All Students Dimension Report
Pellissippi State Technical Community College

Foundations Institutions serve all new students according to their varied needs. These institutions anticipate, identify, and address the needs of traditional and non-traditional students in response to their individual abilities, backgrounds, interests, and experiences. These efforts are subject to assessment and adjustment as needed. Institutions also ensure campus environments that are inclusive and safe for all students.

Committee Leader:
Jim Bruns, VP Academic and Student Affairs

Committee Members:
Dennis Adams, Dean of Instructional Programs
Mary Bledsoe, Dir. Student Life and Recreation
Jerry Burns, Associate Professor - Natural and Behavioral Sciences
Cynthia Dempster, Academic Department Head - Business and Computer Technologies
Felita Dews, Student Leader
Margaret Ann Jeffries, Academic Department Head - Engineering and Media Technologies
Jim Kelley, Academic Department Head - Natural and Behavioral Sciences
Mary Monroe-Ellis, Professor of Mathematics
Joan Newman, Director of Learning and Testing Center
Linda Pinkard, Associate VP of Student Affairs
Linda Randolph, Director of Educational Improvement
Lois Reynolds, Academic Department Head - English
Linda Streebeck, Assistant Professor - Mathematics
JoAnne Thomasson, Director of Developmental Studies Program
Leigh Anne Touzeau, Director of Admissions and Records
Berta Ward, Dean of Academic Advising, Articulation and Curriculum
Catherine Williams, Academic Department Head - Mathematics
L. Anthony Wise. Jr., Department Head, Liberal Arts
Julia Wood, Director of Community Relations
Pat Zingg, Professor-Natural and Behavioral Sciences

Current Situation:

Academic Needs
Most of the College's efforts in identifying subpopulations of students are focused on students' academic needs. The following groups of students are identified according to their unique academic needs:

University Parallel/College Transfer majors
Career/Technical majors
Developmental students
Students with disabilities
African-American students
First-generation college students
ESL (International) students
Students at various campuses

Social/personal needs are identified to varying degrees for different groups. Group affiliation and other social needs are identified for first-generation college students on the Pellissippi campus through the TRiO program and student organizations are established for specific populations (e.g., African-American students; International students; and students with non-heterosexual orientations).

Safety needs are identified for students as a whole. Proactive emphasis is on physical safety needs based on location and timing of classes and on computer security to protect students' privacy and avoid identity theft.

Mandatory Placement-All first-time students
The College requires testing of degree-seeking students academic skills and uses the results as the primary basis for course placement. New students who have not earned transfer credit in math or English or another college-level course that would exempt them from a test of their reading skills must take the ACT or SAT if they are under 21 or ASSET if they are 21 or older.

Academic Support
Students are provided opportunities to improve their placement by retesting using a standardized placement test. Attendance at placement testing workshops or participation in other means to improve skill levels is strongly encouraged for students who desire to retest. Students may also challenge their placement with approval from the DSP director, DSP program coordinators, and college counselors. Challenge tests are selected by the academic departments in which the DSP subjects are housed and must be completed prior to the first day of classes each semester.

Free tutoring is available through the College's Learning and Testing Center to students at the Pellissippi campus in math, writing, science, computer science and foreign language. Other resources and services include online tutorials for study skills, math and writing; assistance with locating private, paid tutors; and space to study alone or with other students. Personal computers and printers are available in the Learning and Testing Center as well as in the open lab. Free tutoring in math and writing are offered at all three site campuses. The Division Street campus offers tutoring in chemistry and Spanish as well. Site campuses also offer online resources, computers and other learning resources to support student success in the courses offered at the respective sites.

Alternative Credit- Available to all students
Students who have developed their academic skills through non-traditional means earn credit by demonstrating their knowledge through a variety of means. CLEP and DANTES credit are accepted in many subject areas. Credit-by-exam is offered for most of the College's courses and credit-for-life experience is available for students who qualify.

New Student Advising - First-time degree seeking students
New students are instructed to complete their application file and call the Student Assistance Center to make an appointment with a new student advisor. Counselors, full-time faculty and the Advising and Curriculum office staff serve as new student advisors. Advising appointments for new students are scheduled for one hour with the hope that the new student will make a personal connection with his/her new student
advisor and feel more confident about their upcoming experience at the College as a result. Training and materials are provided for all new student advisors. Students who do not make appointments are directed to final registration where they meet with faculty advisors on a first-come, first-served basis.

