City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME V
The College is committed to maintaining a diverse faculty and has recently improved the documentation
required of applicants regarding their preparation for meeting the needs of culturally and academically
diverse learners. However, the length and complexity of the hiring process for faculty and administrators
can have a negative impact on the quantity and quality of the pool of applicants, particularly in areas
where there is significant competition for these staff from other Colleges or from the private sector.
The College should also investigate ways to provide more flexibility in the interview process
without compromising the integrity of the hiring procedures.
Some improvements have been made in the integration of Program Review with institutional planning
and curriculum development and revision. Programs now have the option of addressing plans and activities
related to the assessment of student learning outcomes in their Program Reviews. During the 2004-05
academic year, plans were initiated to tie the review and revision of course outlines to the six-year Program
Review cycle. The College should have a fuller discussion of how the Program Review process could
be used to institutionalize efforts to assess student learning outcomes and make improvements in
the teaching and learning process. In addition, the College should develop stronger methods for
assessing how students are performing after completing and/or graduating from programs and
that information should be used to improve student learning outcomes.
While CCSF has a consistent and carefully administered faculty evaluation procedure, there are problems
in the continuity of those procedures. The strengths and weaknesses that an evaluation committee
identifies in one evaluation are not reported to the subsequent evaluation team. In addition, there
are no formal provisions for mentoring and other professional support for faculty who receive evaluations
indicating a need for improvement. Improvements in these procedures would strengthen
instructors’ abilities to foster student learning. The College also needs to address funding for professional
development, especially in light of the loss of state funding for development activities.
Counselors face significant challenges in maintaining current accurate information on the hundreds
of programs at CCSF and advising students appropriately. The College needs to develop better
organizational structures for counseling and instructional programs to communicate and
collaborate to insure that students are given the best available information.
The College has made informed and intelligent decisions related to the distribution of the relatively
scarce resources over the last few years. In addition, the College has been quite successful in securing
grants and other types of additional funding. However, there are significant needs for additional resources.
The College should continue to explore all possible avenues to improve financial resources that
support the evaluation and improvement of student learning.
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