Los Angeles Mission College has identified 24 plans during the course of its self-study. In the self-evaluation sections of each standard, committees have identified numerous areas needing attention but have kept the number of plans pared to a minimum. Each plan is carefully designed to address the most crucial needs recognized in the evaluation. Committees have deliberately focused on broad processes rather than short-term solutions. The strategy they have adopted is to develop procedures that address dysfunctional processes, believing that lesser problems will be solved in due course.

The college governance structure that has recently emerged as a condition of the new assessment and planning process will be charged with implementing the recommendations of this report. Each of the three broad divisions of the college will take ownership of the issues appropriate to it and devise strategies to address the specific problems. The strategies embraced will move through the participatory governance committees, ensuring that systematic progress will be made with broadly inclusive involvement among all constituencies. The final responsibility for overseeing and implementing identified plans will lie with the president of the college and her council.

The planning agenda affects all of the operations of the college. The pursuit of solutions will require the involvement and commitment of every member of the college community. There is potential for both individual and collective growth associated with such an enterprise.

Themes

As the committees refined their evaluations and accumulated supporting documentation, several themes began to emerge that affect the institution as a whole: assessment and planning, technology management, college governance, district decentralization, academic standards, campus-wide communication, the development of the operational plan, and space planning and utilization.

Assessment and Planning

The need for college-wide assessment and planning seems to cut across almost every standard. One clear reason for this is the emphasis WASC has placed on institutional assessment. Many standards in the self-study ask the college to assess the effectiveness of each unit and demonstrate the findings using measurable outcomes. The national movement in higher education to initiate quality assurance by setting measurable outcomes throughout the institution, weighing them, and then using the results for improvement is also the accepted means for creating objectives used in strategic planning. The self-study reveals that the college as a whole needs to begin such a process for intrinsic reasons (to improve every endeavor) and for extrinsic reasons (to satisfy those assessing the college from afar that we are doing what we say we are doing). Towards this end, the former planning (now Assessment and Planning) and program review (now Institutional Effectiveness) committees worked throughout the summer and fall of 2000 to bring an assessment process to the college. The intention is that the newly acquired assessment and master planning software, Quality Builder, adopted during the spring semester, will support the process. As planned in Standard 3, assessment and planning must begin together. It will require the enthusiastic involvement of every office, program, department, committee, and support office on the campus.

Technology Management

The second major theme is the need for technology management at the college. It is widely held by many standards' committees that the rapid infusion of technology into every aspect of college operations has presented both a challenge and an opportunity. Many procedures have become digitized, every program uses computers, and most faculty and students use technology every day on campus. Both faculty and staff have recognized the benefits as extraordinary. But a number of frustrating difficulties in organizing, adopting, purchasing, and maintaining new technology have surfaced. Lack of planning and budgeting properly for the maintenance of the network and hardware is an issue that appears in several standards. Training of faculty and staff in its use is another. A comprehensive plan to alleviate these problems is proposed in Standard 6.

College Governance

Early on, as the Standard 10 committee began its work on the self-study, a theme emerged that seemed to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of college governance. The participatory governance agreement between the Academic Senate and the college president had not been revisited for over six years. The committee viewed the Mission President's Coordinating Council (MPCC), as then constituted, as ineffectual. The divisions of the college appeared to have a poor idea of their roles and responsibilities. It saw the design of the departmental structure as accommodating personalities, not the needs of disciplines and programs. Many participatory governance committees were not meeting regularly, and those that were did not effectively develop or implement policies.

However, the committee views the advent of a new permanent president, who immediately began using an inclusive style to work to reform the entire structure, as a steadying influence. The plan includes using the assessment and planning process to systematically measure the effectiveness of all governance constituents with the goal of constant improvement.

