The Class Scheduling Grid Gets a Makeover

I greatly appreciate the efforts of the taskforce chaired by Pamela Call, and the timely turnaround of recommendations for improving the scheduling grid, first developed in 2018. They were charged with assessing the viability of the current scheduling grid, determining whether it is still serving its purpose, or whether changes need to be made. I noted that three items must be retained: 1) uniform start times; 2) a grid that stretches Monday - Saturday; and 3) a Common Time. The task force considered 1) changing the Common Time; 2) scheduling over the dinner hour; and 3) the balancing of day and evening classes.

Using multiple methods to collect data from faculty, staff, and students, the taskforce made the following recommendations, currently under consideration by the Provost’s Office:

• Keep overall changes to a minimum. Most of the current grid appears to work well for many stakeholders and survey respondents are mostly satisfied with the grid. Maintain the current class times from morning until 4:50pm.
• Eliminate the “dinner hour” restriction to improve scheduling options for students and to make better use of existing time. After the 4:50pm end time, classes continue being scheduled accordingly. This means the grid would add the following class time slots in the following order: 5:00 – 6:20pm, 6:30 – 7:50pm, and 8:00 – 9:20pm.
• Improve CEB utilization in the daytime. The Registrar’s office will develop an attribute that will allow schedulers to denote classes to be held in CEB.
• SON found a solution to the 3-hour time gaps between classes Classes are not required to end at the time specified on the grid, as long as they start at the designated time.

The most popular options for a new Common Time per the survey are as follows:

• Tuesdays, 2:00 – 3:20pm
• No exemptions necessary for SON
• Tuesdays, 3:30 – 4:50pm
• No exemptions necessary for SON
• Mondays, 12:30 – 1:50pm

The following faculty and staff created and endorse these recommendations:

• Pam Call, Distinguished Lecturer, SoN (Chair of Task Force)
• Susan Growe, Assistant Professor, SoN
• Adelfa Sullivan, Registrar, Office of the Registrar
• Krystal-Lynn Martinez, Specialist, Office of Registrar
• Sandip Thanki, Associate Vice Provost, Institutional Effectiveness
• Angel Ball, Program Director, Speech Language Pathology
• Christine Beaudry, Faculty Senate Chair, SoE
• Jonathan Dunning, Associate Dean, LASB
• Lance Hignite, Department Chair, LASB
• Alex Kunkle, Director, Academic Advising Center

Committee member Jonathan Dunning provided major contributions in developing, distributing, and summarizing the survey results. LaTricia Perry and Jesse Pool also contributed to discussions and aided in the development of these recommendations. 

Accreditation Update

I know that many of you have worked hard to contain your excitement about the outcome of our mid-cycle accreditation visit – as evidenced by the fact that almost everyone has managed to not ask me about it – but your long, suspenseful journey has come to an end: The formal peer-evaluation report from our accrediting body landed on our virtual desks shortly after our previous newsletter update. The best way to get the full lowdown on this formative review is to take a gander at the report itself, but here are some of the highlights:

• The evaluators complimented many aspects of our institution, including our significant increases in graduation rates, “enviable” first-year retention rates, strong data infrastructure that supports data-informed decision-making, and faculty compliance with program assessment efforts.
• The evaluators also praised our self-evaluation report (even requesting to share it as an exemplar with their own leadership!), the availability of faculty, staff, and campus leaders for “open and productive” conversations, and clear communication and planning for the visit (a big shout out to Gwen Sharp and Sita Sales for so much of this).
• True to the main purpose of this visit, there also were several suggestions for improvement as we approach our mission fulfillment evaluation in 2026:
• We need to incorporate more secondary indicators of mission fulfillment beyond the big, over-arching “key indicators” presented in our strategic plan.
• We should place increased emphasis on student success and persistence beyond the first year, which tails off before graduation, and shift additional focus to student populations other than first-time, full-time students that dominate IPEDs headlines.
• For student learning outcomes assessment, we must do more to demonstrate proficiency (or better) in the achievement of learning outcomes among NSC seniors, and we need to develop and implement a plan for assessing the new core curriculum.
• The evaluators also encouraged us to continue our efforts to transition away from being a primarily commuter school, and to establish and tell our story of how we promote student success.

Needless to say, we will be developing plans with relevant stakeholders to address these and other suggestions in the coming months.  

Student Persistence Observations

Sandip Thanki and I recently did a deep dive into student attrition in the wake of the pandemic. The overall persistence of all students has dropped slightly from fall 2021 to fall 2022 – from 74% to 73% – but a steeper decline is observed among new students who are not in the first-time, full-time category (from 65 to 59% in the past year alone). Unfortunately, the increase in attrition was particularly high among new:

• First-generation students
• Black and Hispanic students
• Pell eligible students
• Students who support dependents (a relatively small sample, but also the largest increase in attrition coming through the pandemic)

Again, these results do not extend to other continuing students, or to new first-time, full-time students, but it nevertheless gives us an area to work on as we continue to promote better outcomes for our students. Specific “buffering” factors have already emerged – such as the 12% increase in retention for new students who saw an academic advisor – and we will continue to explore other efforts that could help this population of students.