AQIP Category Nine, Building Collaborative Relationships

Transcription

1 AQIP Category Nine AQIP Category Nine, Building Collaborative Relationships, examines your institution s relationships current and potential to analyze how they contribute to the institution s accomplishing its mission. 9P1. How do you create, prioritize, and build relationships with the educational institutions and other organizations from which you receive your students? Allen creates relationships with Unified School Districts through concurrent enrollment programs and the on-site use of faculties for college-level courses. This positive relationship is furthered through visits with secondary education students and high school counselors by Allen s Admissions representatives and College recruiters. Articulation agreements between the secondary institutions and the College, as a post-secondary institution, provide educational and career pathways for students, facilitating seamless transitions to college study. Scheduled meetings between the College President and UDS Superintendents take place every other year in both the Northern Tier service area counties of Osage, Coffey, and Wabaunsee and the Southern Tier service area counties of Allen, Woodson, and Anderson to further build relationships between the USD leaders and the College administration. Figure 9P1a shows a sampling of 19 Concurrent Enrollment Programs (CEPs) for the Northern and Southern Tiers of the Allen service area. Figure 9P1b shows a sampling of 59 articulation agreements between Allen and secondary institutions, with the Career Pathway noted.

2 9P2. How do you create, prioritize, and build relationships with the educational institutions and employers that depend on the supply of your students and graduates that meet those organizations requirements? The College creates relationships with educational institutions through clear 2-year to 4-year institutional transfer guides, articulation agreements, and direct contact by way of faculty-to-faculty communication and administration-to-administration communication to assure the seamless transition of our students and graduates to university study. The College creates and builds relationships with employers through active advisory councils for Career and Technical Education programs, degrees, and certificates. Listed below are Kansas Regents Universities and a municipal university with which Allen has collaborative relationships and/or articulation agreements: Emporia State University, Emporia, KS Fort Hayes State University, Fort Hays, KS Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, KS University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS Washburn University, Topeka, KS. Listed below are private colleges and universities with which Allen has collaborative relationships and/or articulation agreements: Cleveland Chiropractic College, Kansas City, MO Southwestern College, Winfield, KS Friends University, Wichita, KS. Listed below are areas of collaboration where Allen works with other higher education institutions and/or external stakeholders: Kansas Core Outcomes Project Southeast Kansas Higher Education System Business and Industry Student Internships Career and Technical Education Advisory Councils. 9P3. How do you create, prioritize, and build relationships with the organizations that provide services to your students? The College contracts with NelNet to provide students an electronic cashier program that allows them to set up an electronic payment plan. The College contracts with Chartwells Dining Service to provide food services for the residential Iola Campus. The Vice President of Finance and Operations, along with the Dean of Students, is responsible for building relationships with the Foodservice Manager and reviewing annually this contractual arrangement. Other student services, such as the Devil s Den Bookstore, are operated by the College.

3 9P4. How do you create, prioritize, and build relationships with the organizations that supply materials and services to your institution? In all areas, the College strives to be a good consumer of materials and services through clear communication and good faith negotiation with organizations that supply materials and services to the College. We maintain a strong record of effective stewardship of resources. By Board policy, the Vice President of Finance and Operations places RFPs for larger purchases, prioritizes bids, and presents these to the Board of Trustees with recommendations for approval. 9P5. How do you create, prioritize, and build relationships with the educational associations, external agencies, consortia partners, and the general community with whom you interact? By searching out and responding to requests from agencies, partners, and the general community we have become involved in very positive and long-lived relationships. The College has representatives attending the Osage County Economic Development Board s E-Community program, the Kansas Board of Regents Technical Education Authority, the Kansas Association of Community College Technical Education Administrator s Group, and the Community College Deans and Directors meetings. In addition, College coordinators participate in various state-level organizations for specific Career and Technical Education programs, such as boards for Addiction and Prevention Studies and organizations for Early Childhood Education. Listed below are areas of collaboration where Allen builds relationships with associations, agencies, and the general community: Osage Area Technical Consortium KBOR Performance Agreements Kansas Core Outcomes Project Chambers of Commerce in Burlingame, Iola, and Osage City Counties of Allen, Woodson, Anderson, Coffey, Osage, and Wabaunsee. 9P6. How do you ensure that your partnership relationships are meeting the varying needs of those involved? 9P7. How do you create and build relationships between and among departments and units within your institution? How do you assure integration and communication across these relationships? The College uses its structure of councils, committees, and task forces to build relationships among departments and work groups, while maintaining our focus on students and learning. The councils, committees, and task forces structure encourages ideas to perk up from the individual, through to departments and work groups, to the President s Council, and on to the Board of Trustees for implementation. We assure integration and communication in building internal collaborative relationships by constructing multi-disciplinary and multi-workgroup committees and task forces to address key challenges and accomplish the necessary work of the College. Our division chairs, directors, and coordinators are responsible and accountable for communicating out to their colleagues, as well as for bringing forth information to their respective Academic Affairs, Student Affairs, and Business Affairs Councils. These processes are well documented, through process documents, agendas and minutes, as well as embedded in position descriptions for these roles.

4 9R1. What measures of building collaborative relationships, external and internal, do you collect and analyze regularly? Allen collects and analyzes quantitative and qualitative data in building external collaborative relationships in the areas of articulations agreements with both colleges and universities, articulation agreements with secondary education institutions, Concurrent Enrollment Program agreements, and collaborations with businesses and industries. 9R2. What are your performance results in building your key collaborative relationships, external and internal? Figure 9R2 shows performance results for building external collaborative relationships. 9R3. How do your results for the performance of your processes for Building Collaborative Relationships compare with the performance results of other higher education institutions and, if appropriate, of organizations outside of higher education? 9I1. What recent improvements have you made in this category? How systematic and comprehensive are your processes and performance results for Building Collaborative Relationships? Recent improvements in Building Collaborative Relationships include the strategic growth of the Allen County Community College Endowment Association in alumni membership, as well as the steady creation of further scholarship opportunities for our students. Figure 9I1 shows the growth of Endowment Association Alumni and student scholarships.

5 9I2. How do your culture and infrastructure help you to select specific processes to improve and to set targets for improved performance results in Building Collaborative Relationships? Allen s culture is collaborative and our infrastructure is flexible allowing us to undertake partnerships, such as a recent initiative with Fort Scott Community College, to better serve our communities. Targets for development of this new collaboration with Fort Scott have been incorporated into the College s KBOR Performance Agreement for , through which we are accountable for setting targets and meeting goals.