Standard Eleven - Integrity

 

DESCRIPTION

On January 14, 2007, newly elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick spoke at Cape Cod Community College. He was introduced by a man who thanked him for honoring his earlier promise to return to Cape Cod for the event honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Governor replied that it was no big deal.

"I do what I say I am going to do," he said with a shrug.

That is integrity.

Cape Cod Community College was established in 1961 by the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Mission of the new college, according to the enabling legislation, was to be an "open-admission, publicly supported, post-secondary institution dedicated to providing quality educational programs and services at a low cost to meet the diverse needs of the citizens of Cape Cod, the Islands, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, and southeastern Massachusetts."

The authority of the College to operate is also contained in Chapter 15A of the General Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the decisions of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, and the College's Board of Trustees.

Cape Cod Community College strives to conduct itself with integrity in its dealings with students, faculty, administrators, staff, and the general public. The true test of integrity is whether the College does what it says it is going to do. The basic statement of the College's purpose is contained in its Mission Statement, adopted in 2006, and approved by the BHE in 2007.

"The students' education comes first at Cape Cod Community College. We are a learning-centered community that values the contributions of a diverse population, welcomes open inquiry, and promotes mutual respect. The College provides a strong educational foundation of critical, creative thinking, communication competencies, and a global, multicultural perspective that prepares students for life and work in the 21st Century. Our liberal arts, sciences, and career programs provide educational pathways that serve the varied social, economic, and demographic characteristics of our community with a distinctive focus on sustainability. We honor our past, celebrate our present, and imagine our future."

Further indications of the College's commitment to integrity, including truthfulness, clarity, fairness, transparency, and nondiscrimination are contained in the Governance Document, the minutes of all meetings held under that document, the Administrative Policies and Procedures Manual, the College Catalog, the Admissions Bulletin, the Student Handbook, collective bargaining agreements, and reports on the deliberations of the Management/Association Committee on Employee Relations (MACER), the College's Affirmative Action Plan, the College's Standard Bid Proposal Form, and in the Advisors' Handbook.

All meetings on campus are open to the general public, with the limited exceptions defined by Massachusetts open meeting laws. Decisions made at meetings are published in minutes made public on the College computer network and are frequently reported in the weekly student newspaper and newspapers in the community.

A non-discrimination statement appears on many College documents, including the main page of the College website. It reads: "Cape Cod Community College policy prohibits discrimination in education, employment, and services on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, marital status, national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation, or disability."

A longer Affirmative Action and Title IX Policy statement reads as follows:

The College's sexual harassment policy and affirmative action policy are distributed by email to all College faculty and staff each semester and posted on the College website. In compliance with federal regulations, the College's Title IX Officer regularly notifies faculty, students and staff of the College's policies regarding sexual harassment and discrimination based on sex. The Title IX Officer communicates through professional development programs and a newsletter covering sexual harassment issues in higher education to help everyone at CCCC stay current regarding these issues.

All classrooms, laboratories, and other campus buildings are accessible to people with disabilities. In an effort to reach out to under-represented populations, the College maintains a satellite campus in a storefront on Main Street in Hyannis, close to low-income and immigrant population centers. The Hyannis Center focuses on Adult Basic Education and English for Speakers of Other Languages.

Both campuses can be reached by public transportation offered by the Cape Cod Regional Transportation Authority.

Academic freedom is guaranteed by the College's Collective Bargaining Agreement and the College Governance Document.

All College employees are subject to the guidelines of the State Ethics Commission.

The College has published clearly defined procedures for resolving grievances from students, faculty, and staff. The student grievance procedure is described in the Student Handbook. The procedure for faculty and professional staff is defined by the MCCC Collective Bargaining Agreement. The grievance procedure for support staff is defined by the AFSCME Collective Bargaining Agreement.

The hiring of new faculty and professional staff is handled through a procedure that is designed to ensure fairness and nondiscrimination. Almost all full-time positions are filled through a well defined process that includes a national advertising campaign in general-audience publications, specialized publications, and publications targeted to minority populations. Applications are reviewed by Search and Screen Committees that include faculty and staff from the affected work area and from outside that area, an administrator, and a member of the Affirmative Action Committee, who is tasked with making sure members of under-represented populations are not victims of discrimination. The final decision in employment is up to the President of the College.

