Revised and approved in November 2015, the CCGA mission statement reads as follows:
As a state college of the University System of Georgia, the College of Coastal Georgia will be a college of choice for residents of Georgia and beyond by providing an accessible and affordable quality education. Advocating excellence in scholarship and community engagement, the College promotes student progression and timely graduation through student-centered programs that offer a rich and diverse student experience. Students are prepared for meaningful careers, advanced study, lifelong learning, and participation in a global and technological society. The institution will provide associate and baccalaureate degrees that support the intellectual, economic and cultural needs of the community and region.
This mission statement is fully aligned with the University System of Georgia’s (USG) mission, it represents the core principles and unique institutional characteristics of a state college, and it is accentuated by strong leadership, worthwhile community linkages, and exemplary student development. Further, the new mission statement effectively infuses the College’s strategic framework that is structured around five central themes: Student Enrichment, Academic Excellence, Institutional Distinction, Leadership through Community Engagement & Partnerships, and Sustainability & Organizational Development. Finally, the revised mission underscores the College’s sustained commitment to community engagement that encompasses service-learning, volunteerism, practica, and internships, contributing to the cultural, economic and social well-being of the local community, southeast Georgia and beyond.
The College of Coastal Georgia’s fall 2018 enrollment, prior to census, stands at 3,549 students and FTE of 2,947. In terms of self-declared race/ethnicity, 6.5% identified as Hispanic/Latino, 0.3% American Indian or Alaska Native, 2.2% Asian, 19.2% Black or African American, 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 66.1% White, 4.0% two or more races, and 1.6% undeclared.
With an average age of 23.2, the College’s student body is composed of 68.1% female and 58.8% full-time students with 80.8% indicating Georgia residency, 17.5% out-of-state, and 1.7% out-of-country.
First-generation students (whose parent(s)/legal guardian(s) have not completed a baccalaureate degree) account for 57.1% of the 3,095 students for whom we know parent/guardian educational attainment. Adult learners (25 years of age or older) and military/veterans account for 23.3% and 17.1% of the total student body, respectively. Pell recipients account for 25.8% of students, while dual-enrolled students total 367, or a 12.2% decrease compared to fall 2017. Academically, the class of new freshman (for fall 2017) came to the institution with a 3.01 average high school GPA, attempted an average of 24.74 hours during the first academic year, earning an average of 18.45 credits. This cohort persisted through fall 2018 at a 54.4% rate and had an average GPA of 2.12. The work on completion is imperative as we continue to support this student population.
CCGA’s institutional mission is a beacon that guides its completion priorities. First, by providing access and affordability, CCGA addresses the needs of the region and is particularly impactful for communities that are traditionally underserved in postsecondary education (data from the First Destination Survey shows 89% of graduates remain in the state and 81% in the region). Secondly, the College promotes student progression and timely graduation by expanding and improving retention systems and instructional delivery to support student success (as evidenced by the high impact strategies referenced in this report). Finally, by increasing student campus and community engagement, the institution prepares students to engage in meaningful careers and to satisfy the economic and cultural needs of the community and the region (data from the First Destination Survey shows that 64% of respondents were employed full-time at or immediately after graduation compared to the national rate of 53.4%).
Leading and supporting the completion efforts at the institution, the Complete College CCGA Task Force was instituted with a charge to evaluate, identify, implement, and monitor high-impact strategies and activities that increase retention, progression and graduation rates. This task force is comprised of leaders from a diverse group of units across the institution, who work collaboratively and strategically to guide the institution while maintaining an alignment of the institutional goals and strategies with the college completion plan of the state.
The next two sections will provide a retrospective review of the activities that have promoted college completion during the 2017-2018 academic year, and will provide a detailed status update of the Momentum Year initiatives, the work that has been completed so far, and what we need to accomplish in the near future.
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. Your report should include a general overview and description of each activity, a summary of the work your institution has undertaken in the 2017-2018 academic year, the results or outcomes of this work, and any observations of lessons you have learned about this activity this year.
To promote access while at the same time promoting retention, progression, and graduation, it is imperative that the College has an effective structure to support students who arrive at college with a gap in academic preparation. The College has fully embraced the corequisite remediation model by shifting the focus from traditional remedial education as a standalone enterprise, and concentrating on providing the support that students need to successfully complete credit-bearing collegiate level courses that align well with the students’ program of study.
