Sinclair Community College was awarded a $2 million grant last fall, which they are using for an initiative called \u201cConnect 4 Completion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project is aimed to increase student achievement, according to a completion initiative by Dr. Kathleen Cleary, associate provost for student completion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re looking at massive changes to the college, especially in advising, but even in just the way we\u2019re structured for academic programs and how we\u2019re offering student support within those programs,\u201d she said. \u201cBig changes, so it\u2019s complicated and a little messy, but it\u2019s going very, very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Connect 4 Completion is divided into separate projects, including alterations in advising and creating career communities according to vocational patterns.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has three major parts to the grant,\u201d she said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be different for a new student starting in the fall,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ll get a letter saying \u2018Welcome to this career community\u2019 [and] they\u2019ll 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Returning students will not be assigned advisors.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs each new student comes in, we will assign them [an advisor],\u201d she said \u201cIt may take five or six years to have every student assigned to an advisor. We\u2019re trying though, we know we need to continue surveying returning students, and of course we\u2019re going to be doing that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The goal for having career communities is to create an environment for students to connect with potential employers, other students and campus resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really looking at the student from all angles, and leveraging as many resources as possible that fit the needs of each particular student,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s 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 \u2014 academic, career, financial and personal. Then developing an IT system so we can monitor the information we\u2019re giving students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overall, she feels that the project is going well, but there is still work to be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling really good about where we are, where we\u2019re going,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s still a lot of work to be done, but I absolutely believe we\u2019re committed to helping more students graduate \u2014 and we\u2019re going to do that not by lowing standards and expectations, but by providing better coordinated support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinclair Community College was awarded a $2 million grant last fall, which they are using for an initiative called \u201cConnect 4 Completion.\u201d The project is aimed to increase student achievement, according to a completion initiative by Dr. Kathleen Cleary, associate provost for student completion. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at massive changes to the college, especially in advising, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-2Aj","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9940,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9939\/revisions\/9940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}