Convocation Address 2006

Introduction

Faculty, Administration, Staff, Students, Board Members, Alumni, and Friends of the College, welcome to our annual convocation. We will be providing State of the College addresses by the Executive team, a description of future initiatives for the upcoming academic year and celebrating our successes after a reflection by Father Bob Irish.

The theme for this year’s convocation presentation is “what lies beneath.” You may recognize the figure chosen and the quotation “personality is what’s seen: character what lies beneath.” They are the cover of our new Student Handbook for this academic year 2006-2007. When I saw the picture of the glacier, I thought that it would be a perfect depiction of the College. We have just completed the first year of a new three year strategic plan, which is also our institutional assessment plan. We have only uncovered the “tip of the iceberg.” So today we are going to provide you with a bird’s eye view of “what lies beneath” as we rediscover ourselves as a College. You may also read about our accomplishments in the College Annual Report for 2006, which has been published on the College Intranet.

The following is a snap shot of this past year’s accomplishments and future initiatives for each goal in the West Suburban College Strategic and Assessment Plan. You may think that the goals look the same as last year’s. You are correct. They are!! For the most part, only the objectives and initiatives change from year to year. However, we have added one new broad goal - Goal Six, the “Plan for Expansion”.

Finances

This past year has been a third successful year for the College. The College achieved revenues in excess of expenses and continues to decrease dependence on the Medicare formula. We funded six students with the new $1.5 million Resurrection Loan Forgiveness Program. We are now tracking the number of students funded with the Federal Work Study program and those participating in externships at West Suburban Medical Center and throughout Resurrection Health Care.

Initiatives for the upcoming year will include starting in a conservative mode until we reach the Spring 2007 census day enrollment figure to maintain a balanced budget. We will work to identify new sources of funding via enrollments, new programs and grants. We will continue to work with our service partners to expand the Resurrection Nurse Externship Program to all Resurrection Health Care hospitals, identify other sources of student worker positions within the College, and ways to connect students to our hospitals.

College of Choice

Several achievements and future initiatives support Goal Two, “College of Choice.” We reported second year accomplishments for three Academic Quality Improvement (AQIP) work plans. The new three year Strategic and Institutional Assessment Plan was completed and implemented. This year, we will focus on revising measures. A revised student remediation and support services program using Assessment Technologies Institute, Inc. (ATI) has been implemented. The enrollment plan has been developed and is in operation. The new graduate nursing program with four majors, clinical nurse leader, adult health clinical nurse specialist, nurse administrator and nurse educator has been approved by our regional accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission and by our specialty accreditor, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. The first Systems Portfolio has been submitted to the Higher Learning Commission as a part of our regional accreditation process. We will be hosting the Quality Check-up visit in the Spring of 2007. Last, but not least, we have increased the yield rate for our applicants and expect to meet our 2008 enrollment projections in the Spring of 2007.

Future projects include a focus on marketing our programs for the Registered Nurse Completion (RN-BSN) program and graduate nursing (MSN) program and identifying new markets for the nursing baccalaureate (BSN) program. We will begin to attend graduate college fairs and expand our efforts to more of the Chicago market area as well as neighboring states. We will also explore expansion of enrollments by adding new programs and courses, which I will address under Goal Six. We will continue to focus on increasing the level of preparedness of our applicants and their conversion to matriculates.

Collaboration and Partnerships

Faculty began to implement and track service learning projects. This past year’s project was in collaboration with the Oak Park Health Department (OPHD). The majority of our faculty had scholarships projects comprised of formal presentations and publications. This is a significant accomplishment compared to only three faculty achieving these outcomes five years ago.

As a relatively new member of Resurrection Health Care, the College has moved the majority of the clinical rotations for students to hospitals within the System. And, the majority of our adjunct faculty members are nurses within our System. And I am proud to say, that this past year we had our first clinical nurse educator and researcher appointment to a summer position at Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center (SMEMC), Dr. Mary Horton Elliott.

