NTSW: Overcoming the Turbulent Period of COVID-19 Through CCRI Student Support

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With Transfer being one of the most understudied yet most frequently occuring phenomena in higher education, it is important to recognize the functions at play involving societal inequities that continually contribute to adversities transfer students face. Considering transfer students already deal with intense adjustments depending on the institutions they come from (i.e. new requirements, new social communities, and completely readjusting their own approach to participation in contrasting cultural even linguistic circumstances), providing students with adequate connections, staffing support, and guidance becomes a much-needed tool in their tool kit for success.

Attending to student needs, overall, has taken a massive shift since the pandemic. Being a transfer student during this time poses a unique challenge of navigating two big transitions as they adapt to a new institution. One is the online learning environment and adjusting to regulations and rules that continue to change, and one is related to returning to the “normal” standards of the school (something students are unaccustomed to because of the pandemic’s influence).

The CCRI team sought to raise awareness on transfer student needs during this time. Our researchers, Debra Bragg, Lia Wetzstein, Elizabeth Apple Meza, & Theresa (Ling) Yeh analyzed different methodologies to support students and bolster their success during this unstable period. Read more about this in Data Note 11 of the Transfer Partnership Series.

NTSW: Prioritizing Student Input- Key Components of Our Dedication to Transfer Success

As our main goals are dedicated to supporting our transfer students in their journeys, we highly prioritize student input on how we can better our program. As such, we made sure to expand our outreach to our students, inquiring about improvements for the pathway and any and all adjustments we could make that would allow our students every opportunity for success in their respective goals.

Team members Leandra Cate, Lia Wetzstein, and Katie Kovacich created intricate surveys and structured feedback from students to gain both formal and informal data regarding how best to support the transfer student population. Emphasis on one-on-one faculty connections, degree specific inquiry, and navigational avenues to understand their educational requirements were just a few of the dynamic pieces that students provided. All of these components lend themselves to the important success of the Transfer Partnership success, lending stronger promise for the continuance and future of others within the program.

You can read more about this process HERE

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NTSW: STEM Transfer Partnership Engineering Pathway Access Increase

ChemE Capstone project

Team members Matthew Ford, Aleya Dhanji, Kira Glynn King, Jie Sheng, Skyler Roth, and Emese Hadnagy have been looking into increasing and consistently expanding outreach to minority serving 2-year and 4-year institutions to promote engineering pathways for increasing students’ upward mobility. Through countless trials and tribulations, this incredible group of individuals focused on identifying shared data needs around student success barriers, established inter-institutional data sharing protocols, and developed a framework to significantly increase, diversify, and enhanced existing outreach, recruitment and academic advising practices in support of these students.

Such work is extensively crucial in promoting equity-based educational protocols for transfer students moving through STEM pathways. Many of these students face disproportionate experiences of adversity and barriers to their success as minority students, let alone being transfer students. As such, the team’s development and utilization of a new, holistic data model for transfer pathways has been extensively successful in expanding Moser’s Transfer Student Capital model, leading to potential expansive increases in student accessibility of support during their transfer STEM experiences and prospective, successful outcomes. Such work lends a promising outlook for the future of transfer partnerships along the road, hosting great impact for student support and STEM engagement.

You can find the full journal article HERE

National Transfer Student Week

Happy National Transfer Student Week! Transfer students are an important part of the University of Washington community. As such, we wanted to highlight and celebrate the amazing community of Transfer students and prospective transfer students at our acclaimed university. Make sure to check out the amazing list of events to be held during the week at UW: https://transfer.uw.edu/stages/become-a-husky/transfer-student-celebration-week/info-page/

College Friends

Don’t forget to explore a full list of resources provided on the NTSW Website for more information:

https://www.nists.org/national-transfer-student-week

Listening to Students: New Data Note on Getting Student Input

As STP teams have been working on action plans to expand STEM equity at their institutions, CCRI has documented the process of their efforts through a variety of data collection efforts, including participant observation in coaching sessions and convenings, surveys, and interviews. Analysis of this data reveals the challenges and creative innovations embedded in the process of developing a plan for student input and turning that input into student-centered programs and process improvements. The most recent data note shares findings about the iterative process of developing these plans, as teams use both formal and informal learning from students to inform and refine subsequent efforts. We find that teams are thinking creatively not only about how to get student input but also what defines input and how to interpret and apply what they learn from students.

A common experience for STP teams in the initial period of the program was grappling with how to define student input. Many of the STP participants have years, if not decades, of experience working with students in the STEM pathway, but does that experiential knowledge constitute data? Similarly, many participants were learning from students informally at events and in classroom settings but wondered how to synthesize and interpret those informal interactions. One of the key lessons of the first half of the program was that experiential knowledge and informal feedback from students matter a great deal in the action research process. Teams tuned into this information and used it as the basis for initial student engagement events as well as to inform more systematic data collection efforts for student input.