The College continues to transform the Learning Support structure and is now enrolling every student in need of remediation directly into a gateway collegiate course in English and Mathematics, with corequisite support. This was the result of a year of realignment and development of the different pathways, as the institution discontinued the Foundation courses in both English and Mathematics.
The Department of Arts and Humanities was the first to discontinue the Foundations course, by running a designated English corequisite support section during the spring of 2018 with students that would have traditionally gone in a foundations course. Their success rate in the gateway course was 64.3% while the historical success rate for students with the same characteristics was only 43.8% (success rate in ENGL1101 within one year for students starting in ENGL0989 during spring 2015, 2016, and 2017). It is important to highlight that not only was the success rate much higher, but students were able to complete the gateway course within one semester, while the 43.8% success rate corresponded to completing the gateway course within one year.
Moving towards full-scale corequisite support in the area of Mathematics presented additional challenges and concerns, in particular for the College Algebra pathway, where the deficiencies in academic preparation may have been harder to overcome with corequisite support. To address the additional challenges, the College of Coastal Georgia worked closely with the system office and other institutions to devise a staggered approach that would allow students in every program to start with a college-level Math course. We are confident that this staggered approach (starting fall 2018) will serve the student population very well as it will address needs for all LS students:
The Department of Mathematics performed logistic regression discontinuity studies to determine the appropriate placement thresholds that would exempt students from corequisite support for MATH1001/1101 and the thresholds that would exempt them from corequisite support for MATH1111. These newly determined thresholds were used for placement for fall 2018, and the department will follow success rates closely to evaluate their efficacy at identifying the model that gives the student the best probability of success.
The full implementation of corequisite support in English and Mathematics has resulted in the creation of new Banner processes to overcome a variety of logistic challenges. While the faculty and staff are now more comfortable with the deployment of the new structure, the relentless realignment of parameters and processes has required a considerable amount of communication and collaboration to update processes and bring the model to an efficient and sustainable delivery. The faculty in the departments of English and Mathematics have fully embraced the new LS structure and continue to make curricular changes to make sure all Learning support students have the best chance of success
Dr. Elizabeth Wurz, Department Chair, Arts and Humanities, Associate Professor of English, ewurz@ccga.edu
Dr. Tanya Cofer, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Mathematics, tcofer@ccga.edu
Dr. German Vargas, Assistant Vice President for Academic Student Engagement and Associate Professor of Mathematics, gvargas@ccga.edu
The College is working with the John N. Gardner Institute to redesign four gateway courses to improve student success. Specifically, we are redesigning ENGL 1102, MATH 0999, POLS 1101, and BIOL 1107 through Gateway2Completion (G2C).
With approval from the College’s IRB, the G2C faculty have been collecting and analyzing data based on grades, surveys, and classroom experiences. Using the Principles and KPIs developed by the John Gardner Institute, all committees have completed analysis of the first two principles and the steering committee will meet in late October to review this work.
We are still in the beginning stages of this process. Great collaborations and discussions have occurred, but we will not see any student outcomes until fall 2019 when we begin piloting the redesigned courses.
In spring semester, we administered the Student Learning Gains survey to students. The timing of the survey was too close to that of our normal end of course student evaluations. We have since decided to move this survey up to week 10 of the semester.
Dr. Laura Lynch, Assistant Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Associate Professor of Mathematics, llynch@ccga.edu.
To address growing enrollment and workforce needs, we have added several new degrees and programs of study to the College Curriculum.
The College has established three new degree programs in the last year:
For fall 2018, we have a total of 490 students enrolled in one of our new degrees or new concentrations, broken down as follows:
New Degree Programs: |
Enrollment |
|
BS Environmental Sciences |
10 |
|
No Concentration Declared |
2 |
|
Environmental Studies |
2 |
|
Natural Science |
6 |
|
BS Health Sciences |
392 |
|
No Concentration Declared |
345 |
|
Exercise Science |
36 |
|
Health Promotion |
11 |
|
BS Hospitality & Tourism Management |
23 |
|
|
Total Students in New Degrees: |
425 |
New Concentrations: |
|
|
BS Biological Sciences |
General Biology |
25 |
BBA General Business |
Management |
37 |
BS Mathematics |
Scientific Computing |
3 |
Total Students in New Concentrations: |
65 |
We have had great success creating new degree programs out of concentrations within existing degree programs. We intend to continue along this path whenever possible.
Dr. Laura Lynch, Assistant Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Associate Professor of Mathematics, llynch@ccga.edu.
