CCG Campus Plans 2016 Updates

The 2016 Complete College Georgia Campus Plan Updates are now available.

Each year, Institutions across the University System of Georgia report on their progress toward meeting the governor's college attainment goals for the state.  Georgia’s colleges and universities provide a wide range of programs to meet the state’s diverse needs, each tailored to their insitutional mission and student body profile.  Institutions are asked to assess their progress on their highest priority, highest impoact work in the spirit of communicating promising practices across the state.

The report for each institution highlights the diversity of challenges and innovation that continues to mark Gerogia as a national leader in supporting students as they work toward their college aspirations. Among the highlights from 2015-2016 are the significant strides institutions have made to advance the academic progress of students with learning support needs, the increasing focus on advising and analytics to inform student decisionmaking, and the growth of the Move on when Ready Program. This year's updates underscore insitution's commitments to using data to measure their progress and make adjustments as they go. As illustrated in the report, the institutions of the University System of Georgia in partnership with the Technical College System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Education, and the state's private colleges and universities, are addressing the needs of Georgia's citizens and businesses to be competitive and strong.

GUIDELINES & GENERAL INFORMATION

The CCG Campus Plan Updates are intended to be an opportunity for your institution to reflect on your past work and plan for next steps.  Updates are living documents rooted in your institutional mission and student body profile and reflecting the work that will get closest to your goals for improved student success.  It is our intention for updates to be a part of a campus planning process that helps to identify success and challenges and communicates these to peers at institutions across the University System

For 2016, the Campus Plan Updates retain much of the reporting structure from the previous two years.  In response to suggestions from campuses, we have made a few improvements in the structure and suggested process for the updates.

The 2016 updates has two sections: A survey for institutions to indicate the goals and strategies that they have adopted and a narrative section for more detailed discussion of the work and progress of the past year.  Together these elements will help to paint a comprehensive picture of the varied and productive work in place on our campuses.

Campus Plan Components

WHAT’S NEW FOR 2016?

Updated Strategy Survey

Look for a new strategy survey that asks for slightly more detail on the work you are doing.  The new survey reflects an interest in being able to dig deeper into the work being done on campus and identify in a more detailed manner the nature of the completion work being done.  The survey still should not require much time to complete, but will ask for more specificity in the targets of your work. You can preview the questions on the survey here.

Metrics Guide

An updated metrics guide offers institutions guidance on what measures you may want to consider using to evaluate their strategies.  Additionally, the System Office will provide a suite of measures validated off the data warehouse to offer a reference point for your work.  Obviously programs at the campus level may require data that includes program participation or other factors not available through the data warehouse, and we invite each campus to develop and use measures that make the most sense in their settings. 

The metrics guide is not intended as an indicator of what data CCG would like you to report on overall, but offers suggestions for campus reporting.  Campuses are not asked to report on all indicators, and should include only those that support the work highlighted in their report.  Most tables and figures can be included in an Appendix to the report; please label and number tables and figures for clarity and ease of reference.

Narrative Report Clarifications

The narrative report section is intended to answer a few specific questions: what are you working on? Why is it important? What activities have you undertaken? What progress are you making? And what have you learned?

In order to improve the usability of the campus plan reports, we request that updates follow the structure provided (if not the matrix form) in the narrative guidelines.  This includes:

• A definition/general description of the strategy or activity;
• The CCG or campus goal to which it is aligned;
• A statement explaining why this strategy is high priority or impact (new);
• The principal point of contact for the strategy or activity (new);
• a summary of resources and activities conducted
  1. prior to the reporting year (if any) and
  2. in the reporting year;
• Measures by which you are judging the progress of the activity including
  1. the baseline status of the metrics (defined most often as the status the year prior to initiating the strategy or activity, although a determined point in time is also possible)
  2. the interim measures (year-on-year measures), and
  3. final measures of success, the eventual goal for the strategy, if appropriate.  For this final measure, institutions are encouraged to identify the degree of success they wish to achieve for a given strategy and the time period that they feel it will take to accomplish this.  In areas where there is no “end goal,” an appropriate level of growth is a suitable proxy

• Lessons Learned

These strategies are understood to be “works in progress” and it is anticipated that changes in anticipated outcomes will occurs.  Updates should report on these changes and the reasons for revision as well as other observations on challenges or successes you have had in a lessons learned section for each strategy.

Finally, in order to avoid ambiguity in measures of progress and success, output measures, such as activities completed, steps taken, and other process measures which have been generally included as interim measures should be included in the summary of activities. 

Demonstration of Priority and/or Impact

For 2016, we are asking campuses to explicitly link the work they are highlighting in their reports to the priorities that emerge from the review of the institutional mission and student body profile.  Institutions are asked to briefly describe how successfully implementing a strategy will achieve a high priority, high impact objective highlighted in their reflection.  

