Bridging the Faculty-Staff Divide through an Epistemic Community

International relations theory defines an epistemic community as a transnational network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define and address the problems they face. These “scientists without borders” may be able to produce outcomes not easily realizable for national leaders operating in a state-specific political environment. Moreover, by redefining the boundaries of the social group, the network of thought partners gain a different psycho-social perspective that may open new opportunities for problem solving. For example, during the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists forged epistemic communities in the area of arms control in an effort to mitigate the adversarial relations between the governments of the two nations.

To extend a metaphor to higher education, the faculty community and the staff community at an institution can sometimes feel like two distinct nations. Traditionally, each community tends to have their own rules and their own leadership. Each community tends to draw a boundary circumscribed by the classroom, whether inside or out. The mission of the faculty tribe is student learning. The mission of the staff tribe is student persistence/completion. In the worst of times, the international relations between the faculty community and the staff community is perceived as a zero-sum game.

At my institution, I co-chair our Persistence and Completion Committee. From the outset, the committee included “transnational” actors from across the faculty and staff communities. Forming an epistemic community is not as easy as seating faculty and staff members at the same table, however. An epistemic community requires a common point of knowledge expertise. It requires framing an issue in such a way that diverse perspectives are focused on a shared goal. Through open and honest conversations over the period of our first 15 months as a committee, we came to construct a narrative of student success in which student learning, persistence and completion are interdependent. A student must persist to continue learning. A mastery of learning is completion. Student learning, persistence and completion happens inside and outside of the classroom. Though our tribal activities may specific, our global destiny is shared.  We became a trans-institutional network of knowledge-based experts who help decision-makers to define and address student success.

Like most human enterprises, interpersonal relationships were at the heart of our success in bridging the faculty-staff divide. We started with a small group of people from many different parts of the college and got to know each other. We each brought our perspective to challenging discussions. We built mutual trust and appreciation. We struggled together to create a wider and more inclusive frame of reference. And now the members of our epistemic community are well-positioned to return to their respective tribe and share our narrative of student success.

Cultural change at the institutional level is incremental. Not everyone will be swayed by our idealism of a common pool. But by bringing together a diversity of individuals to provide a trans-institutional reframing of our various roles in a shared endeavor, we move toward greater collaboration and more porous boundaries.

The Relationship between Access and Success

The buzz around community colleges as of late is the shift from an access mission to a completion mission. A number of books and articles have put forth the thesis that accessing college without completing college may well leave the student and society (e.g. taxpayers) worse off than if the student never attended college in the first place. Common arguments in support of this completion over access thesis include the abysmal completion rates of students enrolled in remedial coursework and the ethical challenges of allowing students to access Federal Student Aid (including loans) when we know that their statistical likelihood of completion is extremely low.

I extend my kudos to any critical thinker that makes a legitimate and honest effort to challenge the long-standing conventions and norms of any institution. Whether the completion over access thesis is right or wrong, it certainly problematizes the status quo in community colleges. For that reason, I am all ears.

My primary concern with the completion over access thesis is that it expediently papers over the many socio-economic structures that deter the academic preparation of our most vulnerable student populations (low-income, first-generation, minority, immigrants, et cetera). It places the onus of success or failure squarely on the shoulders of the particular student in a particular place at a particular time as he or she prepares to enter college. But what have we as a community and society done to support the academic preparation of this student in the previous 18+ years? Probably not enough.

My institution seeks the tenuous balance that supports both access and success. We have placed certain restrictions on access to remedial coursework and student loans while attempting to strengthen pre-collegiate partnerships and summer bridge experiences. We have moved forward on using learning analytics to prioritize resources toward students in the "murky middle" that stand to benefit most from the additional support. We have worked diligently to provide the best possible institutional environment for the students that come to our doors while accepting that many student barriers are beyond our control. All in all, it is a game of priorities and compromises.

At the end of the day, we all must answer the normative question for ourselves: what is gained and what is lost when completion outweighs access? What is student success?

The Promise and Peril of Analytics

Nuclear power. Cloning. Social media. Space mining. Unchartered waters of  social-scientific innovation often come heralded with great promise, just as the unknown depths often hide potential peril. It seems the evolutionary heart of our species is to learn, to grow, and to explore - to accept the risk of peril in order to gain the opportunity of promise. Some ships sink, others land on new shores. So it goes.

And so it goes with analytics in higher education (see Analytics 101). There is great promise and great peril in these waters. As captains of these high seas, we must hew true to our internal compass while balancing boldness with humility.

“My concern about using data in higher education has to do with the loss of intellectual curiosity. As we meet budgets and metrics for four-year graduation rates, I’m afraid we’ll optimize and track students and become training programs rather than fertile grounds of investigation and exploration," cautions Marc Hoit, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology at North Carolina State University.

If an analytics tool makes it very clear that a student has a very low probability of succeeding in higher level math courses yet it is that student's unwavering dream to become an Engineer, what is the responsible action of faculty and staff at an open access community college?

