10. Public Disclosure
Description
Capital Community College publications serve as recruiting and informational tools to describe the College and its programs, courses, and activities. The publications are addressed to prospective and current students, staff and faculty, and to the general public.
The College makes every effort to produce effective, clear, and concise public documents, and the Department of Marketing and Public Relations oversees, edits, and coordinates the distribution of most publications. The College Catalog (Exhibit 10.1), Student Handbook (Exhibit 10.2), and course schedule booklets (Exhibit 10.3) provide the information students need to make informed decisions about attending the College. The Director of Marketing and Public Relations ensures that this information is also available on the college website (Exhibit 10.4). Each of these documents includes contact information for relevant individuals, departments, and college offices. Printed publications are prominently on display and available throughout the College in locations frequented by students and potential students. They are also available online or by request from the pertinent departments.
Print and online publications are part of a communication network that conveys a wide variety of publications in response to many needs. In particular, the Welcome Center Desk provides a wealth of information about the College and connects students with faculty, staff, academic support services and programs. Inquiries about the College, often initiated by phone and face-to-face interactions, may also be posed by mail, email, or online forms.
All aspects of campus life, opportunities and resources, are documented in the College’s various print and electronic publications. The key document is the College Catalog, which supports the College’s mission by providing information on various degree, certificate, and career paths. It details support services operating within an environment committed to learning and teaching and to the development of self-confidence and critical thinking skills. All institutional publications, print and electronic, are consistent with catalog content and portray the conditions and obligations of the institution. They also specify the opportunities and responsibilities of the students.
The catalog, which displays the College Mission on page two, describes academic programs and services, goals for student education, and detailed learning outcomes for academic programs. In addition, the catalogaddresses academic policies and procedures, including transfers and withdrawals, admission and attendance requirements, expenses and refund policies, and rules pertaining to student conduct. Many of these are reinforced or further detailed in the Student Handbook. The final pages of the College Catalog list the names of the current members of the Board of Governors for Higher Education, the Board of Trustees for Community-Technical Colleges, the Capital Community College Foundation and Advisory Council, and the names and credentials of full time faculty, staff, and administration.
he College’s printed schedules (Exhibit 10.3) reflect the interaction of many groups including department and division chairs, the Academic Dean’s Office, the Registrar’s Office, and the Public Relations Office. Prior to publication each area reviews the information for accuracy. Some Continuing Education courses are taught off-site and some classes require internships or clinical rotations. Such satellite activity is noted in course schedule bookseach semester. Courses not offered within a three-year period are dropped from the catalog.
The college website reproduces and supplements much of the information described above. It provides further details about total cost of tuition and fees per semester, the number of credit hours necessary to complete each program, and details of financial aid opportunities. The Financial Aid Services webpage (Exhibit 10.5)links to FAFSA on the Web, loan calculators, and scholarship search engines, as well as a schedule of in-house financial aid workshops in both English and Spanish, a financial aid video presentation, and a FAQ page. The Institutional Assessment Portfolio on the College website includes documents and data related to planning and assessment.
Key data are available online. The Office of Institutional Research maintains a fact sheet (Exhibit 10.6) on the size and characteristics of the student body posted on the College website. The Board of Trustees System Office website (Exhibit 10.7) publishes information on student graduation and retention rates for the statewide community college system, and this includes graduation and transfer rates for the individual community colleges. A link to this information is provided (“Student Right to Know”) under the “Current Students” link from the College website (Exhibit 10.4a). Additionally the System Office 2005 Community Technical College Report documents licensure examination and certification pass rates; employment rates of occupational program graduates; rates of graduation, retention and transfer; and percentages of students achieving their goals (Exhibit 10.7).
College financial statements are audited on a systemwide basis. As this is information of the Connecticut Community Colleges system, the statements are on the system website (Exhibit 10.8). The College’s most recent audited financial statement is available in the Business Office from the Director of Finance.
isted in the College Catalog (online as well as print versions) are the institution’s statements about its current accredited status as well as national accreditation informationfor the Nursing, EMT-Paramedic, Radiologic Technology, Physical Therapist Assistant, Medical Assisting, and Early Childhood Education Laboratory School Programs. Numerous institutional, divisional, and departmental memberships in higher education professional organizations are listed here also.