In 2001 and 2002, an ad hoc committee of 24 members of the administration, faculty, and staff prepared the College's Strategic Plan as a framework for fiscal and academic planning for the 2003-2008 period. The process included substantial input from the College's internal and external communities and identified opportunity, quality, and integrity as the animating values for the Strategic Plan. Seven strategic priorities were named and have served as benchmarks for College planning since acceptance of the plan by College Meeting and the Board of Trustees.

The College has been monitoring the level of student satisfaction through administration of the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory for 10 years and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement for one year. In the future, the College plans to alternate these two surveys, so that each one will be administered biennially. A similar survey of faculty satisfaction is planned for 2007.

Students also complete evaluations of adjunct instructors every semester and of full-time faculty once a year, in accordance with the Collective Bargaining Agreements. The results of these student evaluations are reviewed by Academic Deans and the Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs. These surveys and evaluations are designed to monitor institutional effectiveness.

 

APPRAISAL

A sentence commonly heard at Cape Cod Community College, particularly since the arrival of College President Kathleen Schatzberg in 1998, is "Students come first." The President's welcome message on Page 3 of the Spring 2007 Course Guide begins, "We believe strongly that no place in higher education is more committed to putting students first." The extent to which this is reflected in the everyday operations of the campus is one indication of how well the College is living up to its Mission.

The results of the Noel-Levitz Surveys taken in 1997, 2001, 2003 and 2006 indicate that in the area of "Student Centeredness," the satisfaction of students at CCCC has remained slightly higher than the national average of community colleges.

Among all 12 areas of the survey, in the 2006 survey, six of the areas indicated no statistical difference between the CCCC results and the national average, and in the six areas where there was a difference, the CCCC scores were higher in satisfaction than the national average in four cases and lower in two (Admission and Financial Aid, and Campus Support Services).

The Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory is administered every other year and includes questions that relate to the integrity of the College. In general, CCCC students were more satisfied with their college than their peers across the nation. CCCC scores were the same or better for most questions. The College's scores were higher at a statistically significant level of difference than the national average in several areas, including responses to the following statements:

• People on this campus respect and are supportive of each other
• The campus staff are caring and helpful
• Faculty are fair and unbiased in their treatment of students
• The institution shows a commitment to part-time students
• The institution shows a commitment to students with disabilities

Other aspects of what might be considered a part of the College's integrity in which satisfaction with the College scored lower included the following:

• Admissions and financial aid
• Campus support services
• Safety and security

It should be noted that the same areas scored lower in the national summaries as well.

Evidence of the effectiveness of nondiscrimination and affirmative action policies can be checked by comparing the difference between the percentage of minority group members at the College and in the general population it serves. According to the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, approximately 5.8% of the College's service area population consists of members of minority groups. This statistic is based upon the 2000 Census. In the Fall 2006 semester, about 13% of the College's credit-earning students were members of minority groups. This percentage has been increasing over the last 10 years.

According to the Human Resource Department, approximately 14% of the College's employees, and 17% of the College's teaching faculty, are members of minority groups.

The Noel-Levitz Survey compares how students perceive the College's commitment to serving under-represented populations to the national average of student perceptions on the subject at other colleges. The results at CCCC have usually been slightly better than the national average. On the question of the "institution's commitment to under-represented populations," the CCCC scores are slightly higher than the national average, except in 2006, when the College's score was 0.02 lower than the national average.

On November 9, 2006, a visiting team from the Massachusetts Department of Education, acting on behalf of the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, visited the campus to conduct what is informally known as a civil rights audit. In a "Letter of Findings" dated January 20, 2007, the Department required Cape Cod Community College to submit a Voluntary Compliance Plan (VCP) to address certain findings. A campus committee was formed in February 2007 to review these findings and develop a compliance plan to address areas of concern identified in the audit. The audit did not find any evidence of discrimination in the College's educational programs or in admission to, access to, treatment in, or employment in its programs or activities. The report did note several areas in which the College was requested to develop voluntary compliance measures, including a description of the action and target completion dates.

