2016-2026 Strategic Plan | 2020 Progress Report

Waterbury • Danbury NV.EDU

STRATEGIC PLAN 2016-2026 2020 progress report

NVCC CORE VALUES student centeredness academic rigor leadership accountability respect trust effective communications human diversity community outreach civic engagement beautiful and positive ideas

MISSION Naugatuck Valley Community College offers quality, affordable education and training in response to evolving community needs by providing opportunities to individuals and organizations to develop their potential.

VISION At NVCC, the word “community� is central and our students are considered our most sacred trust and our finest asset. Collaboration within and outside the confines of our immediate surroundings defines our actions and is the base for the rich intellectual, educational, cultural and civic-minded experiences we provide our students.

Toward a Splendid College Strategic Plan 2016–2026 2020 Progress Report Contents

President’s Message...................................................................................................................................................3 Overview....................................................................................................................................................................5 Goal 1: At NVCC, Students Achieve Their Goals............................................................................................... 6-9 Goal 2: NVCC Faculty and Staff Make a Difference....................................................................................... 10-13 Goal 3: NVCC Programs Meet and Beat Academic and Industry Standards............................................... 14-17 Goal 4: NVCC is an Engine of Change within Waterbury, Danbury, and the Broader Community.......... 18-21 Goal 5: NVCC is an Effective, Performance-based Institution...................................................................... 22-25 Recap of Future Priorities Identified for 2020-2026.............................................................................................26 The Next Frontier–2020-2026.................................................................................................................................27 Strategic Planning Leadership Group and Progress Report Contributors..........................................................28

Strategic Plan 2020 Progress Report

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welcome

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president’s message Dear NVCC Family, During my 12 years as your president, we have embraced together the mission, vision, and values of Naugatuck Valley Community College. These powerful elements are linked to responsiveness, community, justice, and respect—all focused on student success and engagement. They echo the thoughts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who noted, “Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy.” Dr. King wondered about the path forward, a challenging question even today.

The pandemic has presented unknowns for us all, while laying bare inequities that threaten some more. We must support our deserving and often vulnerable community college students. That is why in these times we go back to Dr. King’s words to recognize education and social action go hand in hand. We must learn and we must do. Today’s urgency demands it.

It is with that spirit that NVCC faculty and staff took action this spring when COVID-19 hit. They adapted to online modalities to ensure our students finished the spring semester and completed their courses and programs. For the ninth year in a row, commencement will honor over 1,000 degree and certificate completers. That’s commitment from all sides.

You will see our commitment to both education and social action come to life as your read the pages which follow. This NVCC 2016-2026 Strategic Plan Progress Report details actions we have taken since 2016 toward achieving the 10 priorities among our five strategic goals—the same goals advanced in 2010 with our first strategic plan. It offers three sections for each priority: notable results; how we got there; and the next frontier. Readers will find that, among others, our commitments to equity, service, curriculum, pathways, community and industry partnerships, and institutional effectiveness supported our sacred work.

The generosity of the NVCC Family abounded.

Hope is the thing with feathers Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

The recap of future priorities for 2020-2026 is an action checklist complemented by periodically asking ourselves to agree upon, reflect about, and plan for those next frontiers, always keeping in mind student success as our ultimate goal. You will see addressing complications created by COVID-19 as a theme cutting across many of the actions outlined for the future. It affects everything we do. For example, maintaining safe and clean environments at both campuses has taken on new meaning. Balancing on-ground classes with online and hybrid offerings will become more of the norm.

The college will welcome new leadership in August, and I am hopeful my brief remarks invite you to remain committed to education that transforms students and communities. I share a line in Emily Dickinson’s poem, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” which observes that hope “never stops at all.”

Mil gracias y bendiciones for advancing our shared hopes during these last dozen years.

Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Ph.D. President, Naugatuck Valley Community College June 2020 Strategic Plan 2020 Progress Report

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overview

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NVCC STRATEGIC PLAN 2016-2026 OVERVIEW GOAL 3

GOAL 2

NVCC programs meet and beat academic and industry standards.

NVCC faculty and staff make a difference.

• Leadership and Service • Research

• Cutting-edge Curriculum • Innovation and Entrepreneurship

GOAL 1 At NVCC, students achieve their goals.

GOAL 4

• Completion, Job Placement, and Transfer • Equity in Achievement

NVCC is an engine of change within Waterbury, Danbury, and the broader community.

• Pre-collegiate Pathways • Workforce Pathways

GOAL 5

NVCC is an effective, performance-based institution.

• Institutionalizing Data and Assessment Systems • Strategic Institutional Growth and Support Strategic Plan 2020 Progress Report

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goal one

AT NVCC, STUDENTS ACHIEVE TH Priority 1: Completion, Job Placement, and Transfer When we set out on this plan, student completion was top of mind for a host of reasons. Community colleges historically have increased access to higher education, but often have done poorly in helping students complete. Completion increasingly correlates with higher employment rates and higher wages. And while students who complete programs at NVCC achieve notable success, often with high job placement, NVCC’s own completion and transfer rates have been slow to improve.

For these and other reasons, NVCC named student success in completion, job placement, and transfer our primary areas of focus.

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Notable Results So Far 9 Students can now complete developmental courses in one semester, allowing them to earn college credit within one year. This increased the percentage of developmental students obtaining college credit for required English and math courses in one year from 40% to 46% and 30% to 51%, respectively.

9 Credentials awarded held steady–averaging 1,195.

9 NVCC’s three-year completion rate for firsttime, full-time students increased from 12.8% to 17%.

9 Job placement rates for graduates remained high–especially for workforce program graduates (95% to 100%).

9 Number of students transferring–before and after earning NVCC degrees–increased by 84+% and 42+%, respectively since the plan started.

What We’ve Done to Get There Integrated systems and efficiencies to improve student success. Since we set out with this plan, we’ve seen integration improve between academic programs and supports, with faculty facilitating student referrals to tutoring offered by the Academic Center for Excellence (ACE).

More faculty were trained and the majority of fulltime faculty are using Degree Works, a web-based academic reporting and advising tool that systematizes advisement. Teams across areas have come together to remove hurdles in the way of our students, from ACE and the Library creating academic literacy videos, to Academic Affairs, Admissions and CAPSS collaborating to communicate information to students at key times during their enrollment (e.g., 0-15 credits, 15-30 credits). Coordinated marketing enabled us to more consistently and regularly update academic degree and certificate brochures, webpages, and social media which became more student-oriented, encouraging early registration and early advisor intervention.

Overall, more and more units are coordinating (we held the first Joint Student Services/Academic Affairs Retreat in August 2019) and individual units increasingly put a student lens on their processes, making it easier for students to perform essential tasks like registering early, making course substitutions and completing graduation paperwork online. Coordination between our Waterbury and Danbury campuses increased: bus service links, greater collaboration between faculty and staff, improved virtual tutoring across subjects such as biology and accounting, and increased student interaction from Student Government Association and club activities.

Coordinated with systems beyond our campuses.

Coordination with state university partners produced 23 transfer programs that expanded greatly over the last five years from 44 enrolled students in 2016 to 658 in 2020. Degrees awarded in these programs also

HEIR GOALS. increased from 15 in AY 2017-2018 to 59 in AY 20182019. These students were awarded junior status without the need for additional credits upon transfer to the state university of their choice and are well on their way to earning their baccalaureate degrees.

Scaled tutoring in developmental education and beyond. We know the faster students complete their developmental sequence, the more likely they will persist and complete college. Over the last few years, we modified courses so students can complete their developmental sequence and get to college-level courses faster. We also created Modified Supplemental Instruction (mSI), an ancillary tutoring requirement linked to the lowest levels of developmental English and math, to help students complete these courses.

First offered four years ago, mSI evolved and expanded from one room/one location serving 24 students to four rooms in Waterbury and Danbury serving 539 students in the spring 2020 semester. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we not only jumpstarted distance learning to offer all courses online, but also ramped up online tutoring by training all ACE tutors in online tutoring. More than 550 students accessed online tutoring in spring 2020 alone (with reports of satisfied/very satisfied from students at 97%). This response to COVID-19 also addressed a long-held wish of our students for NVCC to provide more 1:1 tutoring assistance.