Teams are also thinking outside the box about collecting student input, often combining student engagement with gathering input. Teams hosted hands-on events like building rockets and soldering hearts while also cultivating feedback through conversation, focus groups, and/or exit surveys. Most importantly, teams are not relying exclusively on one stream of student feedback or input but, rather, combining multiple methodologies, both formal and informal, to develop a robust understanding of the student experience and to inform improvements in STEM education and transfer.

Overall, what we learned in this analysis is that STP teams are thinking creatively to develop new strategies for student input, focusing on student engagement in combination with data collection efforts. Each step of the process informs the next, working holistically with both formal and informal information sources. Ultimately, this approach results in interventions and process improvements that are sensitive to the students in a particular context, providing students with the resources and supports they need.

New Research Scientist Mayra Nunez Martinez

It is with great pleasure that we introduce our newest research scientist, Mayra Nunez Martinez whose research centers on reimagining and transforming postsecondary institutions to better serve historically underserved students and communities. Informed from both personal and professional experiences her research is accountable to examining the racial and spatial inequities that rural Latine/x students face in higher education. She brings a unique lens to CCRI’s work, particularly for our grant on Building Evidence to Increase Rural Learner Success funded by Ascendium Education Group. She understands that it is critical to better support these communities, as rural communities are often excluded from national conversations around education, and there are substantive gaps in the literature for issues in rural higher education.

As a first-generation, DACAmented Mexicana and former college access advisor and high school teacher, she is committed to removing the systemic and structural barriers that exist for underserved communities in accessing higher education. Currently, she is working toward her Ph.D. in School Organization and Education Policy at the University of California, Davis. Her dissertation work examines how institutional and structural factors influence rural Latine/x students’ community college transfer decisions and outcomes.

“As educators and scholars, we must critically analyze policies, programs, and resources to make college accessible for all students by acknowledging the unique needs of students based on their intersectional identities and experiences.”

Through her collaborations on various projects as a graduate student researcher for the California Education Lab and Wheelhouse, she supported data collection, analyses, and dissemination of research related to higher education access and equity issues. For example, she contributed to projects examining factors influencing Latinx community college choice, first-time Latinx students’ and parents’ college choices during the pandemic, and how recruitment and outreach strategies can be more culturally and linguistically inclusive at emerging Hispanic serving institutions. From these experiences she learned the importance of using mixed research methods and centering students’ voices to understand how institutional practices and educational policies should be more responsive to their unique challenges and needs and how academic research utilizing researcher-practitioner partnerships can inform policy and practice.

These opportunities have provided her with invaluable experience that will contribute to CCRI’s research in this and other areas as well as continue to gain more tools for advancing educational equity to postsecondary opportunities for rural Students of Color.

Talking about Transforming Transfer with the Chronicle of Higher Education

In August, Dr. Lia Wetzstein, the director of CCRI, participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education. The focus of discussion was the need to improve the transfer process to achieve more equitable outcomes in higher education. Lia had the opportunity to highlight CCRI’s STEM Transfer Partnerships, composed of nine teams from two-year and four-year institutions in Washington. These teams have been actively engaging with their students to gather valuable input. This feedback has influenced their initiatives, leading to innovative approaches to enhance the transfer student experience, particularly those from low-income backgrounds.

You can read more about the panel discussion here.

The UW’s Community College Research Initiatives receives $449,535 grant to increase rural educational equity

The University of Washington’s Community College Research Initiatives announced that it received a $449,535 grant from Ascendium Education Group for research to increase rural learner success.

Community College Research Initiatives (CCRI) conducts research to facilitate the advancement of equity in higher education. Ascendium invests in research that helps to build a body of evidence about how to ensure rural learners from low-income backgrounds can achieve their postsecondary education and career goals. Ascendium expects this investment in CCRI’s research will catalyze action affecting policies and practices grounded in high-quality evidence and research.

The CCRI project will address mentorship program gaps through a multisite, three-stage study of mentorship programs at public rural community colleges across the United States. Drawing upon institutional websites, in-depth interviews and student survey responses, this project will benefit both scholars and practitioners by producing a database of mentoring strategies at rural community colleges.

“We at CCRI are excited for the opportunity to learn how rural two-year institutions across the country are supporting students from low-income backgrounds with mentorship programs,” shared CCRI director, Lia Wetzstein, Ph.D. The CCRI data will advance the understanding of how the evidence-based solution of mentoring is being implemented at rural colleges while gauging the student experience with a primary focus on students from low-income backgrounds and racially minoritized students.

“We are grateful to Ascendium Education Group for their support,” Wetzstein continued. Ascendium is interested in generating evidence about practices and programs that increase the completion of high-quality postsecondary education and training and successful transition to high-quality jobs. Through the CCRI analysis of the nationwide landscape of rural community college mentorship and mentorship experiences, this project will produce models of mentorship to specifically address the rural community college context and rural students’ experience.

