American Samoa Community College

06/16/2009

June 16 , 2009 - ASCC Committees Make Accelerated Progress on Institutional Planning
by Jim Kneubuhl, ASCC Press Officer

ASCC President Dr. Seth Galea'i (front, center) and members of the Institutional Planning Committees have been working through the summer break, and have made significant progress in fulfilling the WASC requirement that the College demonstrate integrated, broad-based planning. (Photo: J. Kneubuhl)

The team of 21 administrators, faculty and staff at the American Samoa Community College (ASCC) who make up the Institutional Planning Committee (IPC) have made substantial progress in addressing one of the main areas of concern expressed by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), the organization whose findings during a visit last October resulted in the College being placed on sanction by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). Among its four main recommendations, the ACCJC/WASC said that ASCC needed to more clearly demonstrate evidence of "integrated planning," or the formalized participation of College constituents at all levels in the institution's decision and planning process.

As the College's Accreditation Liaison Officer and Vice President of Student and Academic Affairs Dr. Kathleen Kolhoff explained, "Integrated planning, as defined by ACCJC/WASC, requires documentation of coordinated efforts from all college stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration, Board of Higher Education and community." ACCJC/WASC specifically recommended that ASCC designate a group of college constituents to oversee planning activities and design a process to promote broader participation, provide more coordination, ensure greater integration of functional plans, and establish a clearer link to resource allocations.

As it transpired, the ACCJC.WASC recommendation of clearly documented integrated planning already made up a component of the College's Program Review process which got underway in February, the same month ASCC received its sanction notice. For the past three two-year cycles, the ASCC Program Review had previously covered only the academic divisions at the College, but the 2009 project also encompassed administrative divisions. Thus, the still-ongoing 2009 Program Review has allowed ASCC to collect and compile relevant data from all its areas and at all levels for the first time.

The first phase of the Program Review began with the formulation of the Institutional Planning Committee, composed of a broad-based representation of administration, faculty, staff, students, and the Board of Higher Education, and including a core group, the Institutional Planning Executive Core Committee (IPECC) formed to organize the planning process. The IPECC invited all faculty and staff to participate in surveys covering the scope of their work in terms of Inputs, Operations, and Outputs. From February through May, the process of dissemination and collection of surveys, data entry and analysis, and report summaries took place under the auspices of the Institutional Effectiveness Division.

The second phase of the project involved distributing the Program Review summaries to each division for their review, allowing them to identify priorities in need of addressing. The divisions in turn submitted their priorities to the IPECC as recommendations to be addressed in the institutional planning. The IPECC reviewed every recommendation for validation with Program Review data, and subsequently the recommendations were charted and diagrammed for use in the planning process by the IPC and its subcommittees, an activity currently in progress.

Institutional Effectiveness Division Director and committee member Mrs. Rosevonne Pato described the activities of the IPC as " essential in carrying out the integrated broad based planning process required by ACCJC that leads to good decision making, planned budgeting, and a system that works toward institutional effectiveness." Returning to the ACCJC/WASC concept of integrated planning within the context of the Program Review, Pato explained, "Integrated planning means that the decisions made to improve the college are data driven and are institutional - the plans are developed by the needs identified in the Program Review. Broad based planning means that everyone is represented and has the opportunity to participate or voice concerns and issues that need to be addressed."

Pato said that while the Program Review planning process and the final plans it yields will address the recommendations given by ACCJC/WASC, the College had already begun to move toward continual, ongoing planning even without those recommendations. Describing the IPC activities now in progress, she explained, "The Program Review identified four strategic areas of focus for ASCC - Academic Excellence, Technology, Staffing, and Physical Facilities/Maintenance. The subcommittees are now in the actual planning stage that will result in master plans for Staffing, Academics, Facilities, Technology, and Budget. The work will continue since the plans are for the next three years, and include an annual review and a biennial Program Review. The subcommittees will be re-established in the next planning revision which should take place in two years. The master plans will determine the institutional priorities which are eventually approved by the Board through the President's presentation of the master plans."

To put the current IPC activities in perspective, according to Pato, "ACCJC/WASC expects institutions of higher learning to follow a three-year cycle of evaluation, planning, and implementation that allows a year for each phase. The Program Review makes up the evaluation stage, we've now moved into the planning stage, and the implementation stage will begin after the Board of Higher Education and the President approve the work of the IPC, at which point the plans become the direction the College will follow for until the next evaluation stage. Having only begun this process in February, our IPC has actually moved at an accelerated pace, and in a little over four months we've reached a point in the process that most other colleges take two years to reach."