Started a college-wide campaign focused on student retention. Doing Our P.A.R.T. (Paying Attention to Retention Today) is a growing campus-wide movement to improve student retention. Begun at the 2018 President’s Retreat, data analysis brought into sharp relief challenges NVCC students faced with retention. Initial focus on improving student access to financial aid and addressing developmental education barriers led us to almost double FAFSA workshops, change the appointment system so students access more individualized financial aid assistance, speed the financial aid package rate and verification process, and accelerate the pilot delivery of developmental math (recommended by a discipline review) to embed it in college-level math courses.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Double down on retention. We will advance our Achieving the Dream activities to transform our “touch points” from first contact to enrollment and deepen our data analysis about issues that affect equity and completion. We will roll out additional college-wide retention-focused activities, from forums to help faculty share classroom-based approaches to connect better with and engage students, to interventions like those the Faculty Senate identified to champion. We will continue to determine better ways to connect students with faculty advisors so they receive tailored guidance that helps them complete their studies.

• Track persistence and ensure student success upon transfer. More of our students transfer before and after earning NVCC degrees. Though focused primarily on supporting student success while at NVCC, we see student persistence as a positive outcome. We will strengthen collaborations with four-year colleges where many NVCC students transfer to ensure their continued success in higher education. We also will track persistence rates–the percentage of students who subsequently enrolled at or earned a credential from another institution–to capture outcomes of our efforts.

• Integrate technology assessment and skills building into student orientation. COVID-19 closed our campuses and shifted learning and student interaction on line. It reminded us to ensure students have the technological capacity and skills to successfully navigate a full or partial virtual experience with us, should another outbreak force our return to online teaching and learning.

• Support completion of college-level English and math requirements. Structural changes to developmental courses decreased student time spent in developmental education so more students attempt college-level English and math sooner. We now must help students move faster through their developmental sequence and complete their required English and math courses.

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goal one

AT NVCC, STUDENTS ACHIEVE TH Priority 2: Equity in Achievement

Community colleges play a leading role in higher education for underrepresented groups, including nonWhite, first-generation, and low-income students. We need to do better to help these students succeed. As one of three community colleges in Connecticut designated a Hispanic Serving Institution, we see our critical role to close the achievement gap.

Notable Results So Far 9 Increases in Hispanic graduates kept pace with increases in Hispanic enrollment with the three-year graduation rate for all graduates increasing by four percentage points since this plan started in 2016.

9 Staff, faculty, and student composition kept pace with regional racial/ethnic demographics.

Since 2016, Hispanic representation among fulltime staff increased (11% to 17%) and among students (26% to 32%).

What We’ve Done to Get There Advanced structural efforts to strengthen diversity, equity and inclusion. We opened the Center for Racial Dialogue and Communal Transformation in 2019. It invited students, faculty, staff, and community members to dialogue and learning through monthly book discussions, a “Lunch and Learn” series, and community forums on topics ranging from “The Danger of the Single Story: Who is American and Who Gets to Decide?” to higher education equity gaps. In 2017, we launched our International Center for the Arts which celebrates multiculturalism. Our 4th annual International Festival in 2019 attracted 1,114 people.

In fall 2021, we’ll host our 5th Fulbright Scholar-inResidence this time in theater to promote international understanding on campus and in our communities.

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Presented data and invited dialogue about campus equity challenges. In 2019, the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (OIRE) identified at-risk segments of NVCC’s student population and presented this data to multiple audiences, like the Center for Racial Dialogue and Transformation and NVCC’s Institutional Planning Council. Starting in 2017, the Social Justice Series hosted conversations among students and community activists about systemic and historically rooted social inequalities. Since 2016, these and other diversity events hosted by the Student Government Association and clubs reached about 1,000 people through 120-plus programs. The Multicultural Club celebrated diversity during Hispanic Heritage and Black History months at both campuses. Its annual Thanksgiving-time Multicultural Celebration of Bread attracted over 300 visitors who enjoyed varieties of bread from the over 50 nations represented by students in the ESL program.

Expanded financial supports to low-income students.

Since fall 2016, the NVCC Foundation increased scholarships from 78 in 2016-2017 to 203 in 2019-2020 and the Student Emergency Fund from six students in 2016-2017 to 210 students in 2019-2020. We’ve secured scholarships for Danbury students with funds from the Fairfield County Community Foundation which expanded Danbury scholarships from two totaling $20,000 in 2017-2018 to six totaling $40,000 in 2018-2019. We also secured grants that attracted and retained low-income students like NViSION, a fiveyear, $650,000 National Science Foundation STEM grant in 2019, to increase the number of low-income, academically talented students with financial need to enter STEM degrees, find jobs, or transfer to higher degree programs. We’ve expanded our Jobs on Campus program, with 62 students benefitting since fall 2016.

HEIR GOALS. Provided other direct supports to address equity challenges. In 2018, with support from the Connecticut Community Foundation and the Ion Bank Foundation, we opened the NVCC Student Food Pantry. With funds from existing and new donors (including the United Way of Greater Waterbury), food distribution more than doubled, from 3,420 items in fall 2018 to 7,948 in fall 2019, with home delivery established in response to COVID-19.

Provided targeted supports to students in response to COVID-19. We’ve collaborated with Face Masks for Connecticut and other sponsors including Webster Bank and Waterbury Hospital to distribute 50,000 face masks to our area communities. Two AMTC instructors in collaboration with a local volunteer group used their 3-D printing skills to manufacture personal protective equipment. To date, 206 face shields and 930 ear savers have been produced and distributed to local hospitals and other emergency responders. Our COVID-19 Student Emergency Fund provided 420 students with finances and groceries delivered to their homes. To help with their online courses, we distributed computer technology to more than 105 students in Waterbury and Danbury. For those without transportation services we distributed gift cards for Uber and Lyft.

Several initiatives focused on at-risk women and minority students. During 2019-2020, we expanded Spanish-language information sessions and a number of cohort-based models such as: a peer mentoring program for 49 Hispanic students in partnership with CREAR Futuros/Hispanic Federation; the Women’s Lead, Empower, Achieve Program, (LEAP) with workshops that mentored 10 educationally at-risk women; and the Promoting Academically Successful Students (PASS) program, an initiative of the Minority Advancement Program at the Connecticut Office of Higher Education, which supported 91 students of color placed on academic probation. The Male Encouragement Network (M.E.N) at both campuses, on average convenes 8 to 10 students via bi-weekly discussions about the male experience at NVCC, developing successful study habits, sexual health and wellness, and establishing safe and healthy relationships. M.E.N. and a newly formed Women’s Empowerment group developed on the Danbury campus continue to meet weekly or biweekly virtually.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Roll out targeted efforts to improve African American student course and degree completion.

NVCC African American students reflect national data that show these students have the lowest first-year persistence and completion rates at twoyear public colleges. We will fundraise to expand cohort-based programs, build the hiring pool for African American faculty and staff, and advance a planned Faculty Senate and Black Student Union collaboration to hire academically qualified students to serve as Academic Ambassadors to tutor students who struggle with college-level math.

• Roll out targeted efforts to improve Hispanic student course and degree completion. While our graduation data show Hispanic graduation rates kept pace with increases in Hispanic enrollment, we have not yet made gains to close the equity gap for these students.

We will build the Hispanic faculty and staff hiring pool and expand offerings like CREAR Futuros.

• Disaggregate data and engage campus dialogue to identify targeted interventions. With OIRE, and as part of Achieving the Dream, we will use data to see where to best address equity gaps, e.g., identify the high enrollment courses with the biggest equity gaps, discuss the underlying issues, assess the effects of virtual learning on Pell, Hispanic, and African American students, and engage the community to help overcome barriers.

• Prioritize wrap-around services in a post-COVID world. We will assess our capacity to address food insecurity, health issues, transportation, child care, mental health services, and disability student services, toward prioritizing which to provide to scale with existing resources and which to provide through grants, partnerships, community referrals, and volunteerism.

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goal two 10

NVCC FACULTY AND STAFF MAK Priority 3: Leadership and Service When we set out with this 10-year strategic plan, NVCC, like other community colleges across the country, faced the prospect of leadership transition within its student, staff, faculty, and administrative ranks.

Now, with proposed System Office changes in motion, our President departing, and the COVID-19 pandemic requiring everyone to build new leadership skills and determine what service means in these times, this priority has become even more pressing.