Last year CCRI was awarded a $1.2 million grant from Ascendium to work toward equity in STEM education for low-income learners across Washington state. CCRI, a program within Undergraduate Academic Affairs at the UW, is an influential contributor in community college and transfer partnership research identifying strategies that help students transfer to four-year institutions and complete their bachelor’s degrees. To learn more about CCRI, visit https://www.washington.edu/ccri/.

Ascendium Education Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to helping people reach the education and career goals that matter to them. Ascendium invests in initiatives designed to increase the number of students from low-income backgrounds who complete postsecondary degrees, certificates and workforce training programs, with an emphasis on first-generation students, incarcerated adults, rural community members, students of color and veterans. Ascendium’s work identifies, validates and expands best practices to promote large-scale change at the institutional, system and state levels, with the intention of elevating opportunity for all. For more information, visit https://www.ascendiumphilanthropy.org.

For more information or to get involved, contact CCRI, ccri@uw.edu.

Institutional coaching publication in New Directions for Community Colleges

CCRI (Community College Research Initiatives) had the privilege of working for several years with Student Success Center (SSC) partners and Jobs for the Future (JFF) on coaching programs to facilitate institutional change. The result of that work was several briefs and tools to support coaching and state coaching programs. A recent article, authored by Jennifer Miller (NY SSC), Lia Wetzstein (CCRI), and Amy Girardi (formerly JFF) in New Directions for Community Colleges titled Creating a culture of student success innovation through institutional coaching, discusses this work. It describes how coaches support institutional reform efforts, the history of coaching support of guided pathways implementation, and how CCRI supported the Student Success Center Network Coaching Program.

The article discusses the multiple ways coaching supported institutional leaders’ change efforts. These include coaches being resource hubs by providing information, strategies, and professional development; fostering collaboration; providing external perspectives; moving ideas into actions with knowledge of best practices; and being thought partners (p. 85). It also shares resources that exist for coach professional development and different state examples of how coaches are trained and utilized.

We invite you to use this shareable link to access a free copy available to the first 100! https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/BKIGTXWA5WYXPIHAEFUP?target=10.1002/cc.20562

This link to the article gives access to the abstract and to access a paid copy: https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.20562.

New publications on coaching for institutional transformation

The Student Success Center Network (SSCN) Coaching Program, in its second phase, has three new publications to share on the contributions institutional coaching is making to transform student success in higher education. The CCRI team in partnership with Jobs for the Future (JFF) sought to uncover how coaches facilitate incremental change over time that supports momentum and builds towards larger milestone goals. This phase of the project engaged 72 colleges, 69 coaches, and 4 states, ultimately finding that coaches help Student Success Centers (Centers) propel institutional and systemic change by facilitating the information flow from the Centers to the institutions and inversely from institutions to the Centers, while also serving to create professional connections within and between institutions.

In the first of three publications released this fall, we distilled overarching lessons learned and case studies with coaching design elements for each of the four participating states in the SSCN Coaching Program: Facilitating Institutional Transformation report authored by CCRI’s Lia Wetzstein and Katie Kovacich and our JFF partners, Tara Smith, Jessica Soja, Alexandra Waugh, and Hector Torres. We found that coaches are pivotal in extending Centers’ capacity to facilitate institutional change and discuss the distinctions between coaching programs in systems and association states. Another important learning from this research is how continuous professional development is an essential component of a coaching program. The trainings enhance coaches’ knowledge and skills and provide opportunities to practice with one another which builds confidence in their coaching abilities while sustaining peer learning networks.

How Tools Support and Student Success Center Coaching Programs authored by Katie Kovacich and Lia Wetzstein from CCRI gives an overview of tool use by coaches. Beginning with the background and evolution of the SSCN Coaching Program Coaching Toolbox, this brief was created to describe the usefulness of the many tools generated to support the complex process of institutional change for Student Success Centers, coaches, and colleges. We discuss how three tools in particular produced by CCRI were consistently used in coaching skills development and how they were intentionally designed to train coaches to apply their craft using an equity-minded lens. Learn more about the tools in the brief and all of the tools are actively accessible in the SSCN Toolbox.

Through interviews with college leadership, coaches, and Student Success Center leadership, the brief Ten Ways Institutional Coaching Makes a Difference, describes inspiring examples and stories from those engaged in supporting guided pathways and other student success initiatives. Our CCRI team was integral to the data-gathering process offering our expertise in qualitative research methods. Authors Tara Smith and Hector Torres from JFF explain how coaching helps to keep reform efforts student-centered, supports the implementation of state-mandated education initiatives like guided pathways, and develops leaders that can support transformation at their own colleges and at colleges across the state.

Whether you are interested in learning more about state-based coaching, developing a coaching program, or continuing to expand and sustain a current one, these briefs contain valuable information and ideas to support institutional coaching for change.