Accreditation - Hartnell College!!

Institutional Self Evaluation – 12-05-12
faculty, staff and administrators to address budgetary concerns led to a review of the
educational priorities relevant to the mission and the realities of the district. (I.B.2)
Subsequently, a concerted strategy and sets of recommendations were adopted collegewide.
Similarly, the work of the Student Success (formerly Basic Skills Initiative) Committee is
integrated with the efforts that are part of multiple Title V grants. These efforts engage
faculty, staff and administrators from various divisions and help foster collegial dialogue.
The college holds periodic ―Town Hall‖ meetings, including all full-time faculty and all
available staff, on issues of importance to the college. In the years since the last self study,
meetings have been held on a variety of topics—Student Learning Outcomes (more than
once), Shared Governance (Spring 2008), Course Scheduling (Spring 2012), and
Accreditation. (I.B.3) The college holds between one to three such inclusive meetings in a
typical semester.
Part of the faculty contract mandates professional development on ―flex days,‖ devoted to
presentations and workshops on pedagogy and other practical matters relating to instruction.
Recent flex days have included Assessment of Learning Outcomes, Program Planning, and
Assessing Student Writing, and Student Success. (I.B.4)
Hartnell‘s new superintendent/president (as of July 2012) has already established a regular
President’s Weekly Report distributed to the Board of Trustees, college partners, students,
and all the college‘s faculty and staff. The reports are posted on the college web site and an
announcement is sent out via email when the latest edition is posted
(http://www.hartnell.edu/president/reports_by_month.html). (I.B.5) The content of this
report is far ranging and includes, but is not limited to: management decisions, operational
issues, hiring decisions, student success and achievement, college events and activities,
education trends and issues, etc.
Much of the initial activity in this accreditation period was a massive institutional
mobilization in response to being placed on probation. Certain initial collective steps
involved major changes, as well as temporary emergency measures—such as the
reassignment of faculty time to complete the revision of all course outlines. The largest
single event along these lines was the three day college wide retreat at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey in September 2008, which resulted in significant dialogue
about the college‘s future as well as specific changes in its approaches, including
establishment of learning communities such as the Academy for College Excellence (ACE).
Self Evaluation
Though the way the college meets this standard has changed in recent years, Hartnell has a
lively culture of collegial discussion and self-reflection focused on institutional
improvement. Student learning and institutional processes are debated openly in informal
venues, and discussed formally in focused, goal-oriented ways through our governance
structure. The routine assessment of individual programs, external data, and institutional
outcomes provides the raw data and information necessary for an ongoing, self-reflective
dialogue about continuous improvement.
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