this was
a very interesting discussion about whether, for this particular
institution that was featured here, whether they would include
participation in the long term for grading, because there was some
interesting equity considerations here.
For example, if you are a single parent taking classes, you may
have barriers and challenges to being able to attend class every
single session. Doesn't mean you're not a committed student, but
there are practicalities. There is real life, right, that can get in
the way.
So the discussion here is around whether including participation
in grades could be a barrier for some students. Another here is that
enrollment remains a top risk cited by colleges. Another one as
highlighted in the discussion here is recruitment and hiring.
So there are a number of these different things. Now, some of
these are smaller scale, belong in the realms of, for example,
academics in the case of the first one. Others are more broad and
impact the entire institution, but through the signal scanning we do,
we are carefully monitoring different emerging signals, tracking them
to see if they start building speed. Do we start hearing the same
thing from multiple places so we know it's something we need to pay
more attention to. When we engage in planning, we take these
signals, these drivers, and bring them to bear as we think about the
direction the institution may need to go.
Some of the things that came out of the foresight work in the
last planning processes are summarized here. This is a section of
text copied in from the current strategic plan, which was also
approached in spring 2021.
Some of the things that stood out as factors that may shape the
future of the college, changes in college funding, some economic
considerations, technology, increase in competition for learners.
This is a key one, because the growth of technology has really opened
up a variety of education opportunities, which coupled with a
declining sense and value of higher education kind of works against
us as a community college.
We also need to think about the future of the Pima learner. We
have data from the Office of Economic Opportunity that gives us
projections of what we think Pima County is going to look like in
terms of key demographics when we get to 2040, 2050, et cetera.
That's key for us to think about.
Then the last one here is the nature of educational products.
"Products" is in quotes, because it's not really a product as such,
but as we think about we have traditional certificates, we have
associate degrees, we have a growth in short-term credentials in
which there is growing demand. Also of course here within Arizona we
now have the option to consider including a small number of four-year
degrees. So thinking about what kind of educational outcome our
students are seeking is a really critical one for us to think about
as we move forward as an institution.
Just to give you a brief example, some of the priorities that are
in the works right now and intended to be completed or at least
partially completed for key milestones this year, we have a focus on
standardization, simplification, and access to support learner
progress. This is about simplifying our processes to make them more
transparent and easier for learners to navigate to find their way
through and registered and through our programs.
There are a number of milestones around guided pathways this
year. There were milestones last year, and there are other
milestones in the upcoming year for guided pathways. That's a huge
project.
Restructuring around areas of interest. This is about taking our
clusters of offerings. So, for example, let's take, I will use
Applied Technology as an example. We have a number of programs in
that area for our credit programs that are neatly aligned on our
website under Applied Technology as a division. But we have other
avenues to which students can enter those programs, and we have other
kinds of completion points such as industry credentials.
You can find out about all those different things on our website,
but this is about putting those things together so a learner doesn't
have to go, I want to go and take an IBEST program through adult
education, or I want to pursue an associate degree for transfer.
They can go to one place and think, okay, I'm interested in Applied
Technology, and they can see all their options with the college in
one place.
So this is much more about making us easier to understand from
the outside as opposed to structuring how we're viewed outside the
same way we are operationally structured inside.
Then expanding completion points. This is about
microcertificates, about industry credentials, and recognizing that
those bring value to the learners to earn them, and we that should
recognize those as completion points within the institution.
So these are all in the works right now. There are other
initiatives and projects underway that we will complete in later
years. It gives you a little bit of a flavor about some of the
things in here.
These items and everything else in the plan is structured around
a very specific goal for the year 2030. Within the State of Arizona,
led through Education Forward Arizona, we have an Achieve60
initiative, which 60% of Arizonans in the case of the statewide
initiative, Pima County residents in the case of ours here, 60% of
those residents age 25 to 65 holding a postsecondary credential or
degree by 2030. I won't go into the data right here in terms of what
that currently looks like, but for certain groups, they are not at
that level. Some are, some are close, but some there is a bigger
gap. We recognize as a community college we need to do something
about that.
Of course we want to support the statewide effort as well. So
this is the central target that we have within the strategic plan.
It's been in place now for a number of years. Actually it was in the
last plan as well.
But completion is a critical thing for us to be thinking about.
We have some targets that we establish for ourselves in the strategic
plan. In blue are the historical data. In the orange-type color we
have the targets. You will notice in completion we were pretty flat
for a number of years. Now we are ramping up quite a bit in terms of
our targets. I will show you in a moment where we currently stand.
In addition to that overall target, we also have specific targets
for three of our minority populations. These are populations for
whom the educational attainment level is lower than other
populations. They are also highlighted in the Arizona initiative.
So overall we are looking for a 65% increase in completers by the end
of the strategic plan, but we are looking for 100% increase for these
three populations.
In terms of our overall current performance, we have the little
chart I showed you before with the targets here in the upper right.
The current performance is shown here in the green and blue lines.
The line to pay most attention to here is the blue line, which is the
completer count. Each person is counted once here regardless of how
many awards they earn. So this is the unduplicated count of people
we have in a given year earning an award from the institution.
Now, the pandemic was not kind to us in terms of completers. I
mean, of course, it was not kind to the world in many, many ways.
Our learners, many of our learners had other priorities that had to
take precedence over their education. Our enrollment dropped, our
number of completers dropped.
In the '21/'22 year we're starting to see that turnaround a
little bit, but this is a critical area for us as we work to get back
to the levels we were at before and then move past that to try and
get back on track for Achieve60.
Within the strategic plan we identify a number of metrics, so
completer counts is one of those. That's the big picture, ultimate
target. But of course that feeds in directly to enrollment. It
relates to retention, whether we keep our students from term to term.
So as part of this in the strategic plan we identified what we termed
here are institutional key performance indicators.
I'm going to share with you some of the data aligned with these
so you get a bit of a feel for where the college is at in terms of
how we are doing in some of these different areas.
These focus at the access end of the spectrum, so annual head
count and enrollment. We have progress measures, such as fall to
next-term retention. As well as completion metrics being a count of
completers, looking at students who transfer from us to another
institution, be it the University of Arizona or another higher
education provider.
A number of these metrics come from Voluntary Framework of
Accountability or VFA. I won't go into too much detail about what
this is, but essentially the VFA was developed by the American
Association of Community Colleges to fill a very specific need.
There are a number of systems, I will mention one of them, that
colleges are required to report to. But a lot of those external
accountability systems are originally designed for universities, or
they focus on full-time students.
For Pima, about two-thirds of our students are part-time, so we
really can't with any good meaning use a system that looks at just
full-time students because it's simply not representative of the
community we serve.
There are a number of progress-type measures, some related to
developmental education, some not, which are really relevant to the
community college that these national (indiscernible) accountability
systems just don't include. The VFA was designed by the American
Association of Community Colleges specifically to provide community
colleges with a way to look at measures that are meaningful for us
and compare them to other institutions, so it gives us a different
accountability system that's very appropriate and applicable for us.
The data here highlights a little bit more the point I just made.
