City College of San Francisco - California Competes

INTRODUCTION | ABSTRACT
Theme Essays
Theme I: Institutional Commitment to
High-Quality Education
This essay provides the institutional context for
a case study that focuses on basic skills programs
within the College as an illustration of the institution’s
commitment to high-quality education.
It first defines “institutional commitment” and
“high-quality education,” providing an overview
of how we achieve both. It then discusses the
alignment of CCSF’s Mission with the planning
process and describes how this process yields
strategic priorities for the College that can readily
be mapped back to the Mission. One of CCSF’s
eight strategic priorities focuses solely on basic
skills, and the need for attention to basic skills is
referenced throughout the remaining priorities.
This fact, along with the foundational importance
of basic skills mastery for greater student
success in subsequent coursework, underpins the
rationale for selecting basic skills as a case study
that illustrates how the institution demonstrates
a commitment to high-quality education
through this focus. The case study, then, chronicles
the evolution of CCSF’s emphasis on basic
skills generally, and describes, in particular, interventions
implemented as the result of grant
funding in the two areas of greatest need,
English and Math; the ways in which the institution
measures progress and uses that
information to inform practice at the classroom,
direct service, and administrative levels; and how
the institution continues to promote and support
this emphasis through resource
development, policy changes, and structural
modifications.
Theme II: Student Learning Outcomes
The dialog around student learning outcomes
(SLOs) at City College of San Francisco has
ranged from passionate advocacy to strong skepticism.
The Theme II essay attempts to reflect the
values of City College of San Francisco by highlighting
some of the information the College
gathers and describing how it responds to it
within the institutional context. The essay has
three sections. The first addresses the institutional
context for student learning outcomes at
CCSF. It shows the linkages among the College’s
Mission Statement, its major institutional outcomes
assessments, and selected examples of its
efforts to assess and enhance outcomes. It
demonstrates that the College is committed to
the improvement of student learning, and, while
the role of outcomes assessment in the institutional
culture is still evolving, the value the
College places on student success will provide
the context for future work on SLOs. This discussion
of the institutional context is followed by
two case studies. The first describes the efforts
of CCSF’s English Department to use common
assessment instruments to restructure its reading
and composition course sequence. This case
study reveals that the assessment of student
learning outcomes can influence specific objectives
and methodologies used by a very large
cohort of instructors across a sequence of courses.
The second case study describes the work
of the leadership from all of the units in the
Student Development Division to create a comprehensive,
division-wide SLO initiative. While
this endeavor is still in the formative stages, it
demonstrates the commitment of the leadership
to the process. More importantly, the case study
reveals a clear understanding of the benefits and
challenges this type of assessment poses for the
various student development units and a commitment
to meet those challenges to improve
student outcomes.
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