Notable Results So Far 9 Named one of 150 community colleges invited to apply for the 2019 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.

9 In 2016, U.S. Department of Education ranked NVCC a Top 25 College in the nation to advance opportunities for low-income students.

9 2018 Connecticut Association of Latinos in Higher Education Lifetime Achievement Award given to President De Filippis.

9 Since 2016, more than 47 faculty across 10-plus programs presented at one or more national, regional, and local conferences in their fields.

9 NVCC’s Vanguard Leadership Academy offered 31 professional skills workshops since June 2018 and enrolled 594 participants.

9 Since 2016, expanded student programs and events on and off campus to more than 800 offerings, including 100-plus events dedicated to volunteering.

9 Doubled participation-in adjunct faculty professional development–now up to about 200 adjuncts per year.

9 All new faculty assigned a senior faculty mentor to support them during their first six months.

9 Eight degrees and certificates required service learning or some form of student volunteerism to earn a credential.

What We’ve Done to Get There Offered more management and leadership professional development opportunities for faculty and staff.

Since its creation in 2018, the Vanguard Leadership Academy, NVCC’s professional development arm, held 31 sections of workshops for 594 registrants about skills, management, and leadership topics. A workshop effectiveness survey reported about 85% of participants “somewhat” or “to a great extent” had applied the skills or knowledge they acquired from workshops to their work at the college.

Expanded efforts for faculty to exercise field-based leadership. In addition to investing in state-of-theart simulation technology, in 2017, the Nursing Department, in collaboration with the Connecticut League of Nursing, hosted a workshop attended by simulation leadership personnel from more than 10 colleges. We’ve become field leaders in nursing simulation education, and our faculty were featured on this and other topics at a number of regional and national workshops and conferences since 2016, with one of our faculty selected a chair for the Statewide Committee Healthcare Simulation Network of Connecticut.

Supported faculty professional development–with a special focus on new and adjunct faculty. Since fall 2016, NVCC’s Center for Teaching (CFT) has offered an average of one professional development program every week of the semester. The statewide CFT annually offered four to five half- and full-day programs.

While the number of events remained consistent, the participants doubled from 215 since 2016 to a high of 422 in 2018-19. The pandemic reduced the number of events after they moved online. Since 2016, we’ve targeted supports to new and adjunct faculty too. All new faculty were assigned a senior faculty department member for guidance and mentorship for at least the first six months. Adjunct faculty orientations were

KE A DIFFERENCE. transformed from a basic information session to a lively, engaged “Appreciation and Orientation” professional development event. We’ve doubled unduplicated adjunct participation, with adjuncts reporting they learned new strategies and activities to implement in their courses.

Deepened engagement between Student Activities and the Student Government Association and clubs focused on service. In addition to supporting targeted student leadership programs, like LEAP, a women’s leadership program described in Priority 2, we’ve worked even more closely to foster volunteerism, investing more than $400,000 a year in support of club activities. One of our largest initiatives recruited volunteers each Sunday to the St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen in Waterbury.

Over the past four years, students, faculty, and staff volunteered over 1,000 hours to prepare and serve food to the homeless. The $1,000-plus we raised created a space for children living in the shelter, so they could do homework and learn. The M.E.N.’s group collected different fabrics and worked with faculty to create bags to collect non-perishable items for the food pantry.

Every year since 2016, the CFT invited faculty, staff, and students to make simple, no-sew scarves out of warm fleece to donate to the homeless. In Danbury, we’re working with neighboring agencies like the United Way of Western Connecticut, Danbury Works, City Center of Danbury, and the Women’s Center to strengthen connections between students and community. The Center for Safer Communities supported food drives and donations for the growth and development of our Danbury Campus food pantry. Thus far, about 50 pounds of non-perishable items were donated to the campus.

Upheld the tradition of full campus and alumni community engagement. We have long encouraged a culture that expands opportunities for faculty, staff, and students to participate in community and civic engagement. A number of our degree programs require volunteerism to earn a credential, including Human

Services, Criminal Justice, Drug and Alcohol Recovery Counseling (DARC), Horticulture, Nursing, Respiratory Care, Radiologic Technology, and Physical Therapist Assistant. Extracurricular volunteer engagement remains strong, too. Faculty and staff volunteered at the St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen and the NVCC Food Pantry, individually and through club-sponsored drives. Nearly the entire college participated in organized activities for the Great American SmokeOut when NVCC became a smoke-free campus. An Upward Bound site coordinator—also an NVCC alumna–built a foundation for civic engagement. Her high school students created a “care center” by cleaning and refurbishing an old storage area to stock health and wellness supplies to provide space for mental health awareness activities for high school students in need.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Explore our service role in a post-COVID world within the geographic communities we serve. The pandemic reminded us that we have many resources to offer should a COVID-19 resurgence or other emergency arise. We have a phenomenal kitchen, possible use of beds, 3D printers from which to manufacture ear savers to secure masks to faces, and a campus that could become a distribution center, to name a few. We will discuss how our mission, values and sense of responsibility about service and community leadership align. This may include how to help students, faculty, and staff rethink volunteerism in a socially distanced world.

• Develop intensive focus on staff and faculty professional development to teach and provide support in a socially distanced world. As of this writing, we plan a return to campus to teach classes in person. However, should COVID-19 return, we may need to ramp up more professional development to help staff and faculty navigate another pivot to online classes. One tangible idea is to have faculty

who are effective at teaching online conduct trainthe-trainer workshops on teaching in a distance learning environment.

• Increase faculty sign-up for free professional development offerings. Faculty have access to many free professional development opportunities via the college CFT, Vanguard Leadership Academy, statewide Center for Teaching as well as through the System Office. That office has increased the number of offerings focused on teaching technology skills and best practices for online pedagogy to address the multi-level needs of both full- and part-time faculty.

We will take advantage of those offerings.

• Ensure students have the necessary technology skills to succeed. We’re building a 45-minute, modularized course to teach students basic technological skills and how to navigate our learning management system (Blackboard) and other tools to help them succeed (e.g., Degree Works, myCommNet, etc.).

Students will earn a “badge” upon completion and will be required to complete it before they start their classes each semester. We expect nearly 3,000 students to benefit each year.

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goal two 12

NVCC FACULTY AND STAFF MAK Priority 4: Research

In 2016, we set out to stand out as a community college committed to scholarly research. We wanted to make research more integral to our student curricular experience, recognizing the value of developing research skills brings to student success.

We knew we had a strong base from which to build, with faculty committed to their scholarly pursuits. Yet more needed to be done to grow our culture of scholarship and help faculty expand their own research practice while integrating research across the curriculum.

Notable Results Since 2016 9 Received notable research grants, particularly in STEM. 9 Six faculty earned their doctorates and 12 faculty published one or more scholarly works, including poetry, two novels, three textbooks, and articles in peer-reviewed journals; one associate dean has a patent pending.

9 Hosted four Fulbright Scholars-In-Residence since 2012, with a fifth coming for the 20212022 academic year.

9 Library facilitated information literacy activities for more than 9,280 students: 291 research appointments, 11,400 in-person reference consultations, and 2,255 virtual consultations; since 2016, doubled research appointments and virtual consultation each year.

9 More than 37 students took a new Fundamentals in Research course in psychology that faculty can modify for any discipline.

What We’ve Done to Get There Elevated NVCC’s culture of intellectual rigor and scholarship. Since this plan started, we’ve sought ways to support faculty to expand their own research practice. As notable results show, faculty have applied for and received funding for research grants (e.g., three grants received by four STEM faculty). Faculty also have secured grants that strengthen the intellectual rigor of programs. For example, since 2017, the Drug and Alcohol Recovery Counselor (DARC) Program Coordinator has received three Opioid Awareness and Education Grants funded by DMHAS and Wheeler Clinic’s Connecticut Healthy Campus Initiative.

These grants funded: monthly NARCAN trainings and distribution of educational pamphlets for faculty, students, and staff; supported hosting regional conferences and panel presentations; and educated the campus and community about various topics related to addiction, drug and alcohol use, and prescription drug disposal options.

Faculty demonstrated a commitment to intellectual rigor and scholarship. As noted under Priority 3 (Leadership and Service), our faculty were recognized as leaders and scholars, submitting papers and presenting at various conferences. We’ve brought more scholarly exchange to our campus, including hosting four international Fulbright Scholars-in-Residence.