This little pie chart is looking at spring 2022, student enrollment,
and 71% of those students were part-time, about 29% of those students
were full-time. So we absolutely have to be thinking and focusing on
our part-time students, because that's really where the bulk of our
learners are. If we are not focused on them, we are doing a
disservice to the bigger proportion of our enrollment.
I'm going to show you some of the key data, but I wanted to share
first a few interesting data points about Pima County. I'm going to
move through this relatively quickly. There is a link provided here
and a copy of the full report can be released to the Governing Board
if you'd like to see more about this.
This was a study conducted by an external group, and they were
looking at low-wage workers. In this case, you are looking at a
series of charts. I'll highlight one particular area. We're looking
at Tucson, Arizona, 18 to 24, identified as low-wage workers, and
they are not in school and they do not have a college degree.
If you focus for discussion purposes right now on the race
ethnicity chart in the lower right, we'll see if we look at that
population, 35% of them are White, 54% of them are Latino or
Hispanic, and I'm going to step through different levels of
education. I want you to watch how the White percentage and the
Latino or Hispanic percentage change.
First, same age range, but now we're looking at people who are in
school with no college degree. Note how the percentage of White
individuals has increased significantly. Note the decline in Latino
or Hispanic individuals.
If I go one step further, this is the same age range but now we
are looking at people who hold an associate degree or more, and
again, we see a further increase in the percentage of White
individuals in this population and a decrease in Latino or Hispanic
individuals in this population.
This highlights a critical area that the college needs to focus
on and try and address, and the equity piece around Achieve60 is key
here if we want to support meaningful change in our community.
The other metrics here are interesting. I encourage you to take
a look at those as well to see how they change as we move across
different levels of education, because they are all important and
have meaning for us here at the institution.
Let's look at a few key data points for Pima. So this is
longitudinal trend, looking at data from 2011/'12 through to '21/'22
and the blue line shows annual head count. Orange line, highest in
the chart, gives enrollment count.
Enrollment is, just to clarify, a duplicated count. So head
count, we count a student once regardless of how many classes they
are taking. For enrollment, if a student is taking three classes, we
count them as three times. So it duplicates people according to the
number of classes they're taking.
As you can see here, there is a gradual decline over time, little
steep at the beginning, starting in 2011, a little before that
actually where we had this significant decrease in enrollment.
Right about 2016/'17, we started to flatten off, which was great,
but then with the impact of the pandemic you can see we saw
significant drops in enrollment again over here, the right-hand side
of the chart. If you can compare any of these starting numbers with
any of the ending numbers, we are at approximately half the head
count, enrollment count, and unofficial FTSE that we were 10 years
ago.
FTSE here is primarily used for financial purposes. This is
full-time student equivalent. There's an official version reported
to the state. This chart includes unofficial FTSE, which is a
slightly different calculation, but it's a very similar final number
to the ones we have going in to the state, though it does include the
CTE multiplier, just so you know. So this is a lower number than we
report out to the state.
It gives you a sense of where we're going, and institutionally we
need to think very hard about what it means for us that our
enrollment has dropped this much in this amount of time, and what
does it mean in terms of infrastructure offerings, et cetera.
In terms of gender, over 50% of our students, 58% for the most
recent spring, were female compared to 40% male. This used to be
closer to 50/50. We are losing our male students. This is not
unique to Pima. This is a challenge facing higher education more
broadly. But again, it's something we need to think about and be
mindful of to see how we can rebalance this ideally so we bring our
male students into the institution so they have the educational
opportunities as well as our female students.
In terms of race ethnicity, 47% of our students in spring 2022
identified as Hispanic or Latino. This is a little higher than the
proportion within the community, but within the community, Hispanic
people are typically younger, so we would expect to see a high
proportion of them attending here as we typically have younger
students at the institution.
White students are 38%, approximately, to the nearest percent,
anyway, which is a little below the overall for the community. Then
the other populations are generally much smaller from the two
dominant race ethnicity groups. Of course, all of our students are
very important, and when we compare ourselves to the community, we
look across all these demographic groups because it's important that
we meet the needs of every learner in the community.
In terms of age, our highest age group is 18 to 24, which is very
typical for a community college. About 31% in slightly older age
range, about 12% who are aged over 40. As we move forward in time
because of the birth dearth we are going to see declining numbers of
students graduating from high school.
The institution, as we think about enrollment, we need to think
about how we can effectively engage with adult learners, because the
pipeline is going to start dropping for younger-aged students. So
either as an institution, our footprint, we need to plan for further
enrollment drops if we rely on younger age ranges, or we need to
really ramp up how we engage with adult learners.
That's a theme within the strategic plan, the engaging with adult
learners is due to complete next year, so it's very much on the
college's radar, but I wanted to highlight for the board so you can
be aware of that as you make decisions for the institution.
Let me touch on a couple of progress measures. Now, there is a
lot of information in the chart here. I'd ask you to primarily focus
on two areas.
The first is this one in blue. So when we complete the VFA
reporting, we track cohorts. So we identify students who start in a
given semester, and then we track them over time to see what happens
to them. For this chart, we are tracking students who are new to the
institution in fall of 2020. We track them for two years.
The blue line is fall to next term retention. This reports the
percentage of students who were new in fall 2020 who continued with
the institution in spring of 2021. So when we look at the full
cohort, we retained 64% of those students.
The one next to that, the green one, is the other one we will
focus on. This is no success first term. This is the percentage of
new students in fall 2020 who either failed or withdrew from every
class they were enrolled in in their first semester. It doesn't mean
they didn't come back in the next semester. They may have done, but
it means that in fall 2020, that first semester with us, they didn't
see any success. As you can see, that number is 22%, which is very
roughly 1 in 5 students.
I'm going to apply a few filters to this. Internally all of
these data are available in our business intelligence system.
College employees, if they have the appropriate security access to
the data, which is pretty much everybody within the institution, can
apply filters to see how these change for different subpopulations.
I'm not going to look at many of those for today's purposes, but I
want to give you a couple of examples so you can see the kind of data
we have available and also see how some of these metrics vary across
populations.
First, I'm adding a filter looking at part-time students. If I
go back to the original one, we're at 64% and 22%, and then add part
time, you'll notice the retention rate has dropped. It's now closer
to 50%. The proportion of students who have no success in the first
term has increased. It's now closer to about 1 in 4 students as
opposed to 1 in 5.
Remember what I commented about before. About 70% of our
students are part time. So the larger proportion of our students
have this slightly lower retention rate. Now, of course it means our
full-time students retained a slight higher level, but this is really
critical for us. We retain approximately 1 in 2 of our part-time
students who are new from fall and into spring.
That's an area we need to focus on institutionally to figure out
how we can keep those students, because obviously they cannot kind of
progress with their educational journey, earn their certificate,
transfer to the university if they are not staying and kind of making
progress here with us.
We take this a step further, and now we are looking at part-time
students, but they are not all part-time students. We are looking at
the data for our Hispanic or Latino male students. Note the
retention has now dropped again and it's below 50%. Note that no
success in the first term has increased, and it's now closer to what
is approaching 40%, but it's about 1 in 3 students very
approximately.
Now, we can analyze this what this looks like across all the
different metrics in the VFA, but it kind of highlights for us that
we can look institutionally at our KPIs and at the big-picture level
we are reasonably comparable to the fall VFA cohort. There are some
differences, but they are not huge in most cases.
