Accreditation - Hartnell College!!

Institutional Self Evaluation – 12-05-12
F. Responses to Recommendations from the Most Recent Educational
Quality and Institutional Effectiveness Review
OVERVIEW
The report by Hartnell College dated October 2007 addressing Recommendation 7 and Concern
1 was accepted by the Commission, and Hartnell was moved from probationary status to warning
according to the letter from the Commission dated January 2008. The college then continued to
address Recommendations 2-6 and Concern 2 over the next two years.
Recommendation 1
The team recommends that the college develop a professional ethics code for all personnel and
use it as a foundation for conducting an ongoing, collegial, self-reflective dialogue about the
continuous improvement of student learning and institutional processes, including the
governance process. (Standards I.B.1; III.A.1.d; IV.A.1)
Resolution of Recommendation 1: Creation of the college Professional Code of Ethics was in
progress at the time of the October visit, and was completed February 2008. The Ethics
statement is found on the college website at http://www.hartnell.edu/about/ethics.html. The
resolution of Recommendation 1 is evident in the reaffirmation of accreditation in June 2008.
Ongoing Actions Related to Recommendation 1: The Professional Code of Ethics—with three
guiding principles of Excellence, Fairness, and Transparency—continues to be infused in the
culture. A cultural shift began to occur as flex activities involved assessment of institutional level
outcomes, discussion of course and program level outcomes, faculty dialogue about assessment
modalities and measurement of course and program outcomes. Title V grant funds were utilized
to create assessment tools that presently allow instructors to track student cohorts through
sequenced courses. It has also allowed for data gathering about retention and persistence. These
tools are being used widely across disciplines to collect program data. As stated on our College-
Wide Ethics Policy webpage:
Inherent in the notion of “excellence” is the belief that we cannot be excellent
unless we fully meet the needs of our students and community. To do that requires
that we know what those needs are, and utilize a system for assessing how well
our efforts have worked. We must continually refine our data gathering and
planning processes (e.g., student learning outcomes, shared governance, and
program planning and assessment), and analyze those findings to set priorities
and allocate resources.
The use of grant funds to create tools for tracking outcomes and progress, the use of flex time to
demonstrate their use, and the ongoing dialogue between faculty members and disciplines about
creation of and measurement of student learning has shifted the way college community
constituents think and interact. The questions brought about by this dialogue deepened with each
Page 49