The promise of analytics: proactive data-based needs assessments that are timely and granular; a focus on data variables of greatest impact within complicated multivariable reality; expanding reach of faculty and staff through increased efficiencies in needs assessment; organizational decisions attuned to the needs of students; assessment of student deficits for intervention as well as student strengths for development; greater persistence and completion rates of students; and personalized learning experiences.

The peril of analytics: limiting access in the name of success; treating students as data points to optimize within organizational objectives; self-fulling prophesy of statistical prediction; losing touch with the art of teaching and advising students; compounding errors within complicated data sets/algorithms; and limiting the freedom and self-discovery of higher education.

The Persistence and Completion Committee at CCD will be facilitating conversations around the campus in order to draw out the values and principles to guide implementation of analytics tools at the college. One positive starting point to these conversations is The Asilomar Convention for Learning Research in Higher Education.

 How can we leverage the promise of analytics in higher education while remaining clear-eyed about the perils?

Analytics 101

The future of higher education is analytics, and the future is now.

The analytics approach uses student data to proactively assess student needs, thereby producing actionable intelligence. Contrast analytics with the more traditional paradigm of reporting. In the latter, an organization uses data to identify results, such as the percentage of students that graduated within three years. In the analytics approach, on the other hand, an organization uses data to discern the opportunities and challenges facing a particular student at a particular time.

Numerous programs around CCD are already utilizing analytics to increase student success and enhance organizational efficiency (whether said programs realize it or not!). For example, the TRIO Student Support Services (SSS) program quantifies ten data markers to create a persistence score that feeds into a triage model of advising. TRIO SSS is also piloting a course predictor analytic that utilizes a student's previous academic performance in specific courses to discern the relative challenge of a particular course or course set in the upcoming semester.

"Know where to find information and how to use it; that is the key to success," notes a data wonk's proverb often attributed to Albert Einstein.

It is certain that higher education is swimming in an Olympic-sized pool of data. We can run report after report after report about demographics, success rates, enrollment, and much more. The siren call of analytics is search these data for variables with high explanatory and predictive power, as deciphered by contemporary social science and statistical methodologies. These data variables shine light on the path to increased student success and organizational efficiency.

Guided by data and research experts at the Higher Learning Commission, the Persistence and Completion Committee (PCC) at CCD is diligently swimming through that Olympic-sized pool of data in search of the most impactful variables of student success. Toward this end, the PCC is carrying out a social scientific inquiry using historical data from Institutional Research; student surveys of new, exiting, and graduating students; a meta-analysis of program level data from across the institution; and a qualitative analysis of anecdotal data accrued through the wisdom and experience of faculty and staff practitioners.

Identifying the impactful data variables at CCD is but the first step. Future directions include determining and implementing the information technology solutions to aggregate the data variables and process the statistical algorithms required by multivariate analyses. Then it will be onto creating intuitive and accessible analytics tools for implementation by faculty and staff practitioners.

The process will be both easier and more difficult than it sounds. Much like the game of chess, it is not that difficult to get down the basics, but the perfection of the craft will take much experimentation and learning as an institution.

The future of higher education is analytics, and the future is now.

Commencement and Discontent

I am a commencement banner assistant. On that wonderful evening in May, I march in with the graduates of Community College of Denver. The energy is electric! I hear stories of success from the students. I give high fives to grandmas in the front row as we proceed into the arena. I cheer my lungs out when TRIO graduates walk across the stage. It is hard to be anything but beaming!

Yet, despite my joy, I cannot escape the discontent. It subtly yet darkly seeps into the perimeter of my vision. The empty space surrounding the graduates manifests the void, the 85% of students that start at Community College of Denver yet fail to reach this penultimate moment. Where are they, if not here tonight?

I know that student success takes multiple shapes and forms, and graduation is not the sole marker. Students swirl through higher education as their life ebbs and flows. There are things both within and outside of the control of the student and the institution.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

I know the minimal graduation rates are not due to lack of effort on behalf of our students, faculty, and staff. I witness many a determined student putting in long hours at school only to work the night shift. I observe faculty bending over backwards to facilitate student learning. And I see staff deploying expansive and intentional support programs.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

I know that CCD opens doors and takes risks on students even when the road is long and the hill steep. I am wary of completion strategies that limit access. I believe that any time spent in higher education, even if incomplete, benefits the student and society.

Yet, the void stirs indignation.

Therefore, it is time to take our effort to the next level of sophistication.The mission of the Persistence and Completion Committee (PCC) is to assesses CCD-specific data to drive persistence and completion strategies while fostering a collaborative institutional culture and advocating more universally for improved measures of student success.

The PCC is a cross-functional team with a robust five year plan and the guidance of data mentors at the Higher Learning Commission. We are using institutional data, a longitudinal study, program and department level data, and student surveys to identify the key markers of success and most significant barriers to completion.

Our major deliverables include three meta-analysis reports, learning analytics tools, guided college-wide conversations, and publication of findings and successes to a wider audience.

More to come. For our students!