But as we look at different subpopulations, we start to see
increasing differences in terms of their progress and their outcomes.
That's an absolutely critical focus for us as we work to address
diversity, equity, and inclusion, social justice, and there's
actually going to be an internal session at the institution on Friday
where I'm going to talk in more detail about these data to release it
broadly across the full college community so others are aware of what
these numbers look like. They are available internally in business
intelligence but to kind of give some of the context around the
figures.
We can also through these data track trends over time. In the
case of what we are seeing here, these were again two-year VFA
cohorts that we are tracking, and we are looking from fall 2013 to
fall 2020. We're looking at Hispanic and Latino and White,
completion rates and transfer rates.
Now, if we look back in fall 2013, the completion rate for our
Hispanic students was 4.3%. It was 5.7% for our White students. So
it was close but not exactly the same.
Very significant gaps though in transfer rate. It was about 15%
for our Hispanic students, about 25% for our White students.
We jump forward to the most recent cohort. You will notice the
overall numbers for completion rates have increased from about 5% to
between about 8 and 9%, which is good. It's great to see that
progress and that increase in completion in two years.
There is still a little bit of a gap in the completion rate
between the race ethnicity groups, which is an area that needs focus,
but it's not a huge gap.
Transfer rate has generally dropped. We have seen declines in
transfer rate for a number of years now, and that's something that's
under investigation and analysis in academics, but note there is
still a fairly big difference in the transfer rate between these two
populations.
Again, as we think as an institution about our purpose in
supporting equitable outcomes, helping any student regardless of
where they start reach the educational goal they have, there is a
question around that differences and areas the institution needs to
think about.
We can further slice on this. Here we are looking at the same
groups, male students only. Notice that there are bigger gaps now
between Hispanic populations and our White populations.
These rates are lower than when we look at all Hispanic students,
and the gaps are bigger between White and Hispanic. So again, these
are things we need to think about as a college. Not to say that our
rates overall are bad or anomalous compared to others, but we have
real opportunity as we look to particular subpopulations. There is
real opportunities for us to improve (indiscernible) success for some
of these populations. That's the VFA.
I will touch briefly on IPEDS. There are also IPEDS charts in
here. I won't talk about all of them in detail. IPEDS is Integrated
Postsecondary Education Data System. This is the federal data system
for which there are a number of mandated reports that every
institution, be they a community college or a university, are
required to submit every year.
It makes it a very good benchmarking tool for us, because we can
access institution-level data for every community college in the
country, and this gives us a very strong way to compare how we are
doing compared to others.
There are some of these measures that are better than others for
doing those kinds of comparisons. Definitions are kind of consistent
but sometimes they relate to state definitions. So things will be
consistent within Arizona but they could be quite different between,
say, Arizona and California.
So there are some limitations to this, and the metrics are
somewhat full-time focused, not 100%. They have added additional
metrics in the last few years, but it's a narrow set of metrics but
for a broader set of institutions.
Here, every institution, the VFA, the most recent year there are
about 200. So it's a big difference.
We can access comparison data, as mentioned, through IPEDS and
they provide some standard reports to us. In January, you perhaps
received both the original IPEDS data feedback report and the
customized one. Let me show some examples from the customized report
here.
For the custom report we used two sets of institutions from our
peer institution list. These are those like colleges, so they are
like us. They're big multicampus, high-enrollment institutions.
Then we also included like cities. So they are areas that look
very much like the Tucson region in terms of their demographics,
their characteristics, and so we looked to them, the colleges in
those cities and the large multicampus districts, and compared to
those.
We can pick any comparison cohort, though, so if there is
interest from the board of seeing a particular group of institutions,
a request can go into the chancellor's office and we can look into
that as well.
We go through a series of charts. Pima is in orange in each of
these like the darker color. The comparison group, the institutions
on the previous slide are in this lighter color here.
First off, we are looking at one that relates to federal
financial said. The percent of full-time, first-time, degree-seeking
students who are awarded a grant, scholarship, or loans in the
2020/2021 year. Now, you will notice here for Pima it's a lower
percentage for us across the majority of these categories.
It's interesting for us to note, because finances show up in a
couple different places when we hear from students and the need for
support for their financial needs. So this comparison is an
interesting one to look to.
We can also look at the federally defined retention rate. Now,
it gets a little confusing. VFA talks about fall to next term
retention. When we use the term "retention" in a federal context,
that typically means fall to fall as opposed to fall to spring. But
here we can compare our full-time student retention rate and our
part-time student retention rate between us and the other
institutions. You will notice for Pima it's a little higher in both
cases, which is really encouraging for us to see that we are kind of
outperforming this group of colleges a little bit.
We can also look to the graduation rate and transfer rate. Now,
this is the traditional end of IPEDS where they look at what they
term 150% on-time graduation. This would mean for an associate
degree, for example, that they graduated within three years. So the
traditional two years for an associate degree plus the additional 50%
of time.
For these, our graduation rate is a little bit lower than the
overall cohort, but the transfer rate is a little bit higher than the
overall cohort. So we kind of average out being about the same when
we consider these two kind of key completion points, either earning a
degree from us or making that step to transfer on to a state
university. I shouldn't say state university. Any university would
be picked up within this analysis.
So this is an encouraging sign for the institution, but it does
highlight the graduation rate in 150% of time is something we should
focus on.
These charts get a little bit more detailed as we go along. So
here we have the full-time, first-time, degree-seeking students
earning an award within 150% of normal time, again, that would be
three years for an associate degree, and we see it disaggregated by
race ethnicity.
Some of these populations are very small. For example, the
American Indian Alaska Native population is small, so that difference
might be skewed somewhat because there are a relatively small number
of students in that category.
We like to highlight the numbers here in the middle for our
Hispanic students. Our graduation rate is a little bit higher for
our Hispanic students than it is when we look to the comparison
institutions, which is good to see. It's a little lower though in
other cases, so for our White students, we are a little bit behind.
For our Black or African American students it's largely the same. So
we see gaps in places, but it's a very mixed story in terms of how
this varies by race ethnicity.
I mentioned race ethnicity before, and of course it's key as we
think about the community we serve to ensure we are focusing on
outcomes across our diverse community.
This is another way of viewing this, but instead of 150%
completion, this time we are tracking students for four, six, and
eight years. It gives us a much more representative period of time
within which students may complete and earn an award.
You will notice, we won't go into all the details, but if you
look across those that were awarded a Pell Grant, those who were not,
pretty much every category Pima is slightly outperforming the
comparison group of colleges. That's not the case for enrolled in
another institution. That one is a little lower for us. But when it
comes to earning an award, be they Pell recipients or not, we're a
little bit higher.
However, I would have to note, look at these numbers. Receive an
award in eight years, it was 26% for Pima for our Pell recipients.
That's a little higher than the comparison group, but it's still only
26%. There is a lot of potential there for us to kind of further
what we are doing to support our students.
Increase completion so we can make it to much higher percentages
than that. That's full-time students. This is the same thing for
part-time students. Overall numbers are much lower, which is
concerning for us, because keep in mind the comment that 70% of our
students are part time, so it's important that we focus on this
group, but again, we see slightly higher graduation rates for Pima
students than we see for the comparison group of colleges.
