TSJC staff works together on assessment
TSJC faculty and staff gather in the Pioneer Room on the college campus to work on assessment
The students have gone home following the fall semester at Trinidad State Junior College, but before the faculty headed into break, a final in-service session was held to help improve the college’s best practices and to share ideas for improvement. Almost the entire staff from the Valley Campus in Alamosa made the trek over La Veta Pass to join the faculty and staff from the Trinidad Campus for a joint session focusing on assessment and the strategic plan.
President Felix Lopez started the meeting with a short update on the budget and a recap of the past semester. He then turned the program over to Dean Debbie Ulibarri who walked the staff through the college’s strategic plan and mission. “We had 155 faculty and staff representing both campuses.” said Ulibarri. “They were engaged in assessing their programs and student service areas in order to ensure student success. A college culture that promotes continuous improvement was unmistakable.”
Robert Philbin passes the “Assessment Torch” to Jean Sumner. Philbin has led TSJC’s assessment team for the past ten years. Sumner will be taking that job on in the near future. (photo by David Barrack)
Following lunch, out-going assessment coordinator Robert Philbin, who received special recognition for 10 years of leadership in assessment, and future coordinator Jean Sumner walked the faculty and staff through a series on group discussion geared toward assessment. The faculty discussed topics such as what students should be able to do when they graduate, how to measure if the students are meeting those objectives, what weak areas are in their programs, and what can be done to improve the programs offered at TSJC. Staff discussed things that would improve decision making affecting their departments, ways to improve communication and how to improve overall knowledge of what is going on at the college. Later in the afternoon both groups came together and reported some of their thoughts and ideas.
President Lopez finished the session with an inspirational speech to rally the faculty and staff heading into the spring semester. “Improvement Planning is a key and essential part of any continuous quality improvement plan,” commented Vice President Paula Davis. “Thursday’s In-service on strategic planning and assessment was wonderful and resulted in many great ideas. It will definitely provide us a foundation to build upon. The assessment work that has been led by Robert Philbin and the Assessment Committee over the past few years provided a lot of data for faculty to review and set targets for improvements in programs and majors.”
The college is open until December 23 and will then close until January 3. More in-service sessions are scheduled for early January.
