Convocation Address 2007

State of the College Address
Chancellor Jones

Introduction

Faculty, Administration, Members of Resurrection Health Care, Staff, Students, Board Members, Alumni, and Friends of the College, welcome to our annual convocation. This year’s event is significant in that we will be teleconferencing to all acute care facilities throughout the Resurrection Health Care System and recognizing scholarship benefactors and student scholarship recipients. 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 perception of higher education as a commodity and the student as customer or product has been shaped by the history of the development of higher education and case law (Kaye, T., & Bickel, R.D., 2007). The roots of American higher education can be traced to the colonial days. Colleges were places of study where men of Cambridge and Oxford shaped the curriculum to focus on educating the rich man or student (Rudolph, F., 1990). Colonial colleges were also shaped by their religious affiliations (Rudolph, F., 1990). Colleges and universities transcended to provide education to citizens so that they could contribute to the public good (Rudolph, F., 1990). Curricular trends shifted away from divinity toward science, philosophy, public administration and modern languages (Rudolph, F., 1990). Both private and public institutions were formed. By the twentieth century education was known as a business with boards of trustees established to provide fiduciary and mission oversight.

The new millennium of higher education today has also been shaped by case law (Kaye, T., & Bickel, R.D., 2007). The courts provide institutions of higher education broad and absolute discretion in matters of curriculum instruction, evaluation of student competency in the classroom and clinical setting and determining progress towards or certification for graduation (Kaye, T., & Bickel, R.D., 2007). As a matter of fact, some colleges in the Midwest award a diploma, but no grades or final grade point average. Faculties are called upon to exercise their own professional expertise in deciding how to teach and grade a student’s performance. Thus, good discretionary decision making is called for by adhering to clear and coherent criteria for determining academic curricula and teaching methods and awarding grades and degrees (Kaye, T., & Bickel, R.D., 2007).

West Suburban College wants to provide value added education that students believe is worthy of the price. So, our focus this year will be on enhancing academics via curricular maps, student evaluation and program assessment. The business side of the College has been efficient and effective for the past several years. It is now time to make academics even more efficient and effective. So it is only befitting to have “Let Knowledge be Your Guide” as our theme for this year. The light house, with its ever burning beacon of light guiding ships to safe harbors, seemed a suitable symbol for this theme. Before we speak in depth about the plans for academics and business, let’s review last year’s accomplishments and a few broad goals for this year.

Finances

For the fourth year in a row, the College has achieved revenues in excess of expenses and decreased the dependence on Medicare funding to five percent of the total College budget. College Officers noted in preparing the annual College scorecard that our Strategic and Assessment Plan contained no capital plan objective. Thus, one focus this year in the development a new strategic plan for 2008-2011 will be to develop a formal plan for capital. Ws will also be working with our new Director of Development , Ms. Moira McGinley, to develop other fundraising activities. We have two new scholarships to celebrate, the Doris Kurtz Mesenbrink scholarship and the Ruth Rehwaldt scholarship. In addition, we have had modest tuition increases for the past two years of three percent. Benchmarking with other hospital owned and operated colleges indicates that we still need to increase our enrollments to sustain the infrastructure of support staff positions that have been built to carry a private College. We have grown to 39 faculty and staff with 15 full-time faculty members. We have already identified potential new staff positions to include in the next fiscal year of budget planning.

College of Choice

Being a “college of choice” involves staying on a continuous journey of quality improvement. We completed three action project this past year on that journey: the development of an assessment plan in support of the College strategic plan, the development of a strategic enrollment management plan and a helping students learn projects involving the move to a new achievement testing system, Assessment Technologies Institute (ATI). We also submitted a response to our System Portfolio Review Report. The System Portfolio is a living document on the front page of the College website that describes the college, our students and programs and business processes. This year we will post three new action projects: building for success, faculty development and growth. These projects will involve fine tuning the implementation of the ATI testing system and student advisement, formalizing our faculty development program, and studying our business processes and how they can be supported by our software systems in place. We will continue to maintain accreditation issues through our communication plans and in the development of our new strategic plan.

The number of enrollments and graduates continues to rise. This past year we had approximately 200 students on the campus. Next year we expect to see about 300 students with plans to implement a BSN evening and weekend program in the Spring of 2008. This past year we graduated 75 students. The BSN program continues to enroll a majority of full-time students comprising 75 percent of the student population. The inaugural MSN program included 9 part-time students. We now have 19 graduate students and will be developing targets for the future. The Fast Track BSN program continues to increase in numbers with approximately 33 students enrolled this past year. Preparedness of applicants to College programs has improved with increases in the admission tests scores and the science grade point average.

Collaboration and Partnerships

Community service learning projects this past year involved a clothing drive and faculty working with the Oak Park Health Department on an infectious disease plan. We hope to build a more formal summer course service learning project next year.

The College also partners with Resurrection Health Care (RHC). The majority of our adjunct part-time faculties are full-time practicing nurses in the RHC System. Additionally, approximately half of our students seek employment within the RHC. We will continue to work with Resurrection to identify future joint appointments and continue to promote employment for our students.

Student Outcomes

Faculties have been busy with a number of initiatives to improve the licensure examination pass rate. Efforts have included the creation of an undergraduate transfer seminar, incorporation of the ATI achievement testing program in the curriculum, improving advising and use of academic support services and re-sequencing courses to rotate every seven weeks. We will be assessing the impact of each of these strategies on our students’ successes. Plus, an RN Practice Update Course, approved by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, will be implemented in the future based on student demand. One of our inaugural graduate students, Suzanne Barker, was selected as a Chicago area Schweitzer fellow. Her project will focus on the health and safety needs of at risk children in Des Plaines, Illinois.

Faculty

Where would a College be with out one of the most important group of constituents, the faculty? That is certainly true of West Suburban College as well. This past year three, of our faculty received an intramural grant and almost 50 percent presented a paper at a professional meeting or published a scholarly paper. We implemented the first multi-site research study within the Resurrection Health Care system. Our faculty positions remain competitive in terms of salary with local and national markets. With the award of an Endowed Chair of Nursing Education, we will continue to attract quality faculty. Future work will focus on continuing to develop our faculty and build teams between academic and support service departments.

Infrastructure

We moved to our newly renovated classroom wing and are already exploring options to increase computers available for use in the classroom. You will note a number of spruce up projects have been completed, thanks to our new Business Officer, Therese Scanlan. We hope to complete the Course applicability System (CAS) project this year so that our students will be able to determine transfer courses that flow into our degree plans more easily via internet software. We will move our student information system to CampusNet, a new software and hardware product to improve student and faculty access.

New Programs

While integration of any RHC educational programs into the College are on hold due to lack of space, we have submitted a New Programs Proposal to the Higher Learning Commission requesting to add Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate degrees for health informatics management and administration, health care management and administration and a Doctorate of Nursing Practice. Once approved, these programs will be phased in over the next five years pending market conditions and budget allocations.

Summary

Our major initiatives for 2007-2008 include a focus on improving academics and student outcomes. Our new Vice Chancellor, Steve Langdon, will provide more details on that initiative in a moment. Planning for space to accommodate the growth of the College’s new programs and student body is a major initiative. I will look forward to receiving new volunteers to work on new action projects and the development of a new Strategic Plan for 2008-2011. We will continue to have forums such as this one to promote communication among College constituents and our key partner, Resurrection Health Care. In closing, I would like to express my appreciation to each of you in helping the College Board, executive team, faculty, students and benefactors achieve another year of wonderful outcomes.