Kaua‘i community college

Descriptive Summary

As a direct result of previous ACCJC recommendations, the college has initiated a comprehensive five-year cycle of program review (KCC Policy Guideline KCCM 1-6, dated October 1, 2004, and Program Reviews). All programs are required to engage in an extensive self-directed review of all aspects of the program once in each cycle and to formulate action plans to address shortfalls and to improve effectiveness and student learning on an annual basis (Annual Program Review Updates or APRUs). The reviews follow a specified format that requires the use and interpretation of both qualitative and quantitative data, and the adoption of program-specific Student Learning Outcomes that reflect those of the college as a whole. The process is scheduled, organized, and overseen by the Program Review Committee, currently headed by the Assistant Dean of Instruction. Programs with advisory committees, which include community and student representatives, receive and incorporate feedback on the program into the APRUs. Furthermore, the documents are subjected to a peer review process in which representatives from other programs evaluate the program’s self-assessment, goals, and action plans, make objective suggestions for improvements, and then return the document to the program in question for revision. Thus, the program review process becomes an ongoing cycle of continuous self-assessment and planning.

Ultimately, the College Council makes budgetary, staffing, and programming recommendations to the chancellor based on these ongoing program reviews. Programs and committees are held accountable and responsible for gathering, interpreting, and presenting appropriate data to support budget requests and recommendations made to the council.

Self Evaluation

The college currently meets the standard, although further improvement is desirable. Results from a survey conducted specifically for this Self Study Report indicate that 58 percent of faculty, staff, and administration agree or strongly agree that the program review process has been useful. Only 10 percent disagree or strongly disagree. Clearly, the majority of the college’s constituents understand and embrace the notion of ongoing planning. However, the same survey indicates that only 26 percent of the college’s constituents feel that the college effectively uses program review analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data to allocate its resources to fulfill its plans, and a significant number of respondents (48 percent) indicated a neutral stance on the issue. This considerable neutral response may imply that many members of the college community feel it is too early in the process to evaluate its effectiveness, or it may be the result of a faulty or ambiguous survey, or a lack of clarity as to the survey’s purpose and audience (Self Study Survey, Standard I).

Institutional assessment data are available to all college constituents through the Office of the Assistant Dean of Instruction, and this data is supplemented by the posting of all program review and related documents on the college’s CampusDocs section of its secure server. Thirty percent of respondents to the Self Study Survey indicate that they agree or strongly agree that the college is effective in publicizing its assessment data, and 40 percent indicate a neutral opinion. The same survey indicates that only 30 percent of the respondents feel that institutional data and research is easily accessible and user-friendly, while 35 percent disagree or strongly disagree. At the same time, only 31 percent agree or strongly agree that college-related communication on campus is effective—clear, understood, widely available, and current. Thirty-five percent disagree or strongly disagree.

The duties of faculty and staff members are defined by union contracts. The governance procedures of the college further define specific roles of faculty, including involvement in the program review process. All campus units are required to do periodic program reviews, which are used in the planning process. This process includes faculty and staff input on the College Council, as well as the Faculty Senate and its sub-committees, including the Curriculum Committee, Building and Grounds Committee, and Budget Committee (Faculty Senate Charter).

All staff and faculty members are required to participate in program review and institutional self study activities, and an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration is evident in these committee, sub-committee, and program meetings. In addition, all faculty and staff are directly involved in institutional efforts to develop SLOs and program plans—both institutional efforts to improve student learning and achieve the college’s goals (Exhibit I-22: Workshops). While it may be too early to tell whether this collaborative effort will result in actual institutional improvement, a student-centered atmosphere is now prevalent, and all staff and faculty are aware of the importance of participation in governance processes, self study, and program reviews.
The college makes a concerted effort to schedule courses to best meet student needs and availability. The new scheduling process provides a means by which career programs are able to request specific classes at specific times that suit their students’ needs, and all divisions make decisions concerning which courses to offer and what times to offer them based upon past enrollment patterns and estimated student demand (Scheduling Process and Timetable). Programs try to ensure that courses that are frequently taken by the same students are not offered simultaneously, and the Multi-Year Plan of Offerings (MYPO) allows counselors and students to plan their entire course schedule for two-year degrees with a clear sense of what courses and options will be available in which semesters.
The campus' move towards using a new scheduling process and the MYPO has clearly enabled programs to ensure that course offerings are meeting student needs and to ensure that all constituents are well-informed of scheduling decisions and plans. However, other aspects of internal communication at the college continue to be problematic. Although email, UH news bulletins, paper mailings/handouts, CampusDocs, the UH Portal System, biannual convocations, and regular division meetings that include reports from committee members are currently in place to facilitate internal communication, the recent Self Study Survey Results mentioned indicate that other means are needed to ensure that important information is disseminated in a timely and efficient manner. This is particularly true for data regarding the college’s use of program review information to allocate its resources, as the survey seems to suggest that faculty members do not yet feel entirely comfortable with the new data-driven process. The college needs to consider means to improve its internal communication processes to be more user-friendly. At the same time, constituents need to become more comfortable with obtaining and providing appropriate data to support requests made at the division and program levels. This consideration may be best facilitated through a survey of faculty and staff conducted by an ad-hoc communications committee regarding needed training that will, in turn, make recommendations to the appropriate college bodies. Some professional development initiatives in the areas of data selection and presentation would be appropriate and useful to faculty and staff.
In conjunction with improving internal communication, the services of the college’s newly-hired Institutional Researcher will be indispensable for the necessary interpretation and re-presentation of statistical data in a user-friendly format which will be easily understandable to faculty and staff. This data will then need to be distributed to constituents in an efficient and timely manner—a logistical consideration which will be best addressed by the Institutional Researcher in conjunction with a communications committee.
Planning Agenda

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  The college needs to consider means to improve its internal communication processes to be more user-friendly. This might be accomplished with an ad-hoc communications committee.
  

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  Constituents need to become more comfortable with obtaining and providing appropriate data to support requests made at the division and program levels. This could be done through previously recommended professional development initiatives.
  

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  As previously recommended, the Institutional Researcher should assist in data interpretation and dissemination.
  

I.B.4. The institution provides evidence that the planning process is broad-based, offers opportunities for input by appropriate constituencies, allocates necessary resources, and leads to improvement of institutional effectiveness.