So it's not bad news. This is very encouraging news in terms of
how we are doing compared to similar institutions elsewhere in the
country, but still, a 15% graduation rate for this population of
students, there is plenty of scope for us to figure out a strategy,
bring ideas to the institution to work to increase this further.
The final piece of data I want to touch on is from the research
branch of the institution, and it focuses specifically on the
Community College Survey Student Engagement and the related surveys.
I won't talk in too much detail but these, but essentially this is a
set of surveys that are conducted by an external group based in
Texas, and it's completed by a number of colleges every year, a few
hundred colleges approximately each year.
It's a survey that is administered in classes, either in person
historically, with the pandemic it's currently online, but we get
direct input from students on a range of statements that give us
really valuable input about students' perspectives on lots of
different topics related to student engagement. So it's very
different from the numerical data we were just looking at, but it's
really important information, because those perceptions from students
and the detailed questions within CCSSE really help us to pinpoint
specific areas where we are doing really well or areas where we can
work to improve.
CCCSE pulls their results together in a series of benchmarks, and
those are listed here, these five categories. If an institution
scores 50, then they are exactly average in the full cohort. So the
goal is always to be above 50. So we are above average as an
institution.
What you can see here are the benchmark scores. The average top
10% of CCCSE institutions are in the dark color here. So that's kind
of our aspirational level, it's where we want to get to, right. As
an institution, we want to be in the top 10% as a premier community
college.
Pima scores are in the lighter color here. You can see that for
four of the benchmarks we are above average. For one of them, we are
below average. And specifically support for learners is the one
where we are not quite attaining the average of the full cohort.
To give you a bit of context here, these numbers and these arrows
relate to the previous administration of CCSSE. So we completed
CCSSE in the last academic year, so these are very hot-off-the-press
numbers, but we did this before in 2018. Before the benchmarks we
have increased over where we were in 2018. We were actually either
at average or just below average for each of these before.
This indicates good progress by the institution that we are
tracking the right direction, and student engagement is gearing up in
these different areas, which is really encouraging to see. But one
of them we have dropped slightly. Now, that's an area of
institutional focus.
The key areas within the institution, if we see these data and
kind of analyze and in turn understand what they mean, but a series
of CCSSE questions kind of aggregate together to create the benchmark
scores. We have the specific results by each individual question,
and so it gives us very good information where we can kind of dig in
in detail to understand what's been declining for this particular
area, so we can figure out what adjustments may be made in advance of
the next assessment when we reassess and see how well we are doing.
We have similar kinds of results through the other engagement
surveys which includes a survey of entering student engagement, a
faculty survey, and then we also have (indiscernible) race ethnicity
survey as well. So we have a wealth of information through CCCSE,
and as I say, there are key people through the chancellor's goals
working to understand those results and disseminate them and figure
out what action the college needs to take.
Just to hit on a final couple things before I wrap up, we know
the highest area of student engagement based on CCSSE, and they are
summarized here. We are in the light blue here. The darker color is
a full cohort, and A is listed over here. The highest area, one of
the highest areas of engagement for us is whether the students ask
questions in class or contributed to a class discussion, and the next
one is receive prompt feedback from instructors on their performance.
These things speak highly about the work being done by faculty in
the classrooms. These are areas where we are high relative to the
full CCCSE cohort. All of these items are identified by this
external group as critical areas for student engagement. So these
are areas to celebrate where we are doing really well as an
institution.
At the other end of the spectrum, CCCSE shares with us our lowest
student engagement, so identifies some areas where we have
opportunities to improve. Here, the biggest gaps are the top two
statements here. First one, providing the financial support you need
to afford your education. That stood out in CCSSE for a number of
administrations of this survey going back quite a few of years. This
is a critical area for the institution to think about and figure out
what strategies we might deploy in this area to better support our
students in this regard.
Another area with a slightly larger gap is a frequency of
academic advising and planning. Both of these fall in the area of
support for learners, and they are among the statements that lead to
us being down a little bit this time around compared to the last
administration. But these questions, like I say, give us clues and
ideas where we need to look to, where we can work to improve.
So that is a relatively quick tour through what I realize is a
lot of information, just to summarize a few key priorities in the
team for the upcoming year so you are aware of some of the other
things in critical areas of focus for us. We are building our
timeline in process for the next comprehensive planning cycle. This
will include mission review, development of a strategic plan, new
facilities master plan, education master plan, and a number of
related plans.
The team will be formed to work on these, and these are all items
that will come forward to the Governing Board for review and approval
at the appropriate time.
The team is also responsible for the implementation of the
Climate Action and Sustainability Plan, and we have a lot of work
going on in that space to move the institution forward to become a
climate-positive entity. We are rolling out college-wide process
mapping through a process we refer to as institutional quality.
This is going to be a key step related to the strategic plan as
we work to simplify our processes for our learners. It's critical
that we clearly map all of the processes we have, and that actually
launches Monday of next week. We're (indiscernible) analytics,
bringing that to the institution so we can more fully leverage the
data we have to understand what is working and what is not working so
that we can share that information with the college community to
inform decisions as we work to improve access, progress, and
completion.
Then lastly, we are directly responsible as co-leads for the work
on HLC Criteria 1 and 5, which is essentially mission and resources
and planning. That's another central priority for the team during
the course of the year.
And with that, I'm going to stop showing my screen so I can
hopefully see you again. Turns out I can see myself, but hopefully I
will be able to see you in just a moment. I'd like to open it up for
any questions or any discussion.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you, Nic. I think we got a full load
of statistics and data. I like those graphs, and, you know, they are
informative.
I'm not sure I understand what is meant by the average on slide
44 and 45, but maybe that's something that we could talk about at
another time, just if you could fill me in on why that 50% mark or
the 50 on those two graphs is considered the average.
>> DR. RICHMOND: Yes, we could talk about that at a later date,
but essentially for that one, they normalize the results. So the
average for the full cohort falls at 50.
It's a numerical activity conducted on CCCSE's side. They take
the full results, normalize it to make sure that the average falls
out at 50, and then place people accordingly above or below based on
their aggregate scores across there.
But I'd be happy to provide additional information.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Okay. Thank you.
Now we're going to have the chancellor and chief of staff join
us.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So three things. I just want to ask if
there are any questions we may be able to answer. What do you think
went well? What might we do to improve on the orientation process
for the future?
So those are the three areas.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I mean, I think for me, and this has been
great, there is a lot to learn, especially not knowing as much about
the college, so I really appreciate it. Sometimes these things can
feel like a slog, but that's just because there is a lot of
information. I can't think of, like, a better way to deliver it than
just to kind of get through all of it.
I don't have any thoughts there, but certainly, going forward,
how we act on this, the thought that keeps coming into my head and
this doesn't have to be answered right at the moment, it's just
around, okay, so like as a board, not wanting to necessarily get into
the minutiae of everything that the college is doing, but what do we
need to do as the board to support you all to move some of these
forward.
