City College of San Francisco - California Competes

These essays show how activities that started in a few departments (Math and English) spread to other
departments (ESL, Transitional Studies, Learning Assistance) and eventually found a voice in a renewed
institution-wide effort to address the needs of students with basic skills deficiencies (the Enhanced Self-
Study and the revitalized Basic Skills Subcommittee). At the same time, the Chancellor made basic skills
a central part of the strategic planning process, and the Office of Research, Planning and Grants developed
resources to fund a variety of initiatives that grew out of these institutional dialogs on basic skills.
Dialog is the topic of one of the Theme Essays but descriptions of institutional dialog are found throughout
the essays. For example, the Planning and Evaluation essay (Theme 4) describes how the dialog around
the Program Review in the Architecture Department led to a rethinking of not only the Architecture program
but also the need to collaborate with related departments and disciplines. The English as a Second
Language Department uses a promotional testing model to not only assess individual students’ progress
in a specific course, but also as the basis for departmental dialog on the effectiveness of the program’s
structure and courses. The dialog essay (Theme 3) shows the different ways we dialog with each other
and how each College constituency (faculty, staff, administrators, and students) can either initiate the
dialog or become an active participant in it.
As with dialog, every essay provides a reflection on the organization of the College. There are references
to both the formal organization (departments, administrative offices, and shared governance bodies) and
the informal organization (cross departmental collaborations, peer contacts, developmental initiatives
such as SCANS and the Multicultural Infusion Project). The essay on organization focuses on two different
aspects of a large academic department (Biology), looking first at the way the department functions within
the formal and informal structures of the College, and second, at the impact of a major, primarily externally
funded, initiative (Biotechnology) on the department and the services it provides to students.
Similarly, issues of integrity and honesty, while the focus of Theme 6, can be found in all of the essays.
The validity and usefulness of common testing instruments is a central issue for English and ESL in Theme
Essays 1 and 2. A major study on student success in basic skills courses and retention programs provides
useful information about outcomes, but the real integrity of the institution relies on how that information
is used. The discussion of the initial efforts of the Student Development Division to develop measures of
student learning outcomes portrays a group of faculty and administrators working to create true and useful
assessments of effectiveness in producing outcomes that are difficult to measure and attribute to a specific
department or service. Truly productive dialog can only occur in an atmosphere of trust and respect
among the internal members of the College community and between the College and communities it
serves, as illustrated in Theme 3. Good planning requires valid evaluations of programs and services. As
Theme 4 suggests, when the participating parties are actively involved in the rigorous evaluation of their
mission and accomplishments, the planning and program development has integrity. The essay on integrity
and honesty, Theme 6, focuses on the way we govern ourselves, evaluate our institutional effectiveness,
and communicate our findings to the College community and the San Francisco communities we serve.
As noted in the “Reader’s Guide to the CCSF Accreditation Self Study” in the introduction to this document,
this Self Study has been organized around the assumption that the Standards Reports will be read
before the Theme Essays. Once the reader has assessed the institution’s comprehensive compliance with
the standards from the Standards Reports, the Theme Essays will give the reader a more effective and
affective understanding of the institution’s values and culture. The conclusions from both the Standards
Reports and the Theme Essays are then brought together in a section that addresses the Major Findings,
providing the reader with a clear picture of what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and where we want
to go from this point forward.
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