Charged by the Chancellor of the University System to continue to grow enrollment, campus leaders identified the lack of a long-term view of enrollment or enrollment-focused strategic initiatives at the College. The institution engaged with Ruffalo Noel Levitz to assist in this cross-campus planning process as well as help in developing the College’s first strategic recruitment plan. The purpose of the strategic enrollment planning process was to complete an internal and external environmental scan to help identify the feasibility of this growth plan, help further define appropriate growth markets, identify potential threats to the College’s enrollment, and identify opportunities to expand and grow programming in terms of enrollment (academic and co-curricular). It was our shared goal to document and implement the results of the strategic enrollment plan as well as appropriately fund the initiatives therein.
The Strategic Enrollment Planning process was led by a steering committee who had primary oversight for the development, implementation, assessment, and modification of the Strategic Enrollment Plan (SEP). This committee was chaired by Dr. Jason Umfress, Vice President for Student Affairs & Enrollment Management, and was supported by Jim Anderson, Associate Consultant with Ruffalo Noel Levitz.
Five subcommittees were charged with developing specific strategies and actions to meet the goals of the SEP: Academic Subcommittee; Purpose, Price, and Promotion Subcommittee; Undergraduate Experience Subcommittee; On-Line Student Experience Subcommittee; and the Research Subcommittee. These subcommittees, made up of faculty and staff from across campus, met throughout the Spring and Summer 2018 terms to conduct in-depth analyses of enrollment successes and challenges, brainstorm strategies to address institutional growth, and prioritize these strategies in terms of cost, impact, and implementation.
Currently, the Strategic Enrollment Planning Steering Committee is considering the recommendations from the subcommittees for prioritization. Below is a draft list of some of the subcommittee recommendations being considered.
The steering committee is still working on the final list of strategies / recommendations and their corresponding prioritization. The final report will be written once this phase of the process is complete.
Embarking on a campus-wide project such as this was a monumental task. Although the project is still on-going, there are a few lessons we have learned in the process.
Dr. Jason Umfress, Vice President for Student Affairs & Enrollment Management, jumfress@ccga.edu.
With the goal of promoting access and affordability of higher education, the College is committed to adopting open and low-cost educational resources as alternatives to high price textbooks, without compromising the standards of the courses.
With institutional support from the faculty and administration, and with the support of Affordable learning Georgia, the College has adopted open educational resources (OERs) in 12 common courses in the general education curriculum. To further encourage and support the evaluation of new OER alternatives, the Office of Academic Affairs continues to support the OER Reviewer initiative, where faculty members receive a small stipend to engage in additional review of OERs. While the institution continues to participate formally in ALG by engaging in transformation grants (Introduction to Psychology is currently part of the Round 11 of textbook transformations), the culture of evaluating more affordable options as part of the textbook selection process is now permeating the different academic disciplines, and the No-Cost/Low-Cost Course Designation initiative is helping raise the awareness.
Based on the total enrollment for the academic year 2017-2018 the current courses implementing cost saving strategies, these efforts are resulting in more than $350,000 in student savings per year. For fall 2018 14.4% of all sections at the institution are using low-cost or no-cost textbooks, and it is important to highlight that most of the sections designated as low-cost/no-cost are lower division courses with typical higher enrollment (and therefore greater impact) when compared with the upper division courses where the availability of OER may still be limited.
After a thorough evaluation of the OER that was in use for MATH 1111 College Algebra, MATH 1112 Trigonometry, and MATH 1113 Precalculus, the Department of Mathematics adopted a different textbook for MATH 1111 that would have a more robust platform to serve the students that needed the corequisite support in this course. The OER is still in use for MATH 1112 and MATH 1113 as none of the students participating in this course will require corequisite support.
Dr. German Vargas, Assistant Vice President for Academic Student Engagement and Associate Professor of Mathematics, gvargas@ccga.edu
The College continues to strengthen its Dual Enrollment program. The program is delivered as a collaborative enterprise supported by various institutional units, with participation from Academic Affairs, Student Affairs & Enrollment Management, and the Business Office. The administrative oversight is handled by the Lead Academic Advisor, and the institution has a designated Dual Enrollment Advisor.
CCGA continues to expand and enhance relationships with high school counselors, locally, regionally and state‐wide. The institution now hosts annual Dual Enrollment breakfasts for all area high school counselors, including those in Glynn, McIntosh, Camden, Wayne, and Brantley County school systems as well as area private high schools.
The strengthening of the bonds with the school systems in the region is paired with a focused student recruitment plan, with regular College information programs to continually update guidance counselors on new degree programs, and with Dual Enrollment Information Nights for prospective students and parents.