Like, for example, we just got a lot of data from Nic on things
at the bottom and things at the top, and I know we are hearing bits
and pieces about what's going on, and being informed about that is
important, but I'm in the place now with my brain where I'm looking
for action items. I feel like I kind of get a lot -- I'm sure there
is more I don't know and I'm always happy to learn. That's where my
brain is going now. It's like what's next? What do we do to move
the needle on all these different things?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: That's helpful. Thank you.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I'm thinking about my meeting tomorrow with
SALC. When our question is supposed to be what is your vision for
Pima College, my answer is going to be I don't have a vision for Pima
College. It's already been done. I'm one board member, and I have a
vision for what a board member should be.
I'm trying to align my comments with what you just said in that
what do I need to know as a board member, and if I'm supposed to
function at the 30,000-foot level, did I get 30,000-foot information
or did I get 5,000-foot information?
We saw how many investigations we did and what categories today.
I don't know if that helps me change the policy or influence the
policy on due process in the college.
So I guess what I'm saying is I've got a long way to go to take
data, like an hour's worth of data on who's going to the university,
who is not going to the university, are they Brown, are they White,
are they Black, and what does that mean to the board table? So maybe
it goes back to my comment the other day when I said we need time to
talk to each other about who we are and what we are supposed to be
doing.
You know, I think it's good that we got this information. I just
don't know how I'm going to assimilate it at the board table. If you
don't want us to get involved in the minutiae, why are we getting it?
Maybe it would have been more of a broad stroke than a detailed
stroke. I know some people like the detailed stroke, but, you know,
more maybe conversation with you at some point in time, what do you
see the issues to be, what do you think we ought to do about them,
what do you need from us, how do we assist, and what does that look
like at a board table on a board meeting night on an agenda item.
Something like that.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I, having been exposed to Pima College,
I thought the training was fabulous. I think all of the people that
talked to us and shared information, I think they did a really, an
amazing job. It's impressive, all of the things that are going on at
the college.
You know, there are always going to be questions. I think that,
you know, what my colleague was saying about having time to talk, you
know, there are things from the last board meeting that we still
don't have the answers to. It's not imperative that we get the
answers in any timely fashion. It's just we can't make decisions
until we have time to look at those answers.
You know, from my point of view, coming from having been faculty
for so long, I was looking over my notes from the last year's worth
of board meetings that I watched, and I know on one of the board
meetings, Makyla Hays had mentioned that 21 of the 24, and I can't
remember if it was an action item or something like that, that they
had talked about in the AERC wasn't in the class and comp study.
So I think one thing that I would like to effect some change is
the college is doing amazing on the things that we are doing amazing
on. But I think there are some areas as far as employee
satisfaction, and I hear scuttlebutt about ODR taking a long, long
time, and the process isn't necessarily clear.
If we could figure out why some of our employees, faculty and
staff, are not feeling like this is the most amazing place to work,
and if we could fix some of those things, I think it would only
improve the amazing things that the college is doing on the great
side.
I had a thought that just popped... oh, so when I was
campaigning, I was approached by at least three, maybe four faculty
that were from the social work program. All of them -- and maybe I
misinterpreted what they were saying to me, but I'm pretty sure all
of them told me that the social work program had been canceled or, I
can't remember what we used to call it when I was on the curriculum
council for all those years, but when they were delisted. But
anyway, when Dr. Dolores Duran-Cerda was talking today, she mentioned
of the three programs that transfer most to ASU, our social worker
students transfer in the top three groups.
I didn't ask her a question, I said, I'd like to meet with you
and hear what happened with our social work program, because I heard
that it had been canceled. Kate Schmidt and Dolores both said that I
had misinformation. So that's okay, but my point is three current
faculty members, I think they are still current, told me that it had
been canceled. So there is some disconnect between a client -- not
client, but employee satisfaction.
So I think that if we could fix the things inside the college
that aren't at that amazing level that everything else is, you know,
like the centers of excellence and all the new buildings we are doing
and all the partnerships we have with different employers and
different groups in the city and in the state, I think that that's
one thing that I would like to, you know, see happen.
But as far as this training went, I thought it was great. It was
long, but I think I'd rather have it in big long chunks in shorter
amount of time so we can actually get into business. So the training
was fabulous.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So we got data -- I don't know if we got
data. Did we get data on a climate survey?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes. Well, I think you might have got -- I
mean, the college has communicated the data to the entire college.
Now, the question is whether, because you're new, whether you have
seen that, that may be -- I don't recall that other than if you got
it during the orientation.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: It was in a board meeting. It was in a
board meeting. I think it was in October or November that that was
-- so it was before our time that it was presented to the board.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Okay. So maybe in the future, you could ask
the new board members what they want to know about before you put the
training together. So here's what we normally do. What would you
like to hear? Are there some other things you don't want to hear
about? Maybe take a little poll to see if you're presenting
information that people want to hear.
And I don't know what that is, but climate survey may be one of
them, we didn't hear it, I didn't see it, I don't know anything about
it. That would look more like a conversation again with you as
opposed to a staffer that did the survey.
So the conversation would be, yeah, you know, we got this from
this area of the staff and this is what we are thinking about. What
do you think? Back up to the high level.
I had another one that I lost...
Oh, I don't know what my role is in the budget process. I don't
know if there is a role. I don't know what my role is in salaries,
budget, any of that stuff.
Now, we've gotten reports on the budget, but I don't know what
that means as far as what I do. Does that make sense?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Are you bringing us a budget in the spring?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So I can answer some of these questions now.
I will start with that question, right? So big picture, obviously
you have to approve the budget. The college can't approve it. You,
as a board, have to approve it. That's the first piece.
Now we get into the mechanics of the budget in terms of what
pieces do the board have to weigh in on as part of that overall
decision. So come March, first decision point will be around
tuition. So we will bring you a proposal around tuition, and you
would decide what level you want to set the tuition at.
Because that essentially influences our revenue. So that's one
stage of the process. So in the study session coming up later this
month, Dave will do a presentation I believe around the tuition
piece, and then we get your input and then frame it into what that
would look like for March.
So then another decision point along the way will be around the
whole levy. Do we go to the max of the levy or something shorter
than that, but that's all going to be driven by the priorities that
the board wants us to focus on.
So salaries is -- probably the single-biggest item in the budget
is compensation. So you will tell us what you're wanting to
accomplish there, and then that will affect these levers, right? How
much do you set tuition, and how much do we set the levy at, because
that's how much we have to work with.
So those are the decisions that you are going to have to instruct
us on.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So back to orientation, it would be helpful
for me is we get a calendar that says these are the major decisions
you're going to have to make and when.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Okay.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And then I might be able to tell you what
I'm going to need in order to be prepared to make the decision or
help you decide what information I need.
So if you tell me that I have to discuss salaries, I have no idea
about that question. I didn't get anything. So if somebody says,
well, we want to give a 3% raise in salaries, I don't know if that's
good, bad, or indifferent. Because in the orientation, if we are
talking the orientation, I got nothing on salaries, historical
salaries, compared to inflation or whatever metrics you use in order
to make decisions on that revenue, those kinds of things.