During their first semester, all degree-seeking students are assigned a permanent academic advisor based on their major and campus location. The first assigned advisor with remain the student's advisor hopefully through graduation unless the faculty advisor leaves the College or changes positions or the student changes his/her major or the campus where he/she takes classes. Full-time faculty members hold office hours at least five hours per week to assist students with assignments and to meet with advisees.

Extensive online resources are provided for students and academic advisors to assess progress and assist with decisions regarding major selection, program planning and course scheduling.

Innovations to Promote Student Success
Pellissippi State faculty and staff have a tradition of creating new initiatives to promote student engagement. Examples of those include

• Learning Communities that combine DSP courses within the same and different disciplines, DSP courses with college-level courses, and college-level courses in different subject areas
• Online courses and courses scheduled in computer labs
• Extensive use of technology as a learning tool
• Flexible scheduled courses delivered through the College's Learning and Testing Center

Social/Personal Needs
Personal counseling services are provided at all sites. Currently, one professionally qualified counselor is housed at each of the College's four campuses. Students are generally referred to counselors by faculty who are familiar with the student's individual circumstances. Extensive social, professional and recreational activities are provided through the office of Student Life and Recreation. Over 25 student clubs and organizations addressing students' social, professional and academic, creative, religious and other interests are available to all first-year students.

Safety Needs
Pellissippi State campuses are relatively safe based on a review of the College's campus security reports. Security personnel are located on all campuses although coverage is sometimes more limited at the sites. Emergency response personnel are available on the Pellissippi campus and faculty/staff at all campuses are apprised of procedures to follow in case of an emergency.

Protection of students' privacy and personal information have been given greater attention in recent years as evidenced by FERPA training sessions, the use of a campus-wide identification number as an alternative for accessing student records and the additional attention given to monitoring students' use of the Internet for inappropriate purposes.

Based on an interview with Student Affairs personnel, few harassment incidents have been reported, none have gone beyond preliminary investigation before being withdrawn or found to be without grounds. While students talk with staff on racial and sexual harassment issues, the lack of collected statistics or evidence make it difficult to summarily evaluate the College's effectiveness in addressing these issues.

Needs of Specific Subpopulations
The needs of Career/Technical and University parallel majors, developmental students and to a large extent, students at site campuses are addressed similarly and as described above. The unique needs of students with disabilities; African-American students; International students, particularly those whose native language is not English; and first-generation college students are more precisely identified and addressed through specific programs and services. See Admissions (International and African-American students), Services for Students with Disabilities, and TRiO web pages.

Based on mean responses to relevant items on the Foundations of Excellence Student Survey, students are most positive about the degree to which their safety needs are being met and least positive about the degree to which their social/personal needs are being met.

The degree to which students felt:
Physically safe on campus - 4.51*
Respected by others- 4.12
That their academic needs are met - 3.96
Free to express beliefs without concern about how others will react - 3.95
That they belong - 3.81
That their social needs are met - 3.72
*five-point scale with 5 being the most positive response

With respect to students' ratings of their social experiences at the College, these results are consistent with those seen on the enrolled student and alumni surveys administered by the College over the past decade.

Faculty and staff ratings (mean responses) of the degree to which the College addresses the unique needs of various subpopulations were as follows:

Students with physical disabilities - 4.35*
Students with learning disabilities - 4.26
Students with academic deficiencies - 4.18
Racial/ethnic minority students - 3.93
Honors students - 3.10
*five-point scale with 5 being the most positive response

Individualized Attention from Faculty/Staff
Examples of individualized attention from faculty and staff include assigned advisors, new student advisors, paid office hours for adjuncts and required office hours for full-time faculty. Individualized attention is lacking at site campuses in areas like counseling, financial aid, etc.

Academic Support Outside the Classroom
The College's Resource Directory provides a summary of services provided to students to assist them academically outside of class. TRiO and the FLAG (Flexible Learning and Growth) Center at Pellissippi Campus provide good examples. Site campus services are inadequate.

Opportunities for Campus Involvement
Every campus has its own clubs. Student Life and Recreation plans activities for all campuses. Visiting scholars, lecturers, artists and organizations are sponsored through various student organizations, the Student Life & Recreation office, the Admissions & Records office, individual academic departments and site campuses.

Inclusive Campus Environment
The College has a number of student organizations that promote inclusiveness, such as Pride, the Baptist Student Union, African-American/Black Student Association and the International Student Organization. The College has policies in place that prohibit discrimination and promote inclusiveness.

