‘Ethos, pathos, and logos’ of Strategic Enrollment Scheduling How to

‘Ethos, pathos, and logos’ of Strategic Enrollment Scheduling How to get administrators and faculty to engage with data.

California Winter Summit 2020 Institutional Background American River College Community College, Located in Sacramento California One of four1 colleges in the Los Rios Community College District Serves over 31,000 students in all traditional aspects of a community college: Basic Skills Career Technical Transfer Job Skill Enrichment Lifelong learning Degrees Certificates Experiencing reduction in enrollments changing funding structures general structural ennui One cannot understate how much implementation in a district raises the complexity of developing scheduling ethos, but that’s for another presentation. 1

California Winter Summit 2020 Implementation Snapshot Fall ‘16 “Scheduling” was identified as a major focus area for campus improvement Spring ’17 American River College Enterprise Level Scheduling System Task Force formed. Inventory of scheduling processes and procedures performed though surveys and individual interviews. Fall ’17 Vendor Search by Los Rios District, Ad Astra selected Spring ’18 Vendor approved by board, Technical implementation began “PeopleSoft, meet Ad Astra. Ad Astra, meet PeopleSoft.” Spring ‘18-Today Astra Schedule and Platinum Structural Implementation

Building Trust, Listening to Concerns The importance of the pre-work

California Winter Summit 2020 The Scheduling Process Report The initial interviews and resulting report has been a seminal part of our implementation By sitting with each office staff responsible for division scheduling and listening: Inventoried the actual processes used (which were remarkably divergent division to division) Built relationships with the staff to both assure them that they were being heard and provide them with a conduit directly to the team working on the new system Identified EARLY facility hiccups which were going to have to be carefully implemented in Astra Schedule.

California Winter Summit 2020 Contextualizing & BRANDING Preliminary Data Coupling Ad Astra Data with local data. Fleshing out additional datasets to augment Ad Astra data: WSCH, FTES, FTEF, etc. Building a matrix which provided access to the data before we were ready to provide access to Ad Astra Google Datastudio Python data analysis

California Winter Summit 2020 Enrollment Monitoring awaiting Monitor Daily reports generated and distributed to all Deans & Department Chairs Liberating data, starting the conversation

California Winter Summit 2020 Platinum local reports, awaiting Align Hey, this looks familiar! Merging Platinum data and local data that is not captured FTEF, WSCH, other concerns

Strategic Enrollment Management Report The Real Work Begins

California Winter Summit 2020 Ad Astra will not solve any of your structural scheduling issues. (Sorry, Tom) Strategic Enrollment Management Group, the three areas of concern Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of scheduling Why we schedule what we schedule “Students are the reason we are here, and their education is our primary responsibility.” Tying scheduling back to the college’s Mission, Vision, and Values Mechanisms of scheduling Getting way down into the weeds and documenting how decisions are going to be made. Documenting where and how data will be used for decision making Inoculating the process with documentation Answering the question “What happens if the person in charge of enrollment management wins the lottery, drops the microphone, and moves to Bora Bora?” Building a structure for iterative schedule change. Avoiding “paralysis by analysis” and trying to change too much too quickly

California Winter Summit 2020 Ethos, Pathos, and Logos of Scheduling The primary purpose driving the development of our Academic Schedule is to provide students access and opportunities to: develop their abilities; ARC’s schedule development process requires: fiscally sound, efficient, transparent, and accountable practices; engage in critical and creative thinking; effective communication within the college and with the communities served by the college; succeed in a competitive global work environment; civil and honest communication that promote mutual respect and trust; exhibit responsible citizenship benefit society as well as themselves; participate in lifelong learning;

California Winter Summit 2020 Capturing current enrollment esoterica and leaving room for future change Defining the esoteric E.g. “We need a minimum of 1,000 FTES at our Natomas Center or we lose 1.5 million.” What data do we need to ensure this? Capturing the scheduling zeitgeist Opt-out scheduling, pathways, legislated changes to curriculum: how do we meet the promises we are making to our students? What data do we need to keep these promises? Using the carrot instead of the stick “Our goal is to consider our published schedule of classes as a promise to the faculty and students. We are working to a place where, unless there is an extremely dire situation, we do not cancel sections that have been placed on the schedule.” Wow, we’re going to need a lot of trust in our data to get here!

Where does the current suite of Ad Astra tools fit into your current process?

California Winter Summit 2020 Where and how data will be used: Where does Astra Data fit into your existing structures? Where will you need to change your structures?

California Winter Summit 2020 Down in the weeds Where data fits into the nooks and crannies of building a schedule What can Astra help with? What will you need to build yourself?

Questions and discussion. [email protected]