Because I can't make a decision on salaries unless I am involved
at some point in time in deciding how we are going to divvy up the
pie, if that makes sense?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Complete sense.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: And I guess we're going to do that in a
month?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: There is different gates along the way,
right?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: There's another issue. I've got to see all
the gates before -- you can't, I don't think you can, but I don't
know if I'm going to give you the answer you want, one gate is
tuition based on what, I don't know what that is, because I don't
know what the revenue and the expenditure is going to be. The other
is going to be salaries. I don't know what that is, because I don't
know anything about salaries.
So to ask me to make three different decisions about the
composition of a pie that I had nothing to do with is going to be
real hard on me.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So we'll talk to Dave about laying all of
that out as early as this upcoming study session so you know what the
gates are, and then you know what our current revenues are, our
current expenses, and then what we are projecting in terms of what
will be needed.
And then that's where you'll know, okay, we think tuition needs
to go up by X percent in order to get there in combination with the
levy increase, or in some cases it's the other side of that, how much
do we need to reduce the budget in order to fulfill that revenue
requirement.
So we can lay all of that out for you. He's going to do that.
He didn't do it during orientation, is what you're telling me.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: But that's what we are talking about, right,
orientation?
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Yes. You're raising a good point. Maybe it
should be presented in the orientation so you can think on it before
we get to these other components of the process.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Well, if we had a calendar that said I'm
coming on board in January, you're going to make this decision in
March, I'm already going to be panicked, because I don't know how to
make that decision in March. So what do I need to know in the
orientation that's going to lead towards making decisions on these
benchmarks, whatever they are, contracts, salaries.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Sure. Now, some decisions and the time
frames are known, and then the other ones are they happen along the
way, if you will. So we can lay out the known ones in terms of a
calendar. Then other ones are probably more ambiguous when they come
along.
But remember, that's like 70, 80% of the pie is just that budget
side of the equation, right?
We have some others that are going to come up. That's what I'm
going to talk to the two of you about in another day or two, I think
we meet Wednesday, right, and then we will bring it to the full board
in the study session.
So setting up your study session calendar, try to coincide that
with what we know are some known decisions that have to be made. You
do a study session so you know what you need to be thinking about
before we come to a decision point. A lot of this will evolve around
the capital pieces of the equation. So immediate capital pieces are
going to be around the hotel properties and the 29th Street Center
and East Campus.
So we're going to have to come to you in the next few months
around decision points related to those. But we will lay that out
for you, first in the study session and then decide when we will
bring the actual action item.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: So maybe those initiatives that have come to
new board members in the first six months maybe should be part of the
orientation. I mean, I don't know. I'm just one...
>> TOM DAVIS: (Off mic.)
As much as we know, because like one item, the 29th Street thing,
just came up because of, yeah, having to replace an HVAC system, is
it worth it or not, do we stay there or not. Those kinds of
decisions will come up as they come up.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Sure, that's understandable, yeah. But to
give some thought and warning to -- that's a major decision, I guess,
on this hotel thing, which I don't know anything about.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Right.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: I know nothing. If we have a study session,
I have two hours of conversation about that and then a decision
shortly thereafter. I'm just saying, orientation-wise, maybe some of
the immediate concerns or issues embedded into the training of -- you
could do all that in one of the sessions, I mean, I don't know.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Your point is well made. If we know
something within a six-month time horizon, build it into the
orientation. That's pretty straightforward. That's easy to work
with.
Also what we do is even in a study-session context, if you want
to have, you know, private meetings on a particular topic, we can do
that too. If you want to go even deeper than what you have heard in
a study session, we can do that. Sometimes that has to be done, you
know, individually, and sometimes that can be done collectively.
Just depending on what you feel your comfort level is. We don't want
to bring you something that you're not going to feel comfortable
enough to make a decision on.
Obviously there are some decisions that have to be made sooner
than later, and in some cases, some emergency decisions and how much
time we have to make those decisions. But more or less, your point
is well made.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: So I think it's not just for orientation,
right, but, you know, on our Month 6, so in June, if we could get a
calendar 1st of July to let us know what's coming up for the next six
months, big things, that would be great too. Just so we always know
where we're going instead of -- somebody mentioned something that's
going to be on our next board packet, and I'm not saying specifically
about that that I wish I had known months in advance, but I'm sure
there are some things that would be better to have time to process
and to ask all of our questions.
So as far as the budget, you know, there are people who have
degrees in accounting and finance who are doing this budget. I don't
feel, even though -- I bet you there are a hundred questions in here
I circled and wrote questions. But I don't feel as concerned about
this, because I'm trusting somebody is going to be doing the math
right.
What we need to know is how tuition, how the tax levy, and all of
the different scenarios, if we raise taxes but we don't raise
tuition, if we don't raise anything, and then all of those different,
what's going to happen to what we can do operation-wise.
As far as the hotels go, I mean, for the most part, we don't know
anything about them except for that they were purchased and that, you
know, we don't know what they are going to be used to for, we don't
know how much it's going to cost, we don't know if it's in the
college's best interest to keep moving forward, even though we have
already spent a lot of money, right, but we need just more
information if we are going to be able to make -- well, I shouldn't
talk collectively, but I think some of us, we want to make sure we
are making the best decision, and we are completely outside of the
knowledge circle right now.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Sure. And that's why these study sessions,
I will sit down with the two of you coming up and we will map out,
here are all the topical areas that we anticipate over the next six
months, maybe year, and then bring it to the full board in the study
session, and you tell us when you want to hear these, and we will let
you know when we think these need to happen.
So because of, like Tom just pointed out, we've got an AC problem
out at 29th Street. We need to know, sooner than later, are we going
to stay there or are we going to move them all to East Campus. But
to move them to East Campus, there are second- and third-order
effects. We can't keep doing what we are doing out at East Campus if
we move PSESI out there.
So we're going to have to vacate some other portions. But we
will be laying that out for you. I had thought we had more time, but
instead of pumping in a million and a half into 29th Street on an
HVAC system, will it just be better doing it out at East Campus where
that is the home that we plan to move it to.
This is a foreseen mechanism on that. Again, that wasn't
something we anticipated happening as quickly as it is going to
happen, but we wanted to present to you all the details of the master
plan so you have an understanding where we are, what's left in terms
of projects, what the timelines associated with them, and then that
way you can kind of anticipate when certain key decisions are going
to come up.
But I know Greg asked the question about the healthcare center of
excellence, so I now have a better idea of when I think that's going
to come online. It's going to be like fall of 2024.
So now that we know that, we can better anticipate what are some
of the key decisions that the board will have to make? Now we have
done the assessment, the architect's come in and done their piece,
all the planning documents are just about completed. Now we can
clearly lay out a vision around that project. That's true even for
the hotel properties, too.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Just one last thing. The Facilities Master
Plan, Educational Master Plan, they have been mentioned so many
times. I don't know how big those documents are. Maybe that would
have been something good for us to have either access to online or
something like that, so when it's referenced over and over and over,
we would have had a chance to maybe just glance through them.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: And I can have Andrea -- they are on the
website. But we can send you the link so you can go and read that.
There is two pieces. There is the initial plan, and then what we did
is, just so you know, we first created a concept plan. Then we took
the concept plan and said this is what we are actually going to do as
a result of the study that was done.
Then we did a refresh of this, because, you know, we are more
than halfway down the track of it. The refresh of that is
problematic, so we are going to need to go back and revisit it. I
don't think it was well done like the initial plan was.