All of these efforts build on long-held traditions of intellectual rigor at NVCC, including Fresh Ink, NVCC’s literary journal, which celebrated its 51st consecutive publication in spring 2020. The 50th anniversary edition in 2019 won second place in the Community College Humanities Association Literary Magazine Competition, Eastern Division.

Students demonstrated a commitment to intellectual rigor and scholarship. Within the 2019 Fresh Ink 50th anniversary edition, two NVCC students won 1st and 2nd place for poetry in the Community College Humanities Association Literary Magazine

KE A DIFFERENCE. Competition. Art students had their work accepted three years in a row to the University of Hartford Art School’s Community College Student Exhibition, with two NVCC students winning scholarships to the University of Hartford.

Horticulture students and the program itself won prestigious awards at the 2020 Connecticut Flower Show, including the highest honor awarded: Excellence in Design from the Connecticut Horticulture Society.

The Tamarack, which will be described more in detail under Priority 6, has won multiple awards for years for its journalistic integrity through meticulously researched and cited articles.

Developed robust research supports from the NVCC Library. In addition to our Director of Library Services in 2016-17 being accepted into the Institute for Research Design Librarianship and our library’s ongoing efforts to teach information literacy, the library now runs a research paper competition. This competition requires students to meet with librarians for research sessions to prepare a paper scored by a panel of faculty and librarians. One student winner and a runner-up, along with the faculty member who assigned the winning paper are awarded money from a fund initially seeded by a faculty member and sustained later through book sales.

Created a research course that can be replicated. During 2017-2018, we developed a new two-semester research course that grew from 1.5 credits to 3 credits and an enrollment of 12 to 15 students each semester. Credit for this course transfers to both Southern Connecticut and Western Connecticut State Universities as electives.

Two NVCC students who were enrolled in this course in 2018-2019 had their poster presentations showcased at the 2019 Eastern Psychological Association Conference, a competitive regional conference and the oldest psychological conference in the country. They represented the only community college students at the conference.

This psychology course built a strong research base for students, helping them continue at four-year schools in science majors and as research assistants. It also benefitted NVCC. Providing Institutional Review Board (IRB) submission training to students made us realize we needed an IRB committee on campus to help guide others through that process.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Explore possibilities to adapt or replicate the twosemester research course across disciplines, as well as articulate it with four-year colleges. This course already has been adapted by another faculty member in another discipline as a research-based independent study for a student. We will see where else this could be replicated and expanded to more students, and where we can seek articulations that allow for credit transfer.

• Revamp the Honors Program to increase its intellectual rigor. We will explore ways to motivate more students to come to NVCC because of our Honors Program. This includes offering it as a cohort-based program with a research component.

• Develop modules for information and academic literacy. Based on our strong information literacy offerings, we will explore expanding the scope so that more students understand the intellectual and academic rigor required of college-level coursework.

We also will gather data to inform future revisions.

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goal three 14

NVCC PROGRAMS MEET AND BEA Priority 5: Cutting-edge Curriculum Our core work is helping students learn. That means investing in our capacity to offer the highest quality curricula, so that our teaching and learning is academically state-of-the-art and relevant to the workplace.

Notable Results Since 2016 9 Three new non-credit to credit pathways created.

9 Students enrolled in 19 TAP pathways with 74 students achieving degrees so far in 12 of the pathways.

9 Reviewed 20% of disciplines and academic programs annually via Program Review process.

9 Created one new academic degree program, one new credit certificate, and three new non-credit certificates.

9 Seven new Industry Advisory Councils formed to help ensure workforce relevance to our degree and certificate offerings.

9 Eleven Gen Ed competencies established, and 10 have either completed reports or are in the process of assessment.

What We’ve Done to Get There Established new academic pathways–non-credit to credit and NVCC to four-year colleges. When this plan started, NVCC had only one non-credit to credit pathway. Since then, in addition to that manufacturing non-credit to credit pathway, we built three more with the addition of non-credit certificates in Horticulture, Hospitality Management, and Languages. We also established new pathways that facilitated student transfer to four-year colleges after they leave NVCC.

CSCU’s Transfer Articulation Policy (TAP), allows any student to start at one of the community colleges in Connecticut, complete a Transfer Ticket associate degree, and transfer to a CSCU university (Central, Eastern, Southern, Western) or to Charter Oak College to earn a bachelor’s degree. Since they were first created at NVCC a few years ago, enrollment has increased dramatically, with upwards of 650 students enrolled in TAP pathways in spring 2020.

Built infrastructure to create new degrees and certificates responsive to industry and community needs. Beginning in 2014, the college completed a full round of seven Industry Sector Summits to address the education and training needs of employers in manufacturing, information technology, allied health, bioscience, financial services, hospitality, and energy.

These summits formed advisory councils by sector and contributed to the creation of an associate degree in Cybersecurity and a certificate in Sustainable Food Systems. The advisory councils not only inform new program creation (e.g., an energy-related curriculum is currently under exploration), but also guide course changes (e.g., we’ve recently updated courses in manufacturing and financial services).

Strengthened foundational offerings like ESL and FYE. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution with between 600 to 900 students per year enrolled in ESL courses, we pay additional attention to using data to improve student success. For example, in 2016, data-informed curricular changes resulted in additional grammar and oral communications offerings that improved ESL student course success rates. We undertook similar work with our foundational First Year Experience (FYE) offering, which in 2019-20 enrolled about 700 students to help ground them in what it takes to succeed in college. Since 2016, we standardized the FYE curriculum, offering a course shell created in Blackboard that includes training and an abundance of resources from which instructors can choose to implement into their courses.

AT ACADEMIC AND INDUSTRY STANDARDS. These resources have reduced the need for a textbook to save students money. Regular trainings and brown bags increased to twice a semester and the FYE coordinator, with faculty input, produced a monthly newsletter with tips and articles. The 1.5 credit course is now offered in two ways: once-a-week for the whole semester or twice-a-week for the first seven weeks of the semester.

Assessment results show that students completed the course successfully at the same rate, either way.

Built a faculty led culture and systems to improve teaching and learning. NVCC has 103 full-time faculty lines and over 400 part-time faculty, all of whom are dedicated to help students succeed and reach their goals.

In recent years, these faculty systematized academic program and discipline review and general education assessments, each now sustainable for the long term.

Each year we have processes and a schedule of review to examine if students are achieving the intended learning outcomes of a subset of our courses, disciplines, and programs. Having ongoing, regularized systems make sure all of our academic offerings get reviewed over a five-year period. To support this work, we’ve established the Academic Assessment Alliance which provides systematic training for faculty in the strategies and processes of competency and programmatic assessment to ensure we maintain continuous learning. In the last two years, as expressly articulated in NVCC’s 20192024 Academic Master Plan and Doing Our P.A.R.T., we also started facilitating faculty connections so they can approach their courses and curriculum in creative and collaborative ways, reviewing and sharing data that informs their approaches to teaching and learning.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Create more non-credit to credit options to expand the workforce program pathways for students. We will explore effective ways to use workshops and presentations to increase interest and encourage students in non-credit programs to consider the opportunities available to them after they earned their credential to move into a credit certificate or degree program, such as from a Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA), Patient Care Technician (PCT), or Phlebotomy non-credit credential to our Nursing or Allied Health program.

• Launch three new academic programs. Based on internal capacity and external workforce demand and demographics, we will explore options leading to new program possibilities like Surgical Technician, Medical Assistant, and Office Technology.

• Ensure consistent quality of teaching and learning across modalities, offering ways for students to become more familiar with technology. The COVID-19 pandemic reminds us we must ensure we can provide high-quality teaching and learning across all modalities, especially when it comes to subjects like STEM, where some coursework, such as clinical or lab requirements, becomes more difficult to fulfill in a distance learning context.

In addition to adapting courses to prepare for the possibility of continued socially distanced learning and integrating technology assessment and skills building into orientation, NVCC will develop an online modularized course that orients students to the technology skills required for distance learning.

• Embed FYE outcomes within introduction to major courses. Because NVCC has the capacity to offer FYE only to first-time, full-time students, the Faculty Senate moved in fall 2019 to identify FYE course learning outcomes that could be addressed across majors within introductory courses. This initiative will help more students access the benefits of the First Year Experience.