In the upcoming year, faculty will continue to work with students to develop service learning projects to benefit the community. Faculty will focus on increasing service and scholarship projects to include participating in “magnet” research projects to support hospitals applying for this recognition. We will be attending a special luncheon at SMEMC to identify collaborative research projects that will hopefully expand to other RHC hospitals. We will continue to identify joint appointments between the College and the System. In addition, the implementation of the Course Applicability System (CAS) project will be completed during the next year. And, the purchase of the software interface will facilitate student degree audits and transferability of credits.

Student Outcomes

This past year we implemented the ATI, Inc. Achievement Test and Remediation System, which is comprised of clinical specialty examinations and remediation programs to help students master content. Scores are being used to help students identify areas for remediation and to note areas of the curricula in need of further refinement. The attrition rate this past year was 32 percent. Although this is a two percent drop from last year, trends continue to indicate an opportunity to further develop student and remediation services to improve the results. Employment rates and licensure examination pass rates are incomplete at this point in time. However, preliminary data indicate that these two areas will continue to represent areas of excellence for the College.

Future initiatives will focus on improving student retention, student outcomes, student advising and establishing baselines for the new achievement test system.

Human Resources

This past year we added a new Provost/Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs position. We hope to have the position filled for the Spring 2007 semester. With the start of the new academic year, we have filled all but two faculty positions. Employee development programs were conducted on campus and faculty and staff members attended several user groups and professional conferences. The focus for organizational development was on team building, the assessment system, ATI Testing and Remediation System as well as eCollege, the online courseware system. The College Executive Council and Committee structure has proven a valuable source for input from all of our constituents. Monthly brown bag luncheons for sharing information with faculty, staff and administration have been added to the master calendar. Student Town Hall meetings have also been included in the master calendar. We have identified processes with the development of our System Portfolio.

Future initiatives include, increasing faculty scholarship, continuing with team building and communication initiatives and initiating market equity studies to assure that our salaries remain competitive. We will validate and identify new measures for team building and communication now that our processes have been further defined.

Expansion

Expansion of College programs and enrollment still remains a major initiative. That is why we are constantly analyzing the needs of health care community. In fact, we recently conducted needs analyses for physical therapy, occupational therapy and audiology.

Expansion of the College also included the complete renovation of the 2 North wing, which was completed this summer. We now have a 20 seat computer classroom, nursing skills laboratory, large classroom and newly remodeled cafeteria adjacent to the student lounge on the first floor of the original College building. We also reopened the front doors of the College, providing students and faculty with easier accesses to the College.

We expanded in terms of technology upgrades. In 2006, the College was completely integrated with the Resurrection Information Technology support structure. As a result, we have a state-of-the art e-mail system and faster access to the Intranet and Internet. In addition, all courses are now web assisted through the eCollege program. And, most of our clinical courses have SimMan scenarios.

As we move forward, a major emphasis will be on the exploration of a new home for the College with more space. We are currently exploring an Associate of Applied Science degree for Health Information Technology and the addition of a science department and other general education and nursing support courses. We believe that the addition of new programs will provide students with other career options and meet the personnel needs for Resurrection Health Care. The addition of general education and nursing support courses will also help to improve student retention rates. We will continue to explore new programs for the System and synergize the integration of the College into Resurrection. Each of these explorations will assure that a new home for the College has adequate space to meet our current, immediate and future needs and the needs of other educational activities of Resurrection. The CAS implementation project will continue. We will explore grant funding for ImageNow to support a totally electronic student record.

Closing

I would like to close with the following thought. “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted (Albert Einstein)”. We will continue to discover this on our continuous quality improvement journey and the refinement of our Institutional Assessment System. This past year we have only uncovered the “tip of the iceberg” on our journey. I encourage each of you to continue making your contributions to achieving all of the goals and objectives set forth in the College Strategic and Assessment Plan. Together we will uncover “what lies beneath.”