Allan Hancock College hosted its second annual Student Success Summit on April 3. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., the summit gathered faculty, staff, students, and representatives from local high schools—as well as Cal Poly and CSU Channel Islands—to discuss new methods of promoting student success.
Marla Allegre, English faculty and co-chair of the AHC Learning Council, said the goal of the summit is to scale up the things that encourage student success.
“Last year was the first summit, and we identified potential high-impact practices according to the research [presented at the summit] to include in our educational master plan. This included community service learning, summer bridge programs, and internships,” Allegre said. “We also identified what we mean by student success for students in our community. While the state defines it as completion of certificates or degrees, students come with different goals such as improving job and reading and writing skills. We defined it as attaining students’ goals.”
This year’s schedule included several demonstrations of successful and innovative student success projects from four different groups of Hancock faculty members. The data collected is being used to broaden the projects to serve more students with the overall goal of improving student performance. Demonstrations included projects that focused on factors such as accelerating students through lower levels of English courses and math skills refresher courses for students who want to improve placement.
“The day included morning presentations from faculty on successful interventions, followed by a strategy session to scale up these innovations,” said Paul Murphy, dean of math and sciences at Hancock.
In addition, the summit also looked at retention and success in distance learning courses, especially for underrepresented groups.
“Over the next year we will be looking to try to determine which program can be expanded and what resources are needed and available,” Allegre said.
This article appears in Apr 9-16, 2015.