• Ensure recommendations for improvements that emerge from Program Review and Gen Ed assessment get considered for implementation.

NVCC developed a strong system of ongoing, regularized student learning outcomes assessment.

Now we will ensure assessment findings are considered and implemented, more regularly, as appropriate.

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goal three 16

NVCC PROGRAMS MEET AND BEA Priority 6: Innovation and Entrepreneurship This priority goes hand in hand with Priority 3 (Leadership and Service) and Priority 5 (Cutting-edge Curriculum).

While Priority 3 focuses on building the capacity of individual faculty, staff, administrators, and students to take on 21st century leadership skills like innovation and risk-taking, and bridging connections on and off campus to continuously revitalize our curriculum, Priority 6 focuses on developing long-term mechanisms that regularly cultivate and reward innovation, entrepreneurship, and resilience.

Notable Results So Far 9 Pivoted successfully during the COVID-19 pandemic; shifted all learning online, with numerous, innovative online supports.

9 Multiple awards systems in place which, since 2016, granted more than 178 awards to faculty and staff for their innovative and dedicated leadership.

9 Six Beautiful Communications Committee grants awarded since 2016 totaled $6,000, leveraging significant innovation on campus.

What We’ve Done to Get There Demonstrated NVCC’s innovation capacity during COVID-19. In perhaps the greatest demonstration of NVCC’s innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, staff, faculty, administrators, and students banded together to shift to online classes during COVID-19. Faculty took their spring break to adapt their course content to an online modality, and within a few days created peer-support groups. Our Director of Educational Technologies and assistant tripled the number of individual and small-group trainings. In fewer than two weeks, the library extended “chat” sessions for students and offered virtual support for research.

ACE trained its tutors and mSI leaders (modified supplemental instruction) how to tutor online, and SI instruction continued seamlessly on Microsoft Teams.

Faculty in science, allied health, and nursing classes developed simulated labs, and by the beginning of April, nearly 750 sections of credit courses shifted to remote learning. Non-credit instructors were trained so that they could move the majority of non-credit courses online, as well. Within three days after our March 13 campus closing, all of our student supports–from financial aid, to advising, and admissions–shifted to online. Several more hands-on supports, like workshops (e.g., on mental health, financial aid, probation/ suspension, registration) and academic advising became available on March 23. Since then, we’ve added pandemic-related workshops, and the option to convert spring 2020 classes to pass/fail.

Developed college-wide and unit-based award systems to recognize innovative faculty and staff leadership.

Before the pandemic, we created award systems to recognize students, faculty, staff, alumni, administrators, and community members for distinguished service to NVCC students and the college. Since 2016, we’ve awarded 16 Unit Awards and 41 Presidential Medals of Honor.

AT ACADEMIC AND INDUSTRY STANDARDS. Our faculty and staff also benefitted from the Educational Excellence and Distinguished Service Award program which, since 2016, recognized six extraordinary individuals among AFT, Congress, and AFSCME union members with at least 10 years of service for their professional service. The award gave $1,500 plus the opportunity to apply for up to $5,000 to support their professional activities. These awards were in addition to 108 Board of Regents Merit Awards, and the first NVCC Alumni Association “You Changed My Life Award” recognizing a faculty member for dedication and service.

Expanded funding processes to support faculty and staff innovation. Despite a difficult budget climate, we’ve sought funding to support innovation and entrepreneurship. In 2012, NVCC created the Committee on Beautiful Communications to encourage more faculty and staff to advance innovative projects and compete for seed funding awards each year. While the dollars spent on these awards have been small, they’ve yielded big returns. Since 2016, Beautiful Communications Committee awards supported a number of innovations, from an ACE and student Art Club collaboration to build a mural in the ACE, to the creation of lactation rooms on campus. We also encouraged student clubs to exercise their entrepreneurial muscle through a contest each semester to compete for a $400 prize for the best-designed bulletin board.

Provided students with curricular and extracurricular opportunities to develop their innovation and entrepreneurial skills. Several programs created opportunities to imbed innovation and entrepreneurial skills into the curriculum. Finance majors now use investment portfolio simulation programs and real-life cases to create their own portfolios and make changes to garner the most profit. Macroeconomics students create a Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee and analyze current economic trends and indicators used by

the Fed and economics departments in banks. Principles of Marketing students craft new marketing proposals for existing products. And, students in Communications and Digital Arts Technology (DAT) courses apply their skills and knowledge to create new materials for various college departments, mimicking the entire process of meeting with a “client,” putting together a proposal, and executing the product. NVCC provided extracurricular opportunities, too. One successful example is through The Tamarack, NVCC’s student newspaper. Students receive direct experience working as journalists to generate ideas for content. With faculty advisor guidance, they develop content which is put through a rigorous vetting and editing process prior to publication.

One student a year earns the added experience of being editor-in-chief, while others enhance their editing skills to develop and shepherd stories from idea phase to final print. These experiences hone student skills toward their becoming award-winning writers. For the fourth year in a row, The Tamarack won multiple excellence in journalism awards from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists.

We will explore possibilities to create learning exchanges, from brown bags, to hosted workshops, or maybe even a symposium to explore questions such as: what have we learned about reaching students online that can shape future student services; which teaching and learning lessons should influence curriculum development and pedagogy; and how might we rethink operations in light of what we have experienced?

• Further encourage and fund innovation and entrepreneurship. NVCC has proven it can pivot quickly to online teaching and remote student services. We adapted and innovated almost overnight. We also continue to fund new ideas, if only modestly at this point. We now must build upon this momentum to become an innovation incubator for campus and community. Grants and private funding can encourage and advance think-tank ideas to improve teaching, assess learning, harness technology, reach students in novel ways, address community issues, and invite public engagement.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Integrate Priority 3 and Priority 6 to address leadership, service, innovation, and entrepreneurship holistically. Since the work in these areas truly interrelates, we will approach it in a more integrated fashion. This means we also will consider how to build skills, while also recognizing and incentivizing behavior and actions.

• Inform NVCC’s future innovation and entrepreneurship practice from lessons learned during COVID-19. We imagine much can be learned by encouraging sharing among faculty, staff, administrators, and students, once the pandemic crisis subsides.

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goal four 18

NVCC IS AN ENGINE OF CHANGE AND THE BROADER COMMUNITY Priority 7: Pre-collegiate Pathways Integral to our identity and mission as a community college is our responsibility and connection to our 22town service region.

In addition to offering opportunities for adult learners, we also reach out to young people who may never have considered college as a possibility. As one of 44 Dual Pell institutions in the country, we are committed to building supports and pathways for pre-college students, ensuring they have the opportunity to take college-level courses while still in high school.

Notable Results So Far 9 Since fall 2016, 2,562 students from 31 high schools registered for NVCC credit courses.

9 Since fall 2016, 15,985 college credits have been awarded to participating students.

9 Since fall 2016, the financial value of college credits earned by our pre-collegiate students was $2.4 million–all earned free of charge.

What We’ve Done to Get There Grew federal funding to expand NVCC’s pre-collegiate offerings. With the exception of a small dip in FY2019, NVCC’s federal funding has increased yearly from $3.7 million in FY2017 to $6.7 million in FY2020. In fall 2012, NVCC secured its first major pre-collegiate pathway grant, by becoming the fiduciary for the $11.2 million Bridge to College program serving Waterbury’s low-income, underserved middle and high school students. The success of that grant program with its higher high school graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment contributed to a GEAR UP grant renewal for Connecticut through 2026.

In addition to GEAR UP, we added funding streams with federal funds for our pre-collegiate efforts from the Perkins Career Technical Education grant and the Upward Bound program. Dual Pell funds grew, too.

The Dual Pell experiment allowed us to offer college credit courses to secondary students in Danbury and Waterbury and for them to use Pell Grant funds to cover their cost of tuition and fees, if they qualified.

Since we first started Dual Pell, funding available to our participating students (if approved for an award) rose from $250,000 to over $700,000 in 2019-20. Grant funding to prepare job seekers under our Workforce Achievers Value Education (WAVE) program offered by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) grew from $205,400 in fall 2016 to $300,591 in fall 2020, a 46% increase.

E WITHIN WATERBURY, DANBURY, Y Deepened partnerships with major feeder high schools.

In recent years, we expanded public school contracts within the four school districts of our service region.