Areas of Concern:
The committee's concerns regarding the identification of new student subpopulations fall into two categories:

(1) While Pellissipi State provides many services to students, the services are generally not specifically targeted for first-time students. Planning efforts for the provision of services often do not distinguish the unique characteristics and needs of first-time students within the various subpopulations.

(2) Subpopulations considered important to the committee that are not specifically identified include:

Honors students: The College does not define honors students or make any special academic provisions for them.

Hispanic students: The Hispanic population in the Pellissippi State's service area, as in much of the United States, is increasing rapidly. The College makes no special effort to attract students in this demographic or to research whether they are attending college.

Students over 24 years of age: The number of students in this age group has decreased; identifying and addressing the unique needs of first-time students in this group could reverse that trend.

Web students: The web campus is the second largest at Pellissippi State. However, retention rates are unacceptable for these students indicating that the needs of this group, particularly with respect to first-time Pellissippi State and first-time web course enrollees have not been sufficiently identified nor addressed.

Males: The number of females attending Pellissippi State has increased in recent years, while the number of males has decreased.

As indicated above, committee members felt that important subpopulations had not been identified and therefore the needs of those groups have not been sufficiently identified nor addressed. In particular, the group felt that the needs of non-traditional student (those over 24 years of age) and honors students should be given greater emphasis.

Further, the group felt that the absence of information on the individual needs, interests and goals of first-year students hampered the College's ability to target programming and services for individuals as well as groups of students.

While a primary purpose of new student advising is stated as developing a connection between the new student and a faculty member, advising materials provided to both students and to faculty advisors do not clearly support this aim. New student advisor training may need to be reevaluated to give more emphasis to the relational aspects of the advising experience.

Specific services gaps were identified. Those include the availability of counseling services on the Pellissippi campus and financial aid advising at all sites. Comparison of student to counseling and advising staff and student to financial aid staff ratios indicate that Pellissippi State is significantly understaffed in these areas.

Committee members addressing this performance indicator felt that although the College is doing a good job in these areas, the quality of the student's experiences vary by campus. The college needs increased staff and resources at the site campuses in each of the four areas (availability of faculty/staff outside of class, academic support, opportunities for involvement, inclusive campus environment).

Summary of Evidence:
The All Students Committee's membership included members of Learning Council (the Academic and Student Affairs leaders of the College) and additional interested faculty and staff. Judgments were based on a review of pertinent planning documents, websites, enrollment and student success reports and interviews with Student Affairs personnel to address specific questions. Committee members, many of whom have been at the college for 10-20+ years, also provided their insights based their extensive and varied experiences at the College.

Examples of subpopulations identified by the College were given in the Current Situation section of this report.

Survey results, analysis of documents, reports and the experience of the committee members were all used as a basis for the committee's judgments regarding the degree to which the college is actually addressed the unique needs of identified subpopulations.

Committee members reviewed survey results, information provided by Student Affairs' staff via interview, and documents describing the College's resources and services related to the four areas being evaluated.

Recommended Grade: C+

Recommended Action Items:

• Monitoring/tracking system (High priority)

Develop a monitoring/tracking system to provide periodic information on the status of all first-year students and subpopulations (those currently identified by the College and those identified by the All Students committee)

• Develop new programming (High priority)

New programs and services are recommended for honors students and students over 24 years of age.

Successful aspects of the previous honors program (eliminated during a budget crisis) should be incorporated into the development of a new program that addresses these students academic as well as social and personal needs.

A cohort program in business for working adults is recommended to address the career advancement needs of that subpopulation, response to their scheduling constraints and more appropriately address their social and personal needs.

• Gather information on new students interests and needs prior to the beginning of classes (High priority)

Develop an interest inventory for new students to provide information to specific College offices that would provide a basis for follow up with individual students and a basis for planning activities, programs and services for identified subpopulations.

• Revised new student advisor training program and materials (High priority)

Add activities, strategies and information to assist advisors with the non-academic, relationship-building components of new student advising.

• Address deficiencies in the availability of personal counseling services and financial aid advising (High priority)

Reallocate resources or provide additional resources to address students' needs in these two critical areas.

• Provide more Resources (High priority)

The college should provide more staff and resources at the site campuses for testing, tutoring, the bookstore and financial aid. The college should expand the Trio and Flag Center programs at the site campuses.