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A community college sponsored by Niagara County

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NIAGARA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

STRATEGIC PLAN

2019-2022
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Academic Excellence

Goal: The College will provide flexible teaching and learning environments based upon best practices offering academic programs leading to degrees, certificates, and other credentials that will provide meaningful opportunities for transfer, employment, and personal enrichment.

  • Adopt innovative teaching methods and technology to enhance student learning.
    1. Research, fund, and implement tools (examples: curriculum mapping and assessment tracking software) to collect, organize, and use assessment data to improve instruction. (SJ-Instruct)
    2. Create a system for faculty to analyze and to reflect on assessment data and then use those results to improve pedagogy.
    3. Provide learning environments that are technologically enhanced and evidence-based.
    4. Market Z Courses (those with zero-cost course materials) and LC Courses (low cost course materials) or Z and LC Degrees (degree programs in which all courses have Open Educational Resources (OER) course materials—free resources or options under $50 per course).
    5. Develop a clearly defined and comprehensive technology and equipment replacement cycle and plan/budget for non-IT equipment to account for rapid and increasing technological growth and the inability to repair or to get parts for aging equipment.
    6. Develop an equipment repair/maintenance budget and plan for unforeseen situations where technology or equipment fails or breaks down.
  • Assess remedial placement practices and instructional approaches.
    1. Provide necessary academic support while providing students the opportunity to earn credits toward graduation requirements. (ACWP)
  • Provide innovative instructional activities that prepare students for transfer or employment.
    1. Expand and support applied learning opportunities (including internships, field study, service learning, community service, civic engagement activities, and other program and course requirements).
    2. Provide instructional innovation mini-grants through the Foundation and other sources (see related objective under ensuring professional development below).
    3. Spotlight innovative teaching as a regular periodic feature in SUNY Niagara Today.
    4. Encourage undergraduate scholarship and other advanced academic pursuits by supporting out-of-class academic endeavors, providing consistent budgeted resources for student conference and meeting participation, sponsoring undergraduate research opportunities, and specifically marketing the honors opportunities for students.
  • Create and maintain educational degree programs that respond to and satisfy diverse needs.
    1. Develop/Modify online courses and degree programs to respond to student needs.
    2. Enhance opportunities for and improve processes to award credit for prior learning.
    3. Improve the master schedule of course offerings continuously.
    4. Increase globalization of the College. (AMP)
    5. Reconstitute the Curricula of the Future Committee, with particular emphasis on new programs that will support STEM and other critical initiatives.
  • Ensure that the faculty, staff, and administration are diverse, prepared well, continuously professionally developed, adequately supported, and appropriately organized to support all programs. (Embedded Diversity and Inclusion Objective).
    1. Utilize the PRODiG program of SUNY to diversify the faculty. (Embedded Diversity and Inclusion Objective).
    2. Adopt a formal mentoring program for all new full- and part-time faculty.
    3. Re-establish and implement a college-wide classroom and online teaching observation cycle for all full- and part-time faculty.
    4. Align staffing of full-time teaching faculty to meet programmatic needs.
    5. Explore expansion of the mission of the Foundation with the Foundation Board to include professional development and innovation grants (see related objective under innovative instruction).
    1. Focus on creating contractual training and professional development requirements for all full- and part-time employees.
    2. Assess the division structure and other aspects of the academic administrative structure for any necessary realignments.
    3. Support interdisciplinary exchanges between faculty in and out of the classroom to model dialogue, partnership, collaboration, and team-building for students and the community. In particular, faculty should work together on interdisciplinary approaches to coursework.
  1. Continually assess and evaluate courses and programs to ensure relevance, compliance, and student success.
    1. Hire a designated person to oversee all institutional assessment processes and to maintain data and artifact collections in accordance with accreditation and compliance standards as well as to provide guidance to faculty, staff, and administrators who wish to use assessment to improve instruction and college processes, procedures, and services.
    2. Improve systematic measurement and documentation of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), including comprehensive curriculum mapping and artifact retention including evidence that assessment results were used to improve student learning.
    3. Investigate an SUNY Niagara General Education mission statement and prepare for the upcoming changes in the SUNY General Education program.
    4. Improve conversion, retention, and graduation rates of focused underrepresented student demographics so those rates will be comparable to the student population enrollment, retention, and graduation rates overall. (D&I) (Embedded Diversity and Inclusion Objective)
    5. Facilitate concrete strategies for greater engagement and success among underserved students through curriculum development and assessment. (D&I) (Embedded Diversity and Inclusion Objective)
    6. Establish a course refresh schedule (including a peer review and course observation on a three-year cycle) for each online course to ensure that all courses stay up-to-date with the evolving technology of online learning, current accessibility practices, and best practices in online pedagogy and course design.
    7. Offer credit and non-credit programs that are viable and respond to the needs of the economy. (AMP)
    8. Monitor consistently the completion rates of courses, programs, and transfers to facilitate student success using Argos reports.
    9. Create a central repository of currently available data showing outcomes of transfer, employment, salary attained, and other post-graduation data and consider additional tracking means for data collection to fill gaps in the current records.
  2. Provide classroom and other facilities that are structured and equipped to optimize teaching and learning.
    1. Develop a phased capital plan to fund, renovate, and/or construct new academic spaces for STEM, Horticulture (Multidisciplinary Controlled Environment Agriculture Center), Athletics, and Welding/other technical and vocational education. (FMP)
    2. Develop an all-encompassing capital campaign to fund execution of the capital master plan.
  3. Provide effective library facilities, staff, and resources to support the academic programs and faculty.
    1. Include library services and instruction in the College’s integrated retention plan
    2. Assess the library using LibQual and implement relevant findings of the assessment.
  4. Improve student orientation.
    1. Re-integrate academic orientation into the pre-semester new student/transfer student orientations.
    2. Re-design the orientation platform to a digital format in order to provide consistent content to primary and secondary market students.
    3. Improve student engagement efforts to include academic and student services.

Abbreviation Key:

AcronymDefinition
ACWPAcademic Work Plan
AMPAcademic Master Plan
D&IDiversity and Inclusion Plane
FMPFacilities Master Plan
HRWPHuman Resources Work Plan
SJ-AdmStudent Journey Admissions
SJ-ExtraStudent Journey Extracurricular
SJ-InstructStudent Journey Instruction
SJ-PayStudent Journey Payment
SJ-PostStudent Journey Post-Graduation
SJ-RecruitStudent Journey Recruitment
SJ-RegStudent Journey Registration
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