So you're going to see us doing that.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: That might have been, as you're talking
about it, obviously going into these I didn't -- I guess I could have
anticipated that it was going to be referenced as many times as it
was, and I read it when I was running, but I don't remember every
detail.
So just in terms of the context for it, if we were doing it
again, it may have been useful to start with those and present them
in some way with the idea that everything else was going to start
referencing them as kind of here is the master plan, I use that term
generically, that all these things are in, and then you will start
referencing back to it. That makes sense to me in terms of a
structure.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Another thought. Understanding that the
people that get elected to the board don't know anything, how do we
purchase real property? I couldn't answer that if somebody asked me
-- I know how I used to do it, but I don't know how you do it.
So if capital improvements need to be made or land needs to be
purchased, where's the money come from, how much lead time, is it a
bond conversation, is it a capital conversation?
I don't know the answers to those, but it seems like we're going
to have to make some capital decisions. So in the orientation, maybe
just a small segment on how do we purchase real property or make
major modifications in facilities? Who pays for a new football
field? Things like that.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: I mean, these are all great. So we will be
glad to address some of this, because this notion of real property, I
just got a recent message about we have an opportunity to purchase
some real property. I mean, it just came up. It was like within the
last few weeks. And do we want to purchase it?
Now, this is a topic that's come up in prior years, but we could
never get to a reasonable place with the owner. But now the owner
has listed the properties for sale. We have talked about even
through the, what do you call it, the condemnation process.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Eminent domain.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Eminent domain, that's right, to take them
over. Now it's on the market. So it's one of those things where
it's been discussed, and we have never executed on that part of it.
So this has to do with Downtown Campus, and do we extend our
presence all the way to Main Street? Not because we are going to do
anything with it presently, but for future boards and future members
of the college, now you have capacity to expand the footprint. Even
though we might not do anything in the next few years or for quite a
while. But it gives us the capability of doing that.
Downtown is becoming probably, I hate it say it like this, but
it's going to become centerpiece, the proximity to the University of
Arizona, proximity to I-10, really makes it an ideal location, right?
Although West Campus is the biggest campus, but our potential to grow
out that Downtown is significant.
Let me go back to this climate piece for a moment. What I talked
to the team about is climate survey is just one way to assess overall
employee satisfaction. It should not be "the" way to do that.
Because from an HR standpoint, there is a number of other measures
that you look at to gauge employee satisfaction.
Because the survey is only going to give you some data but not
complete data, right? So I want us to build a more holistic system
to make that determination. Here is some examples: Turnover. I
know those of you who ran your businesses know that employee turnover
is another important metric in the equation. Our turnover is very
low. So put aside what you hear, if it's this bad, why isn't there
more turnover? That's an important piece.
How much are you putting into professional development of your
employees? Are your wages competitive? Are your benefits
competitive? We are going to develop a more complete way to think
about employee satisfaction, because I think too much of the district
has been focused on the survey. It's like, no. So you're going to
see that. I just don't want us to lose sight of that as a more
comprehensive thing than just a single data point.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Like you said, it's just an example.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Absolutely, right? But your point is well
made on the survey piece, but we need to do a better job of helping
people understand the more 360 perspective on it.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I guess, off the top of my head as we are
talking about -- I mean, the detail was nice and it was interesting
and the ability to kind of really see all the thought and all the
good work that's going into it. Again, just in terms of thinking
about if I would do it all again, there almost maybe needs to be like
an executive summary version of each one of those things, because
there was a lot underneath it.
Just something as simple as these are the top three successes in
this area. These are the top three challenges that we are trying to
work on. Just so we have some idea. Because I was kind of
extrapolating it as we were going along, but I may, just with my own
biases, think certain things are more important or maybe a bigger
challenge than what they actually are. It's helpful to put that in
context.
It was good, because it allowed everybody to speak to the
successes they are having. The way I would extrapolate those may not
be the way they would extrapolate those. I'd be interested to know
what they would pull out as the most important.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Anything else?
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: The number of people that we have met over
the last two or three weeks has been pretty impressive. Sadly, I'm
going to see somebody at a restaurant or in passing, and I might not
remember them.
So I really appreciate when they gave us the organizational chart
of the, I think that was the second session we had, that was super
important. Maybe that's something that, I don't know if that's
already online, but, you know, if we can, you know, not only know who
they are but like where they work so we are walking on the West
Campus, these are the people we might see when we are touring their
center of excellence or whatever.
You know what I'm saying? Thank you.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: So to that point, so this is why we have
these (pointing to badge). I mean, it's partly why we have these,
right? But what they don't do is tell you where the person works.
We might want to think about our next version 2.0 of these ID cards
to help people, because people do move in the district. I think
that's part of the challenge. But doesn't mean we can't update them.
Not only you have the org chart but you have these IDs where it
becomes apparent. We need to get you all IDs as well if we haven't
already done -- it's been ordered? Okay.
I will say when we first brought this online, it was not
overwhelmingly received in a positive way. Now, what some of the
drivers of this was was safety and security, and as you all know, we
have had in this city an unfortunate experience around safety and
security, Pima being a big part of that dynamic.
So some people supported these and some people didn't. But I
think as we move across the time horizon, I think this is going to
grow in significance.
So we know who each other are, right? You can't quickly identify
who is a Pima employee, who is not, and this allows us to do that.
And we are tying this to your ability to enter buildings, so
that's another, because as we have gone through and rekeyed all of
the facilities or in the process of doing that, moving to a more
electronic digital version of that, these become more important to
that process.
Anything I can answer today?
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: All in all, I'm very impressed. I will
leave it at that.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of fantastic
work being done. I mean, clearly. Yeah, I mean, like genuinely when
I started with my brain is sort of to what's next, and I don't mean
like move on from orientation necessarily, but what does the college
need to do next so that we, as a board, are focused sort of forward
into the future and less down and into the organization.
There are things we have to approve and all that that we just
talked about and things we are going to be involved in, but ways we
can spend our time to figure out how to support you and everyone else
and what we need to do to move forward and less time with all the
noise that doesn't necessarily have to come to this level.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: To that point, I don't know if Nic touched
on this or not, but we are working on Vision 2040 now, so there is
going to be that we are now just entering into early phases of that
conversation. We are going to start talking more about how do you
diagnose, when you start thinking of your overall strategy, right,
you talk about the diagnosis component of that, and then developing
some guiding principles that come out of your diagnosed work.
Ultimately setting your immediate strategies or your coherent action
steps you are going to take to start to move you closer in that
direction, and then how do you build an accountability structure
around that.
So that's going to be the next level of work. So I think that's
why, and I appreciate that all of you went to NLDS, because that's an
important part of that 30,000-foot work. If you're able to go to the
conference in the fall, that also helps with that elevation, because
you get to see some of the best practices happening across the
country. That starts to give us ideas.
But it may not help answer that long 2040 question, but it starts
to give you an idea of where we are relative to others and what needs
to be thought of as we go forward.
Your input is critical to that as we shape the overall strategy
of the institution. So we got to where we are now because we did
that master planning work, but we know that that's coming to its
natural life cycle. We need to think about the next phase.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I will say this in my board comments in our
regular meeting too, but I appreciate the opportunity to do that. If
there is one thing that was clear and consistent to me in all of the
-- well, the formal presentations but also the informal conversations
I was having with other trustees that were there, we are ahead of
where a lot of other folks are.