High priority: a high priority strategy is one that addresses an immediate and clearly identified need on your campus, or is closely aligned with your institutional mission or student body.  High priority strategies should be those that would be first to be addressed in considerations of allocation of resources and attention on campus

High impact: a high impact strategy is one that affects (or has the demonstrated potential to affect) a large number of students, affects a more limited number of students in a critical area or has the demonstrated potential to have significant demonstrated impact on students regardless of scale.  These decisions should be aligned with the institution’s mission and its student body profile.

Implementation Contact

New for 2016, we ask that you include the campus contact for each strategy.  In response to campus input, the System office will work to facilitate the sharing of experiences and the creation of communities of interest around completion activities. A first step in this process is to assemble a list of campus personnel who are responsible for implementing specific strategies on campuses. 

No Limits on Strategies

In response to feedback from campuses, we are no longer limiting the number of high-priority, high impact strategies you may report on, but we encourage you to be mindful of the intent of the Updates to highlight work that you are doing that has potential to improve the capacity of campuses across the system. 

Given this change, we ask that campuses report on each discrete activity/strategy separately.  Activities that fall under a common goal or functional area can be arranged together, but each discrete strategy or activity should be discussed independently where possible.

Reasonable Limits on Reports

While campuses are encouraged to report on as many strategies and activities that meet the criteria of being high priority and high impact, we are encouraging limits on overall reporting.  If your compiled report (not counting appendices) exceeds 10 pages, please consult with your CCG liaison.

Appendices

Including data in appendices is recommended where the data table will lead to excessive length or complicate the report.  If tables or charts are included as an appendix and referred to in the body of the narrative, please be sure to number or otherwise mark each so that they can be easily referred to.  It is not necessary to report data in the appendix that is not referenced on in the main narrative report.

Feedback

In a departure from previous years, campuses may opt to receive peer review feedback on their updates or submit a final draft with the option to update any missing data.  Campuses opting to receive feedback will need to submit their reports by August 18.  Campuses submitting drafts for feedback will receive input by September 14. Reports submitted after September 14 may only be reviewed by CCG staff; pre-publication feedback may not be provided.

REPORT OVERVIEW

PART I: CAMPUS PLAN STRATEGY SURVEY

This brief survey is an opportunity for you to identify all of the high-impact strategies you are pursuing.  This first part of the update report enables the System Office to collect aggregate information about strategies that are being used across the.  The survey is available online.   The survey is slightly more detailed this year in order to provide a more complete picture of work at the campus level.  You can save, exit, and return to the survey prior to reviewing and submitting your response.

PART II: NARRATIVE OVERVIEW

The 2016 status report features three areas of focus that will be reported to the governor: an institutional profile; institutional strategies, activities, and goals; and general observations. Please use the provided matrix form to complete your report.

Section 1.     Institutional Mission and Student Body Profile

Provide a brief overview of your institutional mission and student body profile.  Please briefly describe how enrollment trends, demographics (for example, % Pell grant-eligible, % first-generation college students, % adult learners), and how your institutional mission influences your completion work’s key priorities. 

Section 2.     Institutional Completion Goals, High-Impact Strategies & Activities

Based on your review of data on completion indicators, your institutional mission, and the resources available, please identify and report on your institution’s high priority, high impact strategies.  The strategies and goals you select to highlight should emerge from Part I: Campus Plan Strategy Guide And Metric Survey. 

Please use the structure (if not the matrix) provided on the next page (and available as a downloadable form here).  In order to improve the usability of the campus plan reports, we request that updates follow the structure provided in the narrative guidelines.  This includes:

• a definition/general description of the strategy or activity;
• the CCG or campus goal to which it is aligned;
• a summary of resources and activities conducted

1. prior to the reporting year (if any) and
2. in the reporting year;

• measures by which you are judging the progress of the activity including
  1. the baseline status of the metrics (defined most often as the status the year prior to initiating the strategy or activity, although a determined point in time is also possible)
  2. the interim measures (year-on-year measures), and
  3. final measures of success, the eventual goal for the strategy, if appropriate.  For this final measure, institutions are encouraged to identify the degree of success they wish to achieve for a given strategy and the time period that they feel it will take to accomplish this. 

Section 3.     Observations

What strategies and activities have been most successful?  What have been least effective?  Has your institution made adjustments completion activities over the past year? If so, please explain why? Looking ahead, do you anticipate changes for next year’s plan? Please briefly describe the direction you think your work will be going in the coming years and why.

Narrative Overview Sample Matrix (Repeat for each High-impact strategy) :

SUBMITTING YOUR UPDATE

Campus Plan Strategy Surveys should be completed online.  Narrative reports may be submitted here as a Microsoft Word file.  Files not submitted through the CCG website should be sent via email to CCG@usg.edu.  Questions on your update can be directed to your institution USG-CCG liaison (see below), or to Jonathan Watts Hull at jonathan.hull@usg.edu, 404-962-3129.

Submit Your Update

USG CCG COMPLETION PLAN LIAISON LIST