The primary VCP statement of concern was as follows: "College publications, policy statements, financial aid forms, admissions/recruitment materials, notice of non-discrimination, student handbooks and guides need to be reflective of the languages of the region, in particular Spanish and Portuguese; the College non-discrimination statement should appear in all major College publications and policies and website, the Financial Aid Office should develop a report identifying financial aid distribution by ethnicity, gender and disability status to verify that financial aid is awarded in a manner that does not discriminate; the College will develop and implement a policy that ensures that Distance Education courses are fully accessible to both students with and without disabilities; residency guidelines shall not be subject to geographic boundaries; improved signage and reconfiguration of the wheelchair entrance to the Wilkens Library."

In 2006, the College formed a team to receive training from the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), an international organization that teaches leadership techniques to combat discrimination, reduce prejudice, and resolve conflicts. The College became an affiliate of NCBI, and the team conducted several workshops, including an all-day workshop for 50 volunteers, a two-hour workshop for the Board of Trustees and President's Cabinet, and several one-hour workshops for students. Participant evaluations from the NCBI prejudice-reduction workshops have been overwhelmingly positive. The College hosted a statewide three-day NCBI training seminar on campus in the summer of 2007. At that seminar, teams from seven community colleges and two four-year institutions received training in the NCBI prejudice reduction model.

Also, the Human Resources Office has initiated a dispute-resolution training program for College employees through a local agency (viz. Cape Mediation) specializing in conflict-and dispute resolution. Since 2005 approximately 50 employees have been trained, and this training is expected to continue.

In the last five years, no formal grievances have been filed relating to academic freedom. According to the MCCC Grievance Officer, grievances are divided into two levels at the initial stage of the process. The first is a filing, which precipitates an informal hearing. This matter stays on campus, in-house. The second is a formal grievance level whereby the MCCC is involved at the state level. Over the past five years the College has had several grievances initiated by faculty regarding academic freedom. All were resolved on campus and never reached the state level.

According to the Affirmative Action Officer, at any given time there are one or two active complaints from employees, and there might be two or three student complaints a year. These are investigated on campus by the Affirmative Action Officer. The individual complaining may then pursue his or her complaint by contacting the Massachusetts Council Against Discrimination (MCAD). According to the Human Resources Office, two employees filed complaints with MCAD in the last five years and their complaints were found to be without sufficient cause or basis.

The College's commitment to Title IX addresses and meets the requirements of the law. However, the coordinator feels that Title IX coordination might be more effective if it were part of a permanent job description rather than assigned on an annual basis. In the fall of 2007 the College President proposed a new position (Director of Equal Opportunity and Institutional Development) that would include Title IX coordination.

There are no more than two or three formal grievances filed each year for discrimination based on sex or gender. Most Title IX grievances involve student-to-student sexual harassment. A recent American Association of University Women (AAUW) study suggests that nationwide two-thirds of college students experience sexual harassment, but only seven percent report incidents to faculty members or other college employees.

The College's Affirmative Action Committee is a Standing Advisory Committee of the College. Its members are members of the College community, including faculty, staff, administrators, and students, all of whom serve as they do on other Standing Committees. As the name implies, the committee is an advisory committee to the President, and is assigned to ensure that all Affirmative Action goals are met at CCCC. All Search and Screen Committees include representatives of the Affirmative Action Committee, which is chaired by the Affirmative Action Officer. The committee meets monthly or more frequently when needed.

The Diversity Advisory Committee is comprised of community and College members appointed by the President to advise the College on diversity issues. The group meets monthly.

In the field of public safety, the College files annual reports in compliance with the federal Cleary Act. The College has few public safety incidents to report. According to the Director of Public Safety, the Department of Public Safety is responsible for maintaining a safe and secure environment for students, faculty, staff, and visitors. The Director reported in the fall of 2006 that the growth in student population had exceeded the growth in the budget for the Public Safety Department. In the fall of 2007 the Board of Trustees approved an expansion of the Public Safety Department and three new public safety officers were hired.