This was supported by internal restructuring of support to our pre-collegiate programs. We integrated the previously separate Bridge to College office so that precollegiate students had access to the full range of student support services, including testing and advising.

Launched the Danbury Early College Opportunity (DECO). Since its inception in fall 2016, DECO has helped students earn college credit toward an associate degree in Computer Information Systems. Danbury High School’s 10th to 12th grade students participate in college-level courses taught at the high school, online, or at our Danbury Campus. Since DECO began, 407 students have participated in five cohorts.

Expanded pre-collegiate scholarships. High School Partnership and Principal to President Scholarship offerings increased, so now more than 75 students each academic year benefit from the funds to participate in pre-collegiate pathways. With planned enrollment expansion and support from these two scholarship programs, since fall 2016, 266 students from 45 high schools have earned 798 college credits on our Danbury Campus.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026

In the coming years, we will ensure these students consider NVCC as the college of their choice to grant them an affordable two-year degree with transferable credits, should they want to continue.

During this next phase we’ll:

• Work with our high school partners to determine post-COVID changes for our pre-collegiate programs. The COVID-19 pandemic had a ripple effect across our work, including programs with partnering high schools. Depending on the trajectory of social distancing in coming years, we will explore ways we can still provide pre-collegiate programs and supports that keep everyone safe.

• Expand partnerships with existing and new school districts. The success of our pre-collegiate outreach and programs has more school districts reaching out to partner with us, including connections with College Career Pathways (CCP). In coming years, we will build on and expand partnerships with existing and new school districts.

• Increase pre-collegiate student enrollment and graduation from NVCC. Many of the students served through our pre-collegiate programs hit important milestones. For example, 83.2% of Waterbury GEAR UP students graduated from high school in 2019, a 6.2% increase from 2017. In addition, for the classes of 2018 and 2019, a total of 1,071 students enrolled at either NVCC or Southern Connecticut State University, which means 50% of the cohort enrolled in a CSCU college.

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goal four 20

NVCC IS AN ENGINE OF CHANGE DANBURY, AND THE BROADER C Priority 8: Workforce Pathways Part of our mission as a community college is to prepare students for the workforce, and in so doing we play a critical role in supporting local businesses and the regional economy. Thus, we must communicate and collaborate with industry leaders and other stakeholders to identify their specific needs then act quickly and productively to create responsive pathways.

Notable Results So Far 9 The AMTC became a Top 10 national finalist for the 2019 Bellwether Award in workforce development.

9 Nursing, Allied Health, and the AMTC–our primary workforce areas–consistently achieved high job placement rates: upwards of an 85% job placement rate for Allied Health and Nursing graduates, and 95% for AMTC graduates (with 85% of students receiving AMTC job placements at the places of their internships).

9 Increased enrollments (some by 30%) in Community and Economic Development (CED) classes.

9 Since 2016, 408 Advanced Manufacturing Certificates were awarded, and 671 National Institute for Metal Working Skills (NIMS) certificates issued–more than any other Connecticut community college with an advanced manufacturing center.

What We’ve Done to Get There Strong industry engagement helped ensure student success. As noted under Priority 5 (Cutting-edge Curriculum), since 2016, we developed seven new Industry Advisory Councils, so all of our workforce programs have advisory councils that ensure curriculum development aligns with workforce needs and expectations. We expanded into new partnerships like the one with Praxair Inc., a subsidiary of the Linde Corporation, which funded $325,000 in scholarships for two cohorts of AMTC students in an accelerated, oneyear advanced manufacturing technology curriculum.

Experiential learning–summer jobs, service learning, internships, and clinical placements–offer us another opportunity to strengthen ties with industry, sometimes facilitated by funders like the Connecticut Community Foundation, which awarded NVCC’s Hospitality Program a grant for students to receive paid internships at local senior centers. Our faculty remain instrumental in building these connections, demonstrating a strong commitment to ensure students get the training they need to be well-positioned in the job market. For example, AMTC instructional staff earned specialized certification in the Siemens Machine Interface System so students can offer additional value to employers and have a competitive advantage when students seek employment.

Outreached to and recruited students via workforcerelated high school partnerships. Our close relationships with local high schools and industry contributed to outreach and education that helped us recruit students. For example, 500-plus students attended our 4th Annual Advanced Manufacturing/STEM Expo in fall 2019, held in collaboration with Waterbury Public Schools and the Waterbury Regional Chamber.

E WITHIN WATERBURY, COMMUNITY Two area high schools will graduate 60 students in our CNA training classes with a third school slated to begin the classes in fall 2020.

Expanded AMTC program in Danbury. Expansion into the greater Danbury area began in spring 2015 with the help of a $1.7 million federal grant. An agreement with the state’s Technical High School System allowed the AMTC to use Abbott Technical High School in Danbury for evening machine shop classes.

Responded to current and emerging areas of workforce training.

The Community and Economic Development (CED) Division serves the needs of adult learners and youths at both campuses through partnerships with local and state agencies. The mix of workforce training and community based outreach enrolled 2,000 registrants annually. Held in collaboration with the Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board, participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) increased by 30%. Welding classes, which also reported a 30% enrollment increase, offered eight to 10 sections each semester, with some held on Sundays.

CED streamlined the Patient Care Technician (PCT) program and added Medical Administrative Assistant and Bookkeeping programs. Seven workforce training classes were held online.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Develop a non-credit program culture of assessment to maintain high-quality workforce offerings. As described under Priority 5 (Cuttingedge Curriculum), we dedicated significant time and attention to build our capacity to provide systematized assessment of NVCC offerings.

Since 2016, we brought NVCC’s credit certificate offerings into our assessment process, developing timelines, templates, and assessment methodologies that allow us to better know the extent to which students are achieving our desired learning outcomes. During this next phase, we will do the same for our non-credit offerings.

• Scale AMTC in Danbury. Currently, there is a proposal to the Board of Regents for a standalone manufacturing center in Danbury. If approved, the Advanced Manufacturing Technology program will relocate to a site on the Western Connecticut State University campus, significantly increasing program enrollment.

• Strengthen and scale industry partnerships. Our close collaboration with industry led to the success of our workforce offerings. In these coming years, we recognize we will reaffirm our partnership commitments and, where possible, seek ways to scale our programs so that more students benefit. Several ventures are already in the works, including a collaboration with ASML Corp, a large semiconductor company and with Western Connecticut State University to establish a new Optical Technology Training Academy.

• Create more CED online. During this next phase, we will build upon the variety of online platforms used

by CED instructors during the pandemic to meet the anticipated increase in requests by some employers for online delivery.

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NVCC IS AN EFFECTIVE, PERFORM Priority 9: Institutionalizing Data and Assessment Systems

goal five 22

Many reasons exist for building NVCC’s culture of assessment. We know this helped us make real-time adjustments to improve our teaching and learning practices. It also demonstrates our effectiveness to a range of audiences–including students, funders, and accreditors–and affirms our commitment to continuously improve.

Notable Results So Far 9 Repositioned NVCC’s Office of Institutional Research to become the Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (OIRE).

9 Built data systems to support regular data tracking, distribution, and dialogue.

9 Made data more accessible to everyone via the website and targeted reporting.

What We’ve Done to Get There Made more public key data about NVCC on our website. The Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness (OIRE) significantly updated its website to clarify what OIRE does and responded to frequently asked questions like how to properly conduct a survey and where to access summaries of results of collegewide surveys. The website now offers a wealth of data, such as student and graduation profiles, enrollment and completion trends, and institutional characteristics. It details the types of reports OIRE produced regularly and how to request data, if needed.

Built dashboards for every degree program and credit certificate. These program-specific dashboards are updated every semester and provide data on connected certificates. They include data on awards, enrollment, curriculum modes, course completion rates, and student demographics. Dashboard data are now shared internally upon request.

Provided targeted data to support decision making and team effectiveness at key points impacting student success. There are times in a student’s academic journey, like at registration, when we intervene to help the student continue and complete. OIRE provides weekly reports during registration with data on the number of students retained, but who are not yet registered. This data supports the college’s enrollment management function.

Provided data and technical assistance to support program discipline assessment and review. As each academic program, discipline, and credit certificate begins its review, OIRE now provides a tailored data set to help faculty reflect, from a data perspective, on the strengths and weaknesses of their program. OIRE then reviews the template that faculty referenced together with a program assessment planning template that help them determine how to approach the review process and ensure it is grounded in data.

