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- Sabrina.Santiago.pic: Palomar Community College District
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by P.J. DeMaris, Jack Kahn, Najib Manea, Wendy Nelson, Travis Ritt
A significant implementation progress has been made integrating Ad Astra with our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Ad Astra is now fully integrated with Palomar ERP system that includes the VPN network, PeopleSoft, Email System, Single Sign-On (SSO) service, and hosts a complete Palomar Rooms/Spaces inventory. The on-site training and Design Strategy implementation phase is underway, and it will require a larger collaboration and integration.
The goal is for the Ad Astra Programs of Study/Pathways is to be created using the imported student historical data or managed manually. It will help determine demand for courses during Planner Analysis and Simulated Registration.
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By Kelly Falcone, Wendy Nelson, Cindy Anfinson
The Spring 2019 semester started with two opportunities to learn about Meta Majors from experts in the field. First, Rob Johnstone led several workshops at Spring Plenary, and then we had the opportunity to learn from Maria Hesse, Vice Chancellor from ASU, and Camille Newton from Maricopa Community College District. Rob, Maria, and Camille provided a good basic understanding about Meta Majors to start exploring what our Meta Majors could be at Palomar College. Since March we have collected data from a college wide survey and conducted workshops. Details of each are are follows:
To begin the Meta Major process we invited all employee groups to complete a Meta Major survey in which they reviewed the Meta Majors of several different colleges and provided us with feedback about what they liked and disliked (if you would like to participate in this activity click here). We want to thank everyone who provided their feedback! We received over 100 responses which included 47% Full-Time Faculty, 33% Classified Staff, 10% Part-Time Faculty, 7% AA, and 2% CAST. The responses allowed us to get a much better idea of what we like and dislike to help us prepare for how we will construct and present out Meta Majors.
Some of the key learning from reviewing your feedback is:
We held seven Meta Majors workshops for our employees; one during our monthly Chairs and Directors meeting, one during Faculty Senate, and five more workshops open to all employees to attend. At these workshops the attendees worked in groups to sort our programs into Meta Majors and then name each Meta Major. The workshops were a great opportunity for robust dialogue about our programs and which programs we thought worked well together from a students’ perspective. Some “aha” moments from the workshops was that it is hard! Many participants said how hard it was to try to sort our program into clusters. One of the difficulties was trying to break out of our current structure and think like a student. One participant said “it was hard to break out of our normal divisional structure and think outside the box, but once we did it was really fun!” Overall, the feedback from the workshops was very positive; participants said it clarified to them the concept of meta-majors and they enjoyed working with their colleagues from different disciplines.
We are now conducting the Meta Major Card Swap activity with students! We have 6 classes participating and have also had High School students participate. After we collect and review all of the data we will present the findings to the college.
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By Kelly Falcone, Wendy Nelson, and Justin Smiley
The 316 employees who have attended Guided Pathways Professional Development trainings account for 597 completed trainings! We were very happy to see every employee group represented in the GP training which included: 138 PT Faculty, 129 FT Faculty, 28 Classified Staff, 16 CAST/AA, and 7 Short-Term Employees.
To begin engaging the entire college in Guided Pathways, the PD Office offered several workshops at the Fall 2018 plenary. In the Fall our Guided Pathways training began with two pre-plenary days facilitated by two GP experts, Dr. Maria Hesse, Vice Provost for Academic Partnerships at Arizona State University (ASU), and senior research scholar, Dr. Davis Jenkins. At our all-college plenary we had an amazing keynote by Dr. Pedro Noguera who helped us to see how GP would help us to reduce equity gaps at Palomar College. After hearing from these amazing academics, employees were invited to attend an “Introduction to Guided Pathways” workshop. At this workshop the GP team shared with the college what GP is, why we are doing it, and some of the actions we would be taking.
Continuing with the focus on Guided Pathways throughout the Fall semester, the GP team led additional “Introduction to Guided Pathways” workshops and offered 10 Coffee Talks to provide an opportunity for employees to have informal conversation about GP. In addition to this, the GP team offered to attend department meetings to provide information about GP and answer questions.
Guided Pathways continued to be a focus of our Spring 2019 All-College Plenary. Dr. Rob Johnstone, from the Center for Inquiry and Improvement, led two workshops and a keynote talk. Dr. Johnstone helped us begin our institutional conversation about Meta Majors. During the first week of school we continued the discussion about Meta Majors by again inviting GP scholars to visit the campus. Dr. Maria Hesse, from ASU, and Dr. Camille Newton, from Maricopa Community College District shared with us how they developed Meta Majors and how they collaborated to develop a pathway from Community College to University.
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By Kelly Falcone, Wendy Nelson, Travis Ritt
Department Chairs and discipline experts created 200 degree and certificate maps during the fall semester. Counselors will review the maps this spring to ensure that general education and degree requirements are correct. The maps will be available to students during the fall semester. The maps will also be used to help the College create its Meta-Majors through analysis of shared courses across degrees and certificates.
Meta Majors are educational programs that have related courses and/or requirements. They include courses that meet academic and/or industry requirements across several disciplines and specific programs of study. Meta majors help students identify a program pathway that aligns with their interests, knowledge, skills and abilities. Enrollment and completion of meta-major courses guide students through initial foundational requirements and into more specific programs of study.
Please consider taking our Introduction to Meta Major Survey. In this survey you will review the work done by a few colleges who have already designed and implemented Meta Majors. Please take a few minutes to see what these schools have done and give us some feedback about what you like and disliked. To complete the survey go to: tinyurl.com/metamajorreview
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