District Decentralization

Decentralization emanating from the district has been a major challenge to the college's understanding of the roles played by various offices relative to the central office. Much of the murky initial communications about decentralization have begun to be clarified by the Multi-College Pilot Program associated with the 2001 self-studies undertaken by Valley, Pierce, and Mission. This report includes a number of functional maps generated by the pilot program that delineate relative responsibilities. The theme here is one of new opportunity matched by increased responsibility. The college will have hegemony over a wide ranging assortment of decisions that the district office previously made, but it will have to operate in a more effective manner to ensure those decisions are beneficial to the college and its students.

Academic Standards

Faculty who recruit from feeder high schools have encountered perceptions that the college suffers from low academic standards. At the same time, many faculty members express frustration that a significant number of their students are not academically prepared for college-level work. Many state they feel they have to compromise academic standards in their classes under the pressure to retain students. Similarly, others feel that instituting and enforcing pre-requisites would subject them to scrutiny for low numbers of students initially enrolling in their classes. Solutions proposed in Standard 4 center on moving toward establishing, validating, and enforcing college skills pre-requisites in courses other than math and English (which already have prerequisites). At the same time, faculty propose creating a co-requisite, non-transfer A.A. degree applicable curriculum that would ready students in developmental classes for the standards they will need in transfer courses.

A parallel strategy is being developed in the assessment project that would move toward measurable objectives for the general education and transfer curricula that could be used to assess the overall quality of disciplines and programs. Lack of effectiveness would presumably prompt reforms.

Finally Standard 5 questions the effectiveness of faculty peer evaluations. Assessment and its climate of evidence will focus attention on competent teaching along with effective curriculum and support services.

Campus-Wide Communication

A number of the standards' committees have surfaced concerns over a general lack of campus-wide communication. For example, students have not widely attended campus climate events partially because of a lack of awareness. In another area, offices and committees have evaluated problems with policies and procedures for which solutions already exist, but committee members were unaware of them. Plus, excellent programs and services are available to students, but no reliable means exists of making certain those who would benefit are appraised of them. In Standard 5, the planning agenda calls for the assessment and planning process to produce a comprehensive campus-wide communication plan. Committee members envision effective communication between all college constituencies. Proposals include more effective use of the college Website, a more focused campus newsletter using new technology, software that would allow instant calendaring of meetings and events, and due diligence by offices in communicating policy and procedural changes.

Development of the Operational Plan

The development of the operational plan and the functions of the former Budget Committee have been issues in several standards. Standard 9 found that in the past there was little faith that the Budget Committee had been operating effectively, and budget managers evidenced a disconnection with the development of the operational plan. In defense of the process, severe budget reductions in recent years have affected the procedure used in developing the operation plan. But with the current increased funding, some of the pressure on Administrative Services to operate in a crisis mode has been reduced. As a result, a new operational planning model has been recently developed. To introduce offices and programs to the new procedures, Administrative Services has begun regular workshops on budgeting.

Also, the new governance structure that has emerged out of the assessment and planning process has transformed the former Budget Committee into the Resource Analysis Committee. The functions of the new committee are changed to primarily provide analytical and technical support to the planning process. Prioritization, the former province of the Budge Committee, will now take place by measuring budget plans against the college goals in the new planning software according to an agreed-upon rubric. Thus, the planning agenda in Standard 9 calls for using the assessment and planning process to develop operational plans and prioritize them in a more rational and accountable manner.

Space Planning and Utilization

Planning for needed space for offices and programs is another theme that appears in Standards 4, 7, and 8. Proposals for adding square footage to the buildings on campus and erecting new buildings have appeared apparently without much in the way of assessment or systematic environmental scanning and planning. The work of outside consultants working with Los Angeles County, community representatives, the district office, and the college may alleviate part of this problem. However, it is not clear how this planning will occur without the work being proposed for the assessment and planning process that considers the college goals and outcome measures. Standard 8 calls for a comprehensive facilities master plan created through assessment and planning that amplifies and provides needed structure to any work the consultants propose.

The plans form in aggregate a collective mandate for a significant change in the culture of the college. Instead of reactively operating in a perpetual state of crisis, the college will systematically move forward in a unified direction. Assessment and planning will permeate all aspects of the college and the students will be the benefactors.