MANCE-BASED INSTITUTION. Supported annual operational planning to implement NVCC’s college-wide strategic plan. Since 2017, OIRE has provided technical assistance to create NVCC’s annual operational plan, known as Wildly Important Goals (WIGs). OIRE staff help units craft their WIGS in alignment with the strategic plan, and then help them track annual progress. OIRE also publishes an annual update on college progress made toward performance targets listed in NVCC’s strategic plan.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Create an open data portal. While the OIRE website offers significant data, during this next phase, we will build out a data portal to include all the existing metrics and historical data so that faculty, staff, and administrators can better track trends to improve their effectiveness.

from which all CSCU colleges now benefit. The System Office indicated it may not renew this contract which NVCC uses extensively to manage data for our assessment processes. We must find new software.

• Strengthen processes for annual operationalization of NVCC’s strategic priorities. We expect to advance the strategic priorities we’ve outlined. However, things could change because of COVID-19, CSCU consolidation, or a variety of unknowns. So, it is more imperative for NVCC to have clear multi-year college-wide priorities to focus annually on what it will do to achieve them. OIRE can play an important role in refining the way NVCC plans and reflects on its progress toward shared college-wide priorities, supporting campus engagement and data-based dialogue and decision making.

• Build OIRE’s capacity. Right now OIRE’s staffing is a two-FTE equivalent, with one full-time interim director, one part-time education/research assistant (a retired director of institutional research with 45-plus years’ experience), and a part-time faculty assessment coordinator. We plan to hire a parttime EA to assist with non-technical projects and administrative duties.

• Improve data literacy on campus. In recent years we conducted workshops via the Vanguard Leadership Academy. Our big takeaway: faculty could benefit from a data literacy workshop series that will allow for a deeper dive into how to use data. Optimally, this will rollout alongside the open data portal.

• Identify new software for managing data assessment files. NVCC currently uses Aqua, a file management system and software program made by Watermark, under a contract negotiated by the System Office

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NVCC IS AN EFFECTIVE, PERFORM Priority 10: Strategic Institutional Growth and Support

goal five 24

Effective operations help institutions weather tough times. There’s no question this priority reminds us that investing in our capacity to enroll students, fundraise, and plan well keeps our success going, even when forces around us get complicated. Being strong operationally acts like a compass, guiding us through the storm and keeping us focused “true north” on our mission during both good and tough times.

Notable Results So Far 9 Reaffirmed for accreditation by NECHE through fall 2022.

9 Maintained healthy unrestricted net assets (UNA)–with just under $5 million in FY2019 (currently in the top quartile for strong reserves among the 12 community colleges).

9 Our new Danbury Campus (20,000 sq. ft.) opened in 2019, now offers 100-plus degrees and certificates, with 1,300 students enrolled in fall 2019.

9 Grants Office established in 2018 helped NVCC receive 23 new grants within its first two years, helping to increase grants raised to $1,957,040 between 2018 and 2020 compared to $300,000 raised in 2016.

9 Grew the NVCC Foundation Endowment Fund from $1,336,910 in 2016 to $2,026,496 in January 2020.

9 NVCC Foundation scholarship awards more than doubled between 2018 and 2020, from 94 to 203.

9 Capital campaign raised $1.1million for stateof-the-art equipment for classrooms and labs in the new Center for Health Sciences.

9 Major institutional plans aligned with the Strategic Plan: Facilities Master Plan, Academic Master Plan (new), Enrollment Management Plan, Institutional Advancement Plan (new), Information Technology Plan, and Institutional Effectiveness Plan.

What We’ve Done to Get There Undertook significant team efforts in response to NECHE. In 2017, NVCC submitted its interim (5year) report to the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE). In 2018, NECHE asked for a two-year update focused on two areas: assessing advising effectiveness and assessing General Education outcomes. A college-wide, inclusive process with the academic and staff community informed the report submitted in August 2019. NECHE accepted the Progress Report and reaffirmed NVCC accreditation to fall 2022.

Focused on improving efficiency and reducing costs while improving service and freeing up financial resources to support student success. NVCC operated in the black for years without compromising quality by reducing unnecessary expenditures, such as by using a new process to order common office supplies from lower-cost distributors, and creating the Upcycle Store, where offices donated unneeded supplies so other offices could “shop” without making additional purchases.

Strengthened Danbury Campus recruitment in and partnerships with regional high schools. As noted in Priority 7 (Pre-collegiate Pathways), increased enrollment at the Danbury Campus resulted largely from concentrated recruitment at high schools and partnerships like the DECO program, AMTC expansion to Abbott Technical High School, High School Partnership Program, and Principal to President Scholarships.

Grants Office built public and private grants fundraising capacity. The NVCC Grants Office was established in 2018 under Development Office leadership. In addition to instituting grants protocols to coordinate campus grant-seeking, since its creation, the Grants Office helped increase grant awards, raising a total of $1,957,040 between 2018 and 2020 as compared to $300,000 raised in 2016.

MANCE-BASED INSTITUTION. Expanded NVCC Foundation engagement, fundraising, and financial supports to students. The NVCC Foundation initiated several new annual fundraising activities, all since 2017: Leadership Breakfast, alumni events, and a direct mail appeal. The permanent Endowment Fund for scholarships and academic program support, grew substantially from $1,336,910 in fall 2016 to $2,026,496 in January 2020. The fund’s 22 accounts distributed $59,000 in 2020 awarding 203 scholarships. The same year saw creation of eight new endowed scholarships which totaled $234,630. The foundation distributed $415,000 in 2020 to support scholarships and college programs, an increase of 83% over 2019. Donations and grants also supported the NVCC Food Pantry, the Jobs on Campus program, and the COVID-19 Student Emergency Fund.

Conducted a successful capital campaign. Though the goal was initially believed to be difficult and even unattainable, the 2016 capital campaign exceeded its goal by raising $1.1 million for the Center for Health Sciences. The total resulted from the determined efforts of a small college team led by a dedicated community leader who served as campaign champion. Team members combined their fundraising strengths and coordinated their contacts. The levels of corporate, community, and individual giving during the year-long campaign demonstrated the broad range of support for and trust in NVCC programs and services. Monetary estimates of non-financial, in-kind contributions plausibly could have increased to $1.3 million the actual campaign total. All donations were used to support the nursing and allied health programs.

Created and implemented major institutional plans.

Each year, as part of the WIGs operational planning process, NVCC now ensure that activities aligned with major institutional plans are included. Two new institutional plans were created since 2016: the 2019-2024 Academic Master Plan and the 2019-2024 Institutional Advancement Plan.

The Next Frontier – 2020-2026 During this next phase we’ll:

• Prepare for NVCC’s next decennial Comprehensive Evaluation Accreditation report due fall 2022. The Dean of Academic Affairs and a Professor of Math will co-chair the Executive Steering Committee with a team of 64 faculty and staff to address the nine Accreditation Standards. Over the summer, OIRE will gather data for the self-study process. The team will outline deadlines and benchmarks, and create a central documents portal for an early fall 2020 kickoff.

• Build institutional resilience through even more aligned and coordinated planning. In coming years, coordinated annual planning and reflection will become a must. Internal capacity and external context will rule.

• Adapt to potential new budget model. We expect changes in the college’s budget model as we transition to a shared service model under the developing consolidation plan. As certain departments become part of the new organizational structure, shared service level agreements (SLAs) will be developed and promulgated by CSCU Finance. After the SLAs are rolled out to the colleges, the impact will come into focus.

• Undertake focused post-COVID enrollment management efforts, especially to boost Waterbury and Danbury enrollments. In line with state and national community college trends, NVCC’s enrollment has decreased since 2016, from a headcount of 6,662 students in fall 2016 to 6,115 in fall 2019 (enrollment down in Waterbury but up in Danbury). A number of factors contribute to this trend, but COVID-19 uncertainties will require focus on areas like in-person or online recruitment, admissions, marketing, customer service, using technology, and refining data analysis.

• Reflect on and prioritize the Development Office fundraising agenda in a post-COVID world. Grants and private giving are expected to be more difficult to achieve during the early months of pandemic recovery. The fundraising agenda must be targeted.