Students are invited to serve on all Standing Committees of the College and to participate in College Meeting. One student is elected each year to serve on the Board of Trustees. This action contributes to the inclusion of student perceptions in all decisions made at the College.

Over the past five years, CCCC has committed itself to developing online distance learning and to providing students with access to online materials. From virtually no online course five years ago, CCCC now offers more than 30 online courses, and provides student access to many more through its membership in the Massachusetts Colleges Online Consortium. During this same time frame, CCCC has also experienced a significant growth in the number of faculty using our Blackboard learning management system to augment and enhance communications with students and to provide students access to online materials and activities.

The 10-year history of data from the Noel- Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement for one year are producing data that have been used to strengthen, for example, the Advising Office, which had been lagging behind national norms but is recovering after the addition of more full-time staffing. The recent addition of a Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness with extensive professional experience in the field bodes well for more tools with which to assess the integrity of Cape Cod Community College.

In 2004, three faculty members wrote a concluding statement to be read at the end of Commencement ceremonies at Cape Cod Community College:

• This evening we have celebrated the community of Cape Cod Community College. We have honored many members of this community: faculty, staff and students. But most of all we have honored those of you in the graduating class. Now it is time for this celebration to draw to a close and for you to move on. We send you forth with wishes that reflect the College motto of life, liberty and learning.
•  
• Go forth with light.
• Let your knowledge be a light that continues to shine.
• Remember that light can be a beacon to those in peril.
• Go forth with liberty.
• Celebrate and cherish the liberty we hold so dear.
• Remember it is your knowledge that protects that liberty.
• Go forth with learning.
• Pursue learning for your own sake
• Remember that learning continues beyond these halls.
• Wherever your life's journey leads from here, go in peace.
• Keep us in your hearts as we will keep you in ours.
• Go forth with light, with liberty and with learning.

We project that these words can also guide the future of CCCC as an institution. Light includes openness and transparency in administration. Liberty includes freedom of association, freedom of expression, and academic freedom, and learning includes the student-centered focus that has always characterized the College.

 

INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Cape Cod Community College is committed to pursuing integrity in all its affairs. Measuring its institutional effectiveness in the area of integrity is more difficult than in more concrete areas, but can be achieved. Continued use of the Noel- Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory and the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (and its separate Survey of Faculty Engagement) is the primary means of measurement. Furthermore, student evaluations of faculty members will continue to assist in measuring the effectiveness of the faculty. Audits by outside accreditation agencies in specific professional programs are further means of measuring the integrity of Cape Cod Community College.

Projections - Standard Eleven - Integrity
Projections The Director of Facilities Management will increase the number of signs indicating how people with disabilities can access all areas of the campus.	Responsible Staff Director of Facilities Management	Completion Date FY 2008
The Director of Communications will produce more literature, signs, and other materials in languages other than English.	Director of College Communications	FY 2008
The Chief Information Officer will supervise, and seek ways of improving the new College website, so that it is ever easier to use.	Chief Information Officer	FY 2008
The Director of Distance Learning will increase the number of courses offered online and make them easier to use.	Director of Distance Learning	FY 2009
The Affirmative Action Committee and The Diversity Advisory Committee will continue to assist the Human Resources staff, The Affirmative Action Officer and The Title IX Officer to ensure that members of minority groups are welcomed and embraced as integral members of the College community.	New Director of Equal Opportunity and Professional Development	FY 2009
The National Coalition Building Institute team will work to expand its membership and conduct more workshops to reduce prejudice and resolve conflicts on campus and in the surrounding community.	New Director of Equal Opportunity and Professional Development	FY 2009
To assess the institutional effectiveness with respect to these measures, The Director of Institutional Research will continue to administer regular surveys of the student body, the faculty, the administration, and the staff to find areas of institutional weakness and strength and recommend to The President actions to continue to improve Cape Cod Community College's integrity.	Director of Intuitional Research	FY 2009