With the goal of promoting access and shortening time to degree completion, the institution needs to promote Dual Enrollment in all our service counties, and as such, the total enrollment in this program is an important metric for success. With a baseline of 203 students participating in the program during fall 2015, the efforts to strengthen the program have resulted in 304 participants during fall 2016, 418 participants during fall 2017, and 367 participants during fall 2018 (an 81% increase when compared to the baseline, but a 12% decrease when compared to previous fall).
With the rapid growth of the program, the institution experienced scalability issues during the 2016-2017 year that were associated with the capacity of processing students through any single process (e.g. communication with individual counselors, collection of participation agreements, financial aid processes, textbook rentals, etc.). This scalability was addressed via process mapping sessions where the Lead Academic Advisor worked with various units to streamline communication and documentation gathering processes. The new structure is giving the Dual Enrollment Advisor additional time to focus on student support and outreach to the school officials, counselors, and parents.
The institution has been closely monitoring the decrease in the Dual Enrollment population for fall 2018, which we attributed to the delivery of Dual Enrollment courses within the high schools by the local technical college. Based on the June 2018 update to SACSCOC policy regarding Dual Enrollment, and in light of the concerns raised by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts Performance Audit Division in their Special Examination Report (No.17-09, January 2018), the institution has not engaged in dual enrollment instruction at the high schools.
Patricia Morris, Lead Academic Advisor, pmorris@ccga.edu
Linny A. Bailey, Dual Enrollment Academic Advisor, lbailey@ccga.edu
Dr. German Vargas, Assistant Vice President for Academic Student Engagement and Associate Professor of Mathematics, gvargas@ccga.edu
As indicated in the strategies above, the College of Coastal Georgia continues to embrace and support Complete College Georgia efforts to improve retention, progression, and graduation rates across the state. In addition, the College is fully committed to the Momentum Year initiatives and has worked diligently in the execution of the strategies and activities delineated in the institutional implementation plan.
For organization and to improve conciseness, we will itemize the actions taken for each of the elements in the plan, will immediately indicate any next steps, and will indicate any challenges or necessary reallocation of resources:
ELEMENT 1 (A) - PURPOSE: Each student is guided into an academic focus area or program that best aligns with that student’s aspirations, aptitudes, and potential for success.
ELEMENT 2 (A) - PROGRAM OF STUDY: Degree programs are aligned into academic focus areas that have common first year courses.
ELEMENT 2 PROGRAM OF STUDY:(B) Each focus area and program of study has an established default curricular (program) map that provides term-by-term course requirements and structured choice for appropriate electives.
ELEMENT 2(F) - PROGRAM OF STUDY: Students are provided with personalized curricular maps and have ongoing advisement in their academic program. Students are directed to co-curricular activities and practices that are supportive of their major and overall integration into the college environment.
ELEMENT 3 (A) - ENGAGEMENT: All incoming freshmen will be invited to participate in the USG Getting to Know Our Students Mindset Survey before the first three weeks of the semester.
ELEMENT 3 (B) - ENGAGEMENT: All faculty and staff, especially those who work with students in their first year, are oriented toward student engagement and success, and are provided with the training and tools they need to fulfill their roles in this regard.
ELEMENT 3 (C) – ENGAGEMENT: Select specific enrichment activities that your institution is investigating, piloting, implementing or building to a greater scale that promotes student engagement, connectivity and satisfaction with their program of study and/or college itself, or their productive academic mindset.
ELEMENT 3 (D) – ENGAGEMENT: Select specific enrichment activities that your institution is investigating, piloting, implementing or building to a greater scale that promotes student engagement, connectivity and satisfaction with their program of study and/or college itself, or their productive academic mindset.
In closing, the retention and progression priority is embedded in everything the College is engaged in, including performance reviews, annual reports and budget reviews. The focus is to create a learning-centered environment for traditional, adult, first-generation, and military/veteran students that will increase student learning, promote student progression and, ultimately, lead to improved graduation rates. The College believes its student progression metrics, standards and retention/graduation strategies are clear evidence of those expectations and a strong foundational commitment to growing enrollment and focusing on graduation with distinction as the overarching campus priorities.
[1] Total enrollment and FTE are based on Banner live data recorded on 10/05/18; all other demographic information is based on USG Preliminary Student Enrollment Report data for fall 2018 and the academic achievement metrics correspond to the fall 2018 cohort.