Sinclair Community College was awarded a $2 million grant last fall, which they are using for an initiative called “Connect 4 Completion.”
The project is aimed to increase student achievement, according to a completion initiative by Dr. Kathleen Cleary, associate provost for student completion.
“We’re looking at massive changes to the college, especially in advising, but even in just the way we’re structured for academic programs and how we’re offering student support within those programs,” she said. “Big changes, so it’s complicated and a little messy, but it’s going very, very well.”
Connect 4 Completion is divided into separate projects, including alterations in advising and creating career communities according to vocational patterns.
“It has three major parts to the grant,” she said. “The first is to develop the college into career communities, and group academic programs into these six career communities based on career themes. After we assigned programs to each of the six career communities, we are assigning advisors to each of the communities. Starting in the fall, every new student with zero credit hours will be assigned to an academic advisor.”
The combination of first-year advising and the regular advising system is a change students may have noticed, which is a part of this initiative.
“It’s going to be different for a new student starting in the fall,” she said. “They’ll get a letter saying ‘Welcome to this career community’ [and] they’ll go to advising, and at that point they will [assign the advisor]. They will meet with that person, and [they] will follow that [student] until graduation.”
Returning students will not be assigned advisors.
“As each new student comes in, we will assign them [an advisor],” she said “It may take five or six years to have every student assigned to an advisor. We’re trying though, we know we need to continue surveying returning students, and of course we’re going to be doing that as well.”
The goal for having career communities is to create an environment for students to connect with potential employers, other students and campus resources.
“It’s really looking at the student from all angles, and leveraging as many resources as possible that fit the needs of each particular student,” she said. “It’s to provide a forum for students to connect with peers, faculty, staff and employers in their area, but then also related to that is building a holistic advising model, in four domains — academic, career, financial and personal. Then developing an IT system so we can monitor the information we’re giving students.”
Overall, she feels that the project is going well, but there is still work to be done.
“I’m feeling really good about where we are, where we’re going,” she said. “There’s still a lot of work to be done, but I absolutely believe we’re committed to helping more students graduate — and we’re going to do that not by lowing standards and expectations, but by providing better coordinated support.”