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RECAP OF FUTURE PRIORITIES IDENTIFIED FOR 2020-2026 PRIORITY 1: COMPLETION, JOB PLACEMENT, AND TRANSFER

PRIORITY 6: INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

• Double down on retention.

• Integrate Priority 3 and Priority 6 to address leadership, service, innovation, and entrepreneurship holistically.

• Support completion of college-level English and math requirements.

• Track persistence and ensure student success upon transfer.

• Integrate technology assessment and skills building into student orientation.

• Inform NVCC’s future innovation and entrepreneurship practice from lessons learned during COVID-19.

• Further encourage and fund innovation and entrepreneurship.

PRIORITY 2: EQUITY IN ACHIEVEMENT

PRIORITY 7: PRE-COLLEGIATE PATHWAYS

• Roll out targeted efforts to improve African American student course and degree completion.

• Roll out targeted efforts to improve Hispanic student course and degree completion.

• Disaggregate data and engage campus dialogue to identify targeted interventions.

• Prioritize wrap-around services in a post-COVID world.

PRIORITY 3: LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE

• Work with our high school partners to determine post-COVID changes for our precollegiate programs.

• Explore our service role in a post-COVID world within the geographic communities we serve.

• Develop intensive focus on staff and faculty professional development to teach and provide support in a socially distanced world.

• Increase faculty sign-up for free professional development offerings.

• Ensure students have the necessary technology skills to succeed.

PRIORITY 4: RESEARCH

• Develop a non-credit program culture of assessment to maintain high-quality workforce offerings.

• Revamp the Honors Program to increase its intellectual rigor.

• Improve data literacy on campus.

• Expand partnerships with existing and new school districts.

• Increase pre-collegiate student enrollment and graduation from NVCC. PRIORITY 8: WORKFORCE PATHWAYS

• Scale AMTC in Danbury.

• Strengthen and scale industry partnerships.

• Create more CED online.

PRIORITY 9: INSTITUTIONALIZING DATA AND ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS • Explore possibilities to adapt or replicate the two-semester research course • Create an open data portal.

• Build OIRE’s capacity. across disciplines, as well as articulate it with four-year colleges.

• Develop modules for information and academic literacy.

• PRIORITY 5: CUTTING-EDGE CURRICULUM

• Identify new software for managing data assessment files.

• Strengthen processes for annual operationalization of NVCC’s strategic priorities.

PRIORITY 10: STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL GROWTH AND SUPPORT

• Create more non-credit to credit options to expand the workforce program • Prepare for NVCC’s next decennial Comprehensive Evaluation Accreditation report pathways for students. due fall 2022.

• Adapt to potential new budget model.

• Launch three new academic programs.

• Undertake focused post-COVID enrollment management efforts especially to boost • Embed FYE outcomes within introduction to major courses.

Waterbury and Danbury enrollments.

• Ensure recommendations for improvements that emerge from Program Review • Reflect on and prioritize the Development Office fundraising agenda in a post-COVID and Gen Ed assessment get considered for implementation. world.

• Ensure consistent quality of teaching and learning across modalities, offering • Building institutional resilience through even more aligned and coordinated planning. ways for students to become more familiar with technology.

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THE NEXT FRONTIER 2020-2026

Getting this far in NVCC’s 2016-2026 Strategic Plan took a lot of work, as the previous pages show.

It couldn’t have been done without the dedication and commitment of our faculty, staff, administrators, students, and community partners.

Setting clear goals, priorities and targeted outcomes and outputs helped too, as did consistently undertaking an annual process to operationalize the plan–via the Wildly Important Goals (WIG)s.

We’ve summarized “next frontier” actions for each priority on the facing page. It’s a lot. On top of our daily work, the context may be daunting: a potential system consolidation, a potential new budget model, even tougher economic times, and unknowns about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, to name a few factors.

[Note: a number of the next frontier actions outlined relate specifically to prepare us for a post-COVID reality.]

We’ve laid out an aspirational action plan for the future because we remain committed to what’s at the core of Toward a Splendid College, our 2020-2026 strategic plan. We believe we constantly have to aspire to become that college. That’s the only way we can achieve the key elements of our mission (to offer quality, affordable education and training in response to community needs) and our vision (for “community” to be central and students considered our most sacred trust and finest asset).

Yes, it’s a lot. And it will mean we must recommit to take time for planning and reflection on our big picture. We must come together and agree on what we want to accomplish collectively and then reflect on that regularly.

It’s going to take a full-team effort to get there. Our leaders must create times every year for coordinated, college-wide planning and reflection to recalibrate our course periodically. These must be times to gather and ask ourselves: • What can we agree we’ll strive for this year in terms of measurable results and key activities to get there (reflecting back on what’s been accomplished in preceding years and using this report as a point of inflection)?

• When are the points at which we’ll reflect? How do we hear from our stakeholders about how we’re doing on our strategic priorities and what they think are the implications for future efforts?

• How can we improve on our operational planning process? How can we reflect on that process regularly and refine it as a tool in service of our strategic work together?

Together we can aspire toward what we want to accomplish and embody collectively.

We can and we will. Because that’s who we are.

Strategic Plan 2020 Progress Report

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NVCC 2016-2026 Strategic Plan Strategic Planning Leadership Group

NVCC 2016-2026 Strategic Plan 2020 Progress Report Contributors

Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Ph.D. President

Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Ph.D. President B.L. Baker, M.A. Associate Dean of Liberal Arts and Behavioral & Social Sciences Division Kim Carolina, M.B.A. Director of Human Resources and Labor Relations Angela Chapman, M.B.A. Associate Dean of Development Lisa Dresdner, Ph.D. Dean of Academic Affairs Dana Elm, M.S. Interim Dean of Administration Carol Gabriele, D.N.P. Associate Dean for Health Sciences & Director of Nursing Sarah E. Gager, M.B.A. Dean of Student Services Waldemar S. Kostrzewa, M.A. Dean of Community Engagement Conal Larkin, M.S. Associate Dean of Business and Professional Programs Beth A. Monchun, M.S. Executive Assistant / Office of the President H. Justin Moore, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Sohair Omar, M.P.P. Interim Director of Institutional Research Ronald Picard, Ph.D. Professor of English Anna-Nanine S. Pond, M.P.A. Strategic Planning Consultant Lisa M. Rodrigues-Doolabh, Ph.D. Director of Institutional Research Antonio R. Santiago, M.S. Dean of Danbury Campus Alan J. Sturtz, Ed.D. Educational Assistant, Institutional Research Kathy Taylor, J.D. Assistant Professor, Legal Studies Sydney Voghel-Ochs, B.S. Director of Marketing and Public Relations

James Troup, M.G.A. Provost and Senior Dean of Administration Kim Carolina, M.B.A. Director of Human Resources and Labor Relations Sarah E. Gager, M.B.A. Dean of Student Services Waldemar S. Kostrzewa, M.A. Dean of Community Engagement Irene Rios-Knauf, Ed.D. Dean of Academic Affairs Lisa Dresdner, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Liberal Arts & Behavioral/Social Sciences Mitchell Holmes, M.B.A. Academic Division Director, Business Conal Larkin, M.S. Associate Dean of Information Technology Beth A. Monchun, M.S. Executive Assistant / Office of the President Ronald Picard, Ph.D. Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Anna-Nanine S. Pond, M.P.A. Strategic Planning Consultant Lisa M. Rodrigues-Doolabh, Ph.D. Director of Institutional Research Antonio R. Santiago, M.S. Associate Dean of Danbury Campus Alan J. Sturtz, Ed.D. Educational Assistant, Institutional Research Kathy Taylor, J.D. Assistant Professor, Legal Studies Sydney Voghel-Ochs, B.S. Director of Marketing and Public Relations

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NVCC CORE VALUES student centeredness academic rigor leadership accountability respect trust effective communications human diversity community outreach civic engagement beautiful and positive ideas

MISSION Naugatuck Valley Community College offers quality, affordable education and training in response to evolving community needs by providing opportunities to individuals and organizations to develop their potential.

VISION At NVCC, the word “community� is central and our students are considered our most sacred trust and our finest asset. Collaboration within and outside the confines of our immediate surroundings defines our actions and is the base for the rich intellectual, educational, cultural and civic-minded experiences we provide our students.

Waterbury • Danbury NV.EDU

STRATEGIC PLAN 2016-2026 2020 progress report