Like there seem to be more or less general alignment on where it
needs to go, but the things that other folks were mentioning in terms
of, well, we wish we could, were things that Pima has already done or
is very nearly going to do, we have already done all the work and the
development on things, I was even more impressed with what you and
the team have done here.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Thank you for that input.
By and large, this is an incredible institution. When I first
arrived here, the bones are good. It needed a focus, and that's what
we brought. Now it's just now we need to sharpen that focus even
more, make the systems clearer to everybody and the processes that
need to be in place to make sure you're in alignment with your
systems and then making sure the systems all connect to each other,
and then what you probably heard was how things are becoming more
integrated.
Because when I first got here, things were so stove-piped.
That's what you probably picked up from these other institutions too,
too much stove-piping happening and not enough integration occurring.
But the integration comes with its challenges, because folks are used
to doing business in their stove pipes. That's not the direction I
have been trying to take this institution in. I don't think that's
sustainable, it's highly inefficient, can't afford it anymore.
But that's going to cause, going to ruffle feathers. Some people
are going to be uncomfortable with that.
That's what I need the board to ultimately come to understand.
We, as a team, we are leading change. That's what it comes down to.
When we are leading change, it's going to be -- if people aren't
complaining, you should be asking me, are you pushing enough?
Because that should elicit response, right? But then the question is
are you being respectful, are you being civil, all that. That is an
important part of that process.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: One thing that I was thinking about when I
think Nic was talking about, 6,000 completers by 2024, so I don't
think we have heard as a board what we are doing to make that happen.
You know, in my mind, I was thinking, well, it's obvious to me.
Let's increase enrollment greatly, right? And then we could have an
opportunity to get closer to those numbers.
I mean, I personally want that to be the solution, but I don't
know if that is the most reasonable way. You know, obviously if we
fix what's not working, the best for students that aren't completing
and retaining and all of those words for continuing on, but that's
one thing that we really haven't heard I don't think anything about
is what we are doing to improve enrollment.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: I think what you're hitting on in part is so
we have this high-level goal. This goal is in alignment with
Achieve60, which is the state has set, and in some ways I don't think
it's a realistic goal, but in order for us to get there we have to
hit this by this point and then sustain that. This is kind of where
this is coming from.
Now, if you step back and say, realistically, given enrollment
patterns, given retention strategies, et cetera, this is a major
stretch goal.
Now, we have things that we are doing that might help with
getting closer. So, for example, there is this notion of reverse
transfer. What that simply means is there is a lot of students who
leave us before they complete their associate's degree, but once they
get to the equivalent of an associate's degree, when they get to the
university, can we reverse-transfer that back to us and we count that
as a completer.
That's some of the work that's going to address this number, and
that's underway. But I think to your point, if you just look at the
demographics, the demographics are not in our favor in this county,
and you heard that even at this NLDS. Enrollments are not healthy
for our country as a whole.
I think that we are probably not going to see the days of, I
don't know what number she showed you, but there was a time when we
were hitting 200,000 enrollments at Pima. We are down probably at
100,000 enrollments now. When I say enrollments, the people who sign
up for credit. Not individual head count but duplicated. We are
probably not going to see that 200,000 number again.
So can we go from 100 to something a little bit above that? Then
can we optimize that by having more individuals complete? I think
that's where a lot of the strategy starts to shift to is around
retention and persistence and completion as opposed to just trying to
bring more numbers through.
You're right. Bring more numbers through, likelihood, you're
going to increase your completers, but I don't think that's going to
work now, just given that enrollment reality.
But can we get closer to this? I'm hoping that we can.
Not to mention, and you know this, that the issues in the high
school, not just high schools, but the whole K12 pipeline is frayed.
You saw it when you were in the classroom, right? A lot of the young
folks coming out who aren't ready for college-level math and not
ready for college-level English. That's not gotten any better.
So that's again another big challenge that we are going to have
to work through. Those of you, you all three were at the breakfast
that last day, that's what the economist was touching on, among other
things.
>> DR. WADE McLEAN: Well, it doesn't help us when a student goes
through a community college in Arizona and then gets ready to
register at one of the, two of the state universities, they say, oh,
by the way, write a $12,000 check. Of course they're not going to
go.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: That's right. Yeah, there is a lot of
moving pieces here.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: I think next steps for me, and I'm glad you
said what you said about -- because I'd love to have some of those
discussions going forward. I mean, because we could sit up here and
say you need to quintuple enrollment in five years. Okay, just make
up whatever number you want, like what do we feel like is a
reasonable trajectory from -- and I don't mean specific to
enrollment. I mean anything.
What are those sort of key quantitative measures we are looking
at, and what do we actually think are realistic goals. Stretch goals
are great, we should have those two. It's hard to evaluate things
against stretch goals, because if you know it's a stretch goal going
into it, if you achieve it, fantastic, you have to have underneath it
the reasonableness to know, okay, we're not here but we're here or
here. I'd love to get a better sense of that.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: To that point, I talked to the team this
morning about coming up with more coherent actions that we can do
right now that is clear what that is. And not this fluffy, oh, we're
going to get to 6,000.
That doesn't tell you anything. But what steps are you actually
going to do that are going to help you move in that line, and
sometimes that step may be, simply, you know what? I've got send
folks to training so they better understand what their role is and
what we are doing.
That's not always comfortable to say that. But sometimes that is
exactly what you have to do, and this speaks to the customer service
component of things, as an example.
>> MR. GREG TAYLOR: The other reason it's helpful, too, at the
end of the day, all of us on the board are elected officials, and
we're accountable to those voters and those constituents, and for us
to be able to not just to get re-elected but for us to be able to
like accurately articulate what's going on, it would be easy for
someone to even watch today and see that 6,000 number, and if we
don't hit that 6,000 number, to go, well, that's a failure, not
understand the full context of what's going on.
So the more, at least for me, that I can understand what's the
realistic trajectory and then articulate that at least to people in
District 4, that's helpful to tell the right story.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: But I think, and I'm glad we are having
this, this is how we might think about how we set up study sessions.
It's different than us bringing you a bunch of information. But
maybe they are strategy conversations, and we just set some of those
key points and then we have this kind of conversation.
That's different than how our study sessions have been set up in
the past. It's been more about, here, let me just tell you about
what we are doing.
Doesn't sound like this board constructed now wants to be doing.
You don't want to just hear what we are doing. You want to be part
of having dialogues how you, as a board, can help support addressing
the challenges and the opportunities that are in front of us.
I really appreciate that. I think that goes to the questions you
are all raising. So what's our role? I really would like to see
that's what your role is is really that higher-level set of
conversations. That means getting out of the weeds.
That's a hard thing to pull away from, because people kind of
want to pull you back into the weeds. I don't mean me, but you're
going to get the phone calls, whether it's internal or people outside
of the college.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: Thank you very much. I'm going to call
this meeting finished.
>> DR. LEE LAMBERT: Thank you.
>> MS. THERESA RIEL: I really appreciate you guys.
(Adjournment.)
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