City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME IV
Once the problem has been identified—here Financial Aid is a good example—the College is not always as
quick as we would like to be in selecting from among the various promising solutions and refining one of
them to make it workable. Sometimes it takes a while to broadly mobilize the will necessary to take bold
action. A&R might be seen as an example of that. Precisely because the situation never reached a crisis
point, it took a while to reach the decision that big changes were warranted. Once there is consensus for
change, it can still take time to identify and obtain human, financial, and other resources essential to the
solution and to actually set a timeline or trigger an intervention or initiative of some kind. For example,
ESL knew it wanted to institute speaking and writing tests again at some point—there was a developing
consensus about that need—but there were other assessment issues that always took priority until such
time as the evaluation conducted by the Noncredit Curriculum Committee placed the speaking/writing
test issue squarely on the immediate action agenda. In summary, there are various challenges that the
College faces in trying to address problems in a timely fashion and some of those challenges seem
unavoidable in an institution of this size. When the goal is continuous improvement, as it is at the
College, there will always be more concerns than can be addressed at one time.
The College can take various steps to enable the institutional improvement system to work more
effectively and efficiently. These suggestions are intended to support the continued development of
a problem-solving culture at the College—a solution-focused approach.
First, the College should implement a data dialog initiative for the purpose of greatly increasing among
all members of the College community (1) exposure to College data, both qualitative and quantitative;
(2) experience and knowledge about accessing, interpreting, and using data; and (3) the amount of
College discussion about the implications of data.
Second, all Shared Governance groups and College organizations should be notified that, if they
have not already done so, they are being requested to proactively identify a list of priorities and formulate
an action plan (for the internal use of their committee), starting in Fall 2005, and continuing
on at least an annual basis. As their work is valued and important, setting priorities and plans will help
to focus the activities of their group for maximum effectiveness, enhancing the benefit to the College,
the students, and the community. Their plans should: (1) reflect their commitment to student learning;
(2) be informed by College data; (3) seek to resolve issues within their scope of responsibilities; and
(4) be informed by and congruent with the Strategic Plan.
Finally, the plans and recommendations from the Standards Reports as well as the Theme Essays
should be integrated into the Planning, Budgeting, and Evaluation System. The College should
ensure that they are used in drawing up Annual Plans, in the revision of the Strategic Plan, in
revision of the Program Review process, and in revision of any other relevant plans such as the
Education Master Plan. Moreover, the implementation of the plans must be evaluated.
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