Appraisal
The College, through its catalog and related print and online publications, effectively describes the institution’s mission, academic policies and procedures. It details programs and courses, fees, student services, academic responsibilities, and benefits of attendance at the institution. It clearly defines the obligations of both students and the institution and provides sufficient information enabling students and prospective students to make informed choices about their education. Students have access to multiple sources of information from many departments, particularly Counseling, Enrollment Services, Continuing Education, the Academic Support Center, and the Welcome Center. Further, as part of the College’s Achieving the Dream initiative, a special communications team has produced streaming video presenting the successes of individual students and has posted the video prominently on the college website.
Among the College’s strengths are the numerous articulation agreements with local four-year institutions. Through the Department of Marketing and Public Relations, the College is creating a brochure for the new Guaranteed Admissions Program with the University of Connecticut, and a flyer is currently available in the Welcome Center and in the counseling office (Exhibit 10.9). These publications describe the various transfer requirements and offer contact information. However, in the Catalog, the complexity of detail concerning transfer has posed a challenge for some students.
In recent years, many offices have interacted in collecting, reviewing, and compiling information for both the catalog and each semester’s course schedule book. This process has involved handwritten, difficult-to-decipher changes. The Director of Marketing and Public Relations has been responsible for the coordination and compilation of the final product. This enormous task has required the approval of appropriate faculty, staff, department chairs and deans to ensure that the content of the college’s print and electronic publications is accurate and up to date. Errors have been inevitable, and the process needs restructuring.
For the design and maintenance of the college website, during most of the past ten years the College relied on a faculty member who served as webmaster using released time. However, the complexity of website management has increased in recent years, and the faculty member who served in that capacity retired in 2004. The College has contracted with a part-time temporary web designer to revise the website and to develop a process for reviewing and updating web information.
A two-year vacancy in the position of Director of Institutional Research has hindered data collection and the flow of information within and about the College. Published information on student body characteristics is dated. Current data on age and ethnicity, available from the Interim Research Associate, has not regularly been published either online or in printed form. These and other information gaps have impeded assessment and institutional effectiveness activities as well as timely response to public inquiries.
Student learning assessment activities are detailed on the Student Learning Assessment Implementation Team webpage (Exhibit 10.10). Other information on student success is collected more informally. Licensure examination rates, retention rates, and graduation rates for the twelve Connecticut community colleges are published on the systemwide website as noted above, and rates of graduation and retention have been provided by the Interim Research Associate. However, unless department chairs request specific data, no regular campus-based reports of student success measures have been generated and published. Likewise, faculty achievements, sabbaticals, and other items of interest have gone unreported. The College has recently hired a Director of Institutional Research to manage the compilation and use of such information. The College continues to need a webmaster to facilitate the communication of data.
Projection
The College is currently making several improvements in publications addressed to students. The part-time webmaster has undertaken a total web redesign including an index to aid in navigating the college website, and he has supervised a team over the summer of 2006 to establish the key webpages. The College has committed additional resources toward updating the website using data-driven technology that will make information easier to access in a more attractive format that invites interactive use and exploration. The ongoing effort will be monitored by a collaborating work group.
College management recognizes the need for a permanent full-time webmaster and will be ready to hire one when funds become available. Meanwhile, the College has purchased an electronic plasma signage system to be installed on every floor. This system will provide current information on college events, news, and opportunities. The system will be initiated in the fall of 2006.
To address transfer articulation confusions in the catalog, department chairs have outlined the articulation agreements for specific programs, and the 2006-2007 College Catalog will include the major points of the key agreements along with contact information for relevant advisors who can offer further detail. In addition, the Counseling Department has informally designated one counselor to specialize in the needs of students who wish to transfer.
For the 2006-2007 catalog, the Academic Dean’s Office is coordinating revisions. The Department of Marketing and Public Relations has provided electronic versions of the current catalog for distribution to relevant departments, and future revisions will be made electronically at the department level before they are returned to the coordinating offices for fact checking, editing and proofreading. This flow will clarify the error-checking process.
The College’s heavy dependence on print catalogs will be alleviated by progress toward a long-term goal of organizing information primarily within an electronic catalog while maintaining a smaller back-up of the print version. The catalog will be streamlined, with non-academic information published in a separate booklet. In addition to the archived printed copies, catalogs will be electronically archived and available online to students and former students. The Director of Marketing and Public Relations now serves on the Strategic Planning Committee to ensure that such communication planning and outcomes are included in college’s strategic goals.
The self-study process has stimulated fuller focus on the need for student success data. The College has recently appointed a Director of Institutional Research who will be assigned the tasks of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. The Director of Institutional Research will enhance institutional effectiveness by providing information management expertise for strategic planning and evaluation. The new director will organize annual information on student body characteristics, demographics and various other measures of student success and will publish them in a unified form available